Editorial

The publication landscape is changing rapidly. The World Wide Web has made publishing easy and less expensive (at least as long as you have access to the infrastructure and someone to maintain it). It has allowed researchers and learned societies to create websites that can be updated daily and reach a wide audience. It has led to the creation of digital journals, which can publish thousands of articles per year. It has also led to the concept of open access, the idea that scientific findings financed by public money should be freely available on the internet to all readers. At the same time, the new developments have reopened the debate about the need for, and the usefulness of, quality control. On the one hand, concerns have been raised about the review process in free access, open journals (e.g., Bohannon, 2013). On the other hand, researchers are becoming aware of the difficulties with publishing critical papers in ‘traditional’ journals, because failures to replicate rarely get through the editorial and review process, leading to a publication bias (e.g., Asendorpf et al., 2013; Francis, 2012). Also research itself is changing at a rapid pace. It is becoming more technical and team-based. New ways of statistical analysis are proposed (and often soon criticised), which go far beyond the traditional analyses of variance and linear regressions analyses we are all familiar with. Finally, we see the introduction of Big Data, immense datasets that are likely to supplement the current focus on small scale, factorial designs (e.g., Balota, Yap, Hutchison, & Cortese, 2012; Marx, 2013). It is clear that the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology should not ignore these changes, even though its history and tradition give it the advantage of a steady ship in troubled waters. For a start, like all good journals we have an active website. This is important, not only because it allows very rapid and easy access to accepted manuscripts (mostly within days), but also because it gives authors new ways to write their articles by making use of the supplementary materials option. This is the place where stimulus materials, complex analyses, and even datasets can be made available. Such practice allows authors to write shorter, sharper papers and still give interested colleagues access to the more detailed materials needed for reanalysis or replication of the original finding. The supplementary materials can easily be submitted as extra files together with the manuscript; they will not be integrated in the pdf that is made of the article, but will be available to the editors and the reviewers for scrutiny. The website of the journal also provides all the opportunities for open access publication required by research councils. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP) continues its established review policy, because it is our conviction that this process is beneficial not only for readers but also for writers. Time after time we notice that the quality of papers is enhanced by the review process. At the same time, we do not want this process to be painful and protracted. Several measures have been taken in this respect. For a start, QJEP has a sizeable board of high quality Action Editors, covering all (we hope) aspects of experimental psychology. Authors are asked to indicate their two preferred Action Editors, so that they have a very high chance of being evaluated by someone familiar with their research topic (we appreciate hearing comments about possible gaps in the composition of the Editorial Board). Furthermore, researchers can nominate potential reviewers of their papers