Multidisciplinary Psychology Research Articles

A comprehensive scan of psychological disciplines through self-identification on Google Scholar: Relative endorsement, topical coverage, and publication patterns.

Psychological researchers often identify with psychological disciplines, such as social or clinical psychology. The current study analyzed Google Scholar profiles from 6,532 international scientists who attracted more than 100 citations in 2019 and self-identified with at least one of 10 common psychological disciplines (psychoanalysis; clinical psychology; (cognitive) neuroscience; developmental psychology; educational psychology; experimental psychology; biological psychology/psychophysiology; mathematical psychology/psychometrics; social psychology; personality psychology). Results indicated that almost half of all psychologists self-identified with either social psychology or cognitive neuroscience. There were 487 topics that were endorsed at least five times, ranging from highly discipline-specific topics to more integrative ones, such as emotion and personality. We also factor-analyzed frequencies of topical endorsement across disciplines and found two factors, which we interpreted as reflecting correlational and experimental research traditions (with social psychology being the largest discipline within the former tradition and cognitive neuroscience being the largest discipline within the latter tradition). Differences in productivity and impact were also found, with researchers identifying with psychometrics being the most productive and researchers identifying with personality psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and multidisciplinary psychology as the most impactful in terms of citation increases per additional output. Recommendations for promoting cross-fertilization across psychological disciplines are formulated.

Social Media Research, Human Behavior, and Sustainable Society

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to review social media research from different perspectives during the period of 2008–2014 based on the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index database. Using a collection of 10,042 articles related to social media, the bibliometric analysis revealed some interesting patterns and trend of the scientific outputs, major journals, subject categories, spatial distribution, international collaboration, and temporal evolution in keywords usage in social media studies. The research on social media has been characterized by rapid growth and dynamic collaboration, with a rising number of publications and citation. Communication, Sociology, Public, Environment & Occupational Health, Business, and Multidisciplinary Psychology were the five most common categories. Computers in Human Behavior was the journal with the most social media publications, and Computers & Education ranked first according to the average citations. The two most productive countries were the U.S. and UK, delivering about half of the publications. The proportion of China’s internationally collaborative publications was the highest. The University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University were three most productive institutions. Several keywords, such as “Facebook”, “Twitter”, “communication”, “Social Networking Sites”, “China”, “climate change”, “big data” and “social support” increasingly gained the popularity during the study period, indicating the research trends on human behavior and sustainability.

Titles in Highly Ranked Multidisciplinary Psychology Journals 1966–2011: More Words and Punctuation Marks Allow for the Communication of More Information

Titles of articles in seven highly ranked multidisciplinary psychology journals for every fifth year between 1966 and 2011 (inclusive) were studied in terms of title length, word length, punctuation density, and word pleasantness, activation, and concreteness (assessed by the Dictionary of Affect in Language). Titles grew longer (by three words) and were more frequently punctuated (by one colon or comma for every other article) between 1966 and 2011. This may reflect the increasing complexity of psychology and satisfy readers' requirements for more specific information. There were significant differences among journals (e.g., titles in the Annual Review of Psychology were scored by the Dictionary of Affect as the most pleasant, and those in Psychological Bulletin as the least pleasant) and among categories of journals (e.g., titles in review journals employed longer words than those in research or association journals). Differences were stable across time and were employed to successfully categorize titles from a validation sample.

A bibliometric analysis of a national Journal: The case of the Turkish Journal of Psychology

What contributions do researchers in the social sciences and humanities in Turkey make to science internationally? In an attempt to answer this question, this conducts a bibliometric analysis of the Journal of Psychology (Turk Psikoloji Dergisi [TPD]) as indexed in the Social Science Citation Index Multidisciplinary Psychology since 1995, volume 10, issue 35. Descriptive data showed that TPD published a total of 215 articles, about 11 per year, in (84.65%) and English (15.35%). On an average, an article was authored by 2 (2.01) authors and the article/unique author ratio was about 1:1 (.98). Apart from Turkey, authors were affiliated with the USA, Canada, The Netherlands, Australia, Cyprus, England, and Germany. Most of the publications were products of authors affiliated with universities in Ankara, Turkey. TPD was ranked 115 out of 126 journals in the category of Multidisciplinary Psychology in the Journal Citation Reports-Social Sciences Edition, with an impact factor of 0.214 in 2012 and a 5-year impact factor of 0.154. Aside from the most common words such as the, in, and so on, Turkish ( n = 30), followed by study and memory, were the most frequently used words in titles; study, ( n = 325) memory, ( n = 206) and between ( n = 201) were the most frequently used words in abstracts. On an average, articles had about five keywords, including about four keywords unique to the article. These findings suggest that TPD is an extremely local, but highly impactful journal publishing articles on very diverse topics from self to culture, and from memory to depression to scale development.

Is Psychology a Health Profession? An Opinion of a Sample of Psychologists Worldwide

The purpose of the current study is to evaluate the opinions of the scientific community of psychologists on the question if psychology is a health profession. Nowadays, the subject is even more important as there are laws, as for example the Ley de Ordenación de Profesiones Sanitarias (LOPS) [Law for the Organization of the Health Professions] in Spain that should be based on the concept that psychology is or is not a health profession. Moreover, the creation of the common curricula for the whole Europe needs the general agreement and no individual opinion can be valid for these purposes. The present study shows the opinion of 803 scientists who have published at least one article in a clinical or multidisciplinary psychology journal included in the Web of Science, from 42 different countries, 23 major fields of psychology and 32 orientations. The results show that, in general, the participants answered that psychology is a health profession, which is even more evident in case of clinical psychology.

A Comparison of Citations across Multidisciplinary Psychology Journals: A Case Study of Two Independent Journals

Citation rates and impact factors are often used in an attempt to evaluate the apparent prestige of scholarly journals and the quality of research published by individual scholars. However, the apparent prestige of "top tier" journals may reflect aggressive marketing and advertising efforts as much as scholarship. Some journals have retained their independence from professional organizations and the funding, marketing, and advocacy policies that may be associated with such organizations. While lacking as much visibility as organizational journals and sometimes considered "lower tier," independent journals may be able to provide comparable scientific quality as measured by citation rates. To test this, the citation rates of 169 articles published by a frequently cited scholar were compared across first- and second-tier journals, including many sponsored and marketed by large professional organizations, and to rates for two independent journals combined, Psychological Reports and Perceptual and Motor Skills. Citation rates were higher for first-tier journals but for most comparisons, especially those that controlled for heterogeneity of variance, results did not differ in statistically significant ways among the three tiers of journals, though some nonsignificant trends (p < .15) were found. If citation rates of articles are any indication of scientific quality, tiered classifications of journals appear to be a relatively weak indicator of scientific merit; journals at any tier contain articles that are useful and of good quality.

Some considerations on the use of the impact factor of scientific journals as a tool to evaluate research in psychology

This paper identifies and presents some characteristics of the psychology journals included in each of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) categories in 2002. The study shows that most of the journals belong to the categories of Multidisciplinary Psychology (102) and Clinical Psychology (83). Their ranking is seen to vary depending on the category, and the same journal may occupy different positions in different JCR categories. Journals included in the categories of Biological Psychology, Experimental Psychology and Multidisciplinary Psychology had the highest impact factor (IF).

Inclusion of Mental Health Consumers on Research Teams

Inclusion of Mental Health Consumers on Research Teams