Editor-in-Chief
Jeffrey J. Lockman, Tulane University
Associate Editors
- Karen Bierman, Pennsylvania State University
- Margaret Burchinal, University of North Carolina
- John Colombo, University of Kansas
- Michael Cunningham, Tulane University
- Gil Diesendruck, Bar-Ilan University
- Andrew J. Fuligni, University of California, Los Angeles
- Mary Gauvain, University of California, Riverside
- Erika Hoff, Florida Atlantic University
- Melanie Killen, University of Maryland
- Bonnie Leadbeater, University of Victoria
- Louis J. Moses, University of Oregon
- Glenn I. Roisman, University of Minnesota
- Cynthia Stifter, The Pennsylvania State University
Editorial Office (cdev@srcd.org)
Adam Martin, Managing Editor
Phone: (734) 926-0616
Laura Kozminski, Editorial Assistant
Phone: (734) 926-0616
Editorial Statement
Development--as our teachers have taught us and as we, in turn, teach our students--is about continuity and change. The same may be said for both our field and this journal. Today, Child Development continues its legacy of publishing the best and most forward-looking research in the developmental sciences.
It is instructive to consider the first volume of Child Development, published in 1930. A quick look at the contents reveals papers on attention, cultural comparisons, motor skill, newborn behavior, peer relations, psychophysiology, reasoning, socialpersonality development—in short, many of the same topics that hold center stage for developmentalists today. The rich diversity of the field that is so obvious now in the content of the current pages of Child Development was already evident in that very first volume.
Still, the developmental world was a lot smaller then. With the dramatic growth of the developmental sciences in recent decades, our field has become increasingly comprised of specialized and separate areas of inquiry. On the one hand, this state of affairs reflects the vitality of our field. But on the other, some might say the field has become fragmented. As Alberta Siegel famously quipped in her review of the 1970 edition of Carmichael’s manual of child psychology, “Now that Paul Mussen has edited it and the reviewers have studied it in order to prepare their overviews, no one will ever read this two-volume book again” (Baldwin, Wohlwill, Hetherington, & Siegel, 1972, p. 422).
Is something comparable happening today to Child Development, the preeminent journal in the developmental sciences? I must confess that I know of few individuals who read each issue of CD from cover to cover. And yet. This wonderful journal and the scientific values it embodies remain a great unifier for our field. Child Development is the publication that binds together all developmental scientists, regardless of discipline or area of study. It continues to be the journal in which most developmentalists and their students aspire to place their work.
In many ways, then, our field is facing a challenge that should not be entirely unfamiliar to individuals who study development. That challenge involves achieving a balance between integration and differentiation. And as students of development, we should be comfortable with the possibility that these currents may be more complementary than conflicting. Although it is neither realistic nor appropriate to expect any one journal, including this one, to step in and impose a unitary framework across our at times seemingly disparate fields of inquiry, we can offer some initiatives that will position us to effect more integration within our field—whatever form that integration may take.
With that in mind, there are new features in Child Development. The In This Issue section presents short, sometimes integrative pieces, which highlight the scientific gains and substantive contributions of the articles that appear in the pages of the issue that follow. Educational, policy and/or practice implications of articles are also showcased. Consistent with achieving an appropriate balance between integration and differentiation, one goal of the new section is to enable investigators to keep up with advances occurring outside of their immediate area(s) of interest. Likewise, we expect In This Issue to alert educators, policy makers and practitioners, regardless of specialty area, to the latest progress in our field. Science writer Anne Bridgman is the author of this new section.
We also use Child Development’s existing publication formats to promote integration across fields and to spotlight emerging areas and approaches that are becoming integral to our understanding of development. In short, think integration alongside differentiation.
Besides these and our other existing publication formats, Child Development is now also printing new article types. Empirical reports feature shorter, cutting-edge empirical papers. These papers are no longer than 4000 words in length (including text, tables, footnotes, appendices, but excluding abstract, acknowledgments and references) and advance research and knowledge in an area through noteworthy findings and/or new methods. Papers in the Empirical reports category should not be viewed as any less newsworthy or definitive than papers in our other formats. Rather, some studies might lend themselves to a condensed form of reporting, particularly in areas where such reporting has become the norm. Our aims here are to be more inclusive and in so doing, promote the integration of innovative research across relevant disciplines in the developmental sciences. The longer Empirical articles format, however, will remain the main vehicle for communicating the latest empirical advances in our knowledge about child development.
Apart from these changes, the editorial policies and core mission of Child Development will stay much the same. We encourage papers from all disciplines and from around the globe that offer new and significant information about child development and advance our understanding of developmental processes and mechanisms of change. We value cultural, ethnic, racial and contextual diversity across the studies that appear in the pages of this journal, and we especially welcome investigations that elucidate how these sociocultural characteristics are integral to our understanding of development. We recognize that to appreciate the complexities of development, different methodological and analytical approaches will be needed, some of which may be more closely aligned with particular disciplines, yet can still be informative to all. Pertaining to empirical submissions, we invite single and multiexperiment papers that are consistent with these goals, but we discourage piecemeal publication of work that addresses substantively similar or related issues. Finally, despite the specialization that has occurred in many of our research areas, we expect all papers to be accessible to the broad readership of this journal, so that as a field we may move toward a more integrated understanding of child development and plant the seeds for the dissemination and application of our work.
It should be clear then that Child Development is a collective enterprise. It represents a partnership among the contributors, ad hoc reviewers, consulting editors and editors to communicate the very best of our science to the broad readership of the journal. We rely heavily on the peer-review system and request that if you would like to be considered as a reviewer for the journal, you either register or update your profile on the CD reviewer website at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/childdev. But Child Development also represents the efforts of a number of key individuals, who behind the scenes devote their time and energy to ensuring that the journal retains its preeminent position in the field. Adam Martin, Managing Editor of Child Development, is first and foremost in this regard, coordinating our daily and longer-term operations, making certain that all of our proverbial trains run smoothly and on time. Susan Lennon, Deputy Executive Director of SRCD, along with Lonnie Sherrod, Executive Director of SRCD and immediate past Executive Director, John Hagen have all worked together to assure smooth publication. In Washington, D.C., Martha Zaslow, Director of SRCD’s Office of Policy and Communications along with her staff, promote the effective and appropriate communication of the science that appears in CD to policy makers, the media and the public.
Thus the journal before you, either in your hands or on a computer screen, is a product of both established practices and innovations, a reflection of continuity and change—an especially apt combination for a journal that focuses on development. Along with the Associate Editors, I invite you to help realize the broader mission of Child Development through your participation along several fronts: contributor, reviewer and just as important, consumer and teacher of the scholarship that appears in these pages. On behalf of the entire team at Child Development, we look forward to working with you during the new editorial term.
Jeffrey J. Lockman
References
Baldwin, A.L., Wohlwill, J. F., Hetherington, E.M., & Siegel, A. E. (1972). The metamorphosis of developmental psychology [Review of Carmichael’s manual of child psychology: Vols. 1-2. (3rd ed.)]. Contemporary Psychology, 17, 417-424.