The official mission of Developmental Science is to "represent the very best of contemporary scientific developmental psychology and developmental cognitive neuroscience, both in the presentation of theory and in reporting new data". When established by its founding editor, George Butterworth, the aim was to become the leading international journal for scientific and interdisciplinary approaches to psychological development. After 10 years we look back on significant progress toward this aim.

“...our aim is to increasingly focus on the highest quality and most newsworthy papers related to developmental psychology.”

Since taking up the editorship (Johnson in 2000, joined by Mareschal in 2005) we have continued to encourage breadth of coverage and publish the highest quality papers in developmental imaging, atypical development, computational modeling, animal behavioral development, as well as in cognitive behavioral and social development. Many of the journal’s papers have had significant press coverage, and have been well cited or very regularly downloaded from our website. Thus, while we are very gratified by the success of the journal, we are not surprised.

Our citation impact and other Thomson Scientific measures have consistently improved every year since the first data were published. Thus, we view the increased citation rate as part of gradual strengthening of the journal and its reputation. However, in recent years submissions to the journal have dramatically increased as its reputation has approached that of the more established journals in developmental psychology. Another reason for the increased citation rate may be that the journal is truly international, with approximately equal submissions and board members from Europe and North America, in addition to Japan, Australia, and China.

In 2001 we established a "fast track" channel to expediate the processing and publication of papers of exceptional interest, and this, along with a general policy of making decisions without multiple rounds of peer-review, may have partly contributed. We have also published invited special papers, sections, and issues on cutting-edge topics, some of which have attracted considerable interest. Finally, we have catered for work on functional imaging of the developing human brain by readily publishing the color figures necessary for this work.

In contrast to the competitor journals in our field, Developmental Science is not affiliated with, or owned by, any scientific society or association. While this has risks from our publisher’s perspective, it allows the editors and board to respond rapidly to new and emerging developments within our field, and to introduce new formats and procedures without any institutional inertia. We believe that the journal has established a strong family of loyal readers and contributors from a variety of different theoretical persuasions and perspectives. The success of the journal is very largely due to the support of this scientific family, and we hope it will continue into the future. The scientific family around the journal is well illustrated by the contents of our tenth anniversary special issue published earlier this year: "A decade of Developmental Science: Issues, themes, and prospects." Finally, we should also credit our publisher, Wiley-Blackwell, who have continuously promoted and supported the journal since its inception.

A new sub-field called developmental cognitive neuroscience has emerged at the interface of human cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology. This interdisciplinary field attempts to integrate information from and about the developing brain, with changes in behavioral and cognitive abilities in infancy and childhood. While several adult cognitive neuroscience and human development journals include this new discipline within their remit, Developmental Science is the only journal that has this new interdisciplinary field as its primary focus.

In our view, Developmental Science differs markedly from several of the long established journals in developmental psychology in several ways. First, we actively encourage papers at the disciplinary borders of developmental psychology with neuropsychology, artificial intelligence, functional brain imaging, comparative psychology, and clinical developmental disorders. Second, we put a higher value on novelty, and therefore often persevere with papers containing new methods and ideas that are generally more open to criticism at the hands of critical reviewers. Third, we weight computational and theoretical arguments more highly than rival journals, and will even reject solid empirical papers where they lack clarity of argument or motivating hypotheses.

Developmental psychology is at a cross-roads. One branch of the field seeks to increasingly make use of the powerful new empirical and theoretical tools for understanding how brain functions and genetics relate to emerging behavioral abilities. This is the branch that Developmental Science will cater to.

  What role do you see for your journal?

We believe that Developmental Science can achieve the aims of its founding editor and become the leading broad-scope journal in the field. We have already planned to implement triage mechanisms for ensuring that we conduct in-depth review only of papers likely to be of widespread and significant impact in developmental science. Thus, our aim is to increasingly focus on the highest quality and most newsworthy papers related to developmental psychology.