Editorial.

The first issue of The Journal of Sex Research appeared in March 1965, making it the longest-running of the sexology and gender-related journals; as the front cover of the inaugural issue proclaimed, "The Journal of Sex Research is the only journal devoted entirely to the scientific exploration of sex." The last four decades have seen a steady increase in the number of journals devoted to sexuality and gender. However, many of these have a narrower focus than JSR (Zucker, 2002), which, in my view, is distinguished by an interdisciplinary breadth of topics and research methodologies.

I am very pleased to have been appointed as the sixth editor of JSR. Although my term as Editor begins in December 2007 and I will be responsible for new submissions after that date, the articles that will appear in all of the 2008 issues were reviewed and selected under John DeLamater's tenure. I am indebted to John, who has been Editor for 10 years, not only for his helpful advice (and patient replies to my dozens of e-mails!), but also for leaving the journal in such good shape. The number of submissions is steadily increasing, the journal is widely indexed, and the impact factor (IF), a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a given period of time (Garfield, 2006), has steadily improved in recent years. The Institute of Scientific Information Journal Citations Reports for 2006 ranked JSR 6th out of 58 journals in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (Social Science) and 35th out of 86 in Clinical Psychology (Social Science), with an IF of 1.417.

I am happy that the four Associate Editors--Dennis Fortenberry, Osmo Kontula, Margaret Rosario, and John Wincze--have agreed to continue. Michael Wiederman, who has done a great job as Book Review Editor for 7 years, has decided to step down, and Patricia Goodson is replacing him. Patricia is considering expanding the book review section to include occasional reviews of websites, educational DVDs, and other types of media.

Regarding future directions, first and foremost, I want to maintain the high quality and the interdisciplinary mix of articles published in JSR. I recently surveyed the contents of JSR issues published over the last decade. The journal has a reasonably good international record; 31% of articles published between 1998-2007 included non-US authors but there is room for more.

I welcome submissions of manuscripts on research using diverse methodologies, including qualitative techniques and mixed-methods approaches. In the last ten years, 14% of the papers published in JSR utilized some type of qualitative methodology. It is becoming increasingly recognized that quantitative and qualitative methods are complementary and in my view some of the most exciting recent research has used a mixed-methods approach.

The Scientific Society for the Study of Sexuality (SSSS) has a strong commitment to the "next generation" of sex researchers and, in line with this, I particularly encourage younger researchers to submit to the journal and also to consider reviewing manuscripts.

The cover of the journal states: "JSR publishes empirical reports, theoretical essays, literature reviews, methodological articles, historical articles, clinical reports, teaching papers, book reviews, and letters to the editor." Although the majority of papers published in JSR will continue to be empirical reports, I encourage submission of alternative formats such as those listed above. On occasion I would like to identify "target" articles on topics that are particularly controversial and invite peer commentaries. Richard Smith, who was editor of the British Medical Journal for 25 years, commented: "what journals do best is ... stir up, prompt debate, upset, probe, legitimize, and set agendas" (Smith, 2004, p. 242). I agree with him.

References

Garfield, E. (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. Journal of the American Medical Association, 295, 90-93.

Smith, R. (2004). Travelling but never arriving; reflections of a retiring editor. British Medical Journal, 329, 242-244.

Zucker, K. J. (2002). From the Editor's desk: Receiving the torch in the era of sexology's renaissance. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 1-6.

Cynthia A. Graham, Ph.D.

Editor, JSR