Current Reflections on Publishing in the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action

Abstract

The Journal of Sport Psychology in Action (JSPA) is now in its thirteenth year. There is as rich a past to this journal, which has informed its evolution and place in our field, as there is an exciting present and future (Schinke, 2022). Though 2010 was the official launch of the JSPA, its roots trace to earlier discussions that were held as early as 2007 within the Association for Applied Sport Psychology’s Executive Board. Discussions were about the need for a new type of AASP journal with as strongly weighted emphasis on the practical component of the science to practice model. The Executive Board of the time envisioned a journal that would inform sport and exercise psychology by adopting a vastly different vantage to any other of the increasing outlets within a growing profession. The E-Board understood many of the existing journals were requesting expanded sections and integrations of practice within their science-based peer-review journals. However, much of the emphasis in these sport and exercise psychology journals began with science and parlayed to practice. Consequently, authors submitting their writing for consideration were trained from a young age to view science as the starting point in their professional writing and practice as the consequence of theoretically informed work with clients. Though journal practices were serving the field relatively well, there was also a siloed flavor to our field, evident in national and international conferences; one written about by Martens five decades earlier (1987), though also considered in more recent years (Winter & Collins, 2016). For many years, our co-authors, observed that researchers and practitioners often traveled in different circles and attended different conference sessions. Picking up on what was somewhat of a fractured approach to the field, the task brought forth through JSPA was to develop and launch a peer-reviewed publication where scholars would have the opportunity to emphasize the practical application of their theoretical and scientific underpinnings. There would also be a place for practitioners to share their intervention https://doi.org/10.1080/21520704.2022.2046240