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Welcome to Technology, Mind, and Behavior

Volume 1, Issue 1. DOI: 10.1037/tmb0000004

Published onApr 20, 2020
Welcome to Technology, Mind, and Behavior

I composed the original version of this letter in happier times. Much has changed in the past 3 months, for the world and for me personally. As you peer out of your home window or peer into your computer monitor, you know for certain: This is not the same world, and maybe it never will be. Three months ago, I envisioned us as folding ourselves into the 21st century. I was quite proud of this metaphor I had composed to jumpstart this letter. My vision was that the beginning of the century was over, and we seemed to be sliding into the middle of the 21st century (i.e., folding, like a nice warm blanket). Well, that warm fold ended in mid-January, just as soon as it had started. We have been drop-kicked into a different reality.

There is one indisputable certainty in this new world: Like it or not, technology is at the heart of it.

Well before the events of the past 4 months, there had already been a growing realization and acceptance of the roles of technology in shaping, enhancing, scaffolding, and infiltrating the human mind and behavior. Now, it is a downright invasion. An entire world had to learn how to teach and learn online in a week. Technologies are currently the centerpiece to communication, socializing, health care, business, social well-being, and the list goes on.

We envisioned and established this journal in 2019, when technology use and research on topics related to psychology, mind, and behavior were clearly on the rise. Its current ubiquity renders Technology, Mind, and Behavior (TMB) even more relevant to human life.

TMB seeks to provide a home for researchers who wish to elucidate human–technology interaction and share their research on an open forum, accessible to all. TMB also seeks to provide a source for readers who seek empirical research that informs our understanding of human–technology interaction, across multiple levels and across multiple disciplines. And TMB provides a forum wherein scientists and practitioners will find peer-reviewed empirical studies and reviews to inform a wide range of issues related to human–technology interaction.

Let us dissect the title of this journal: Technology, Mind, and Behavior. One principal focus of psychology (and thus the American Psychological Association [APA]) is human behavior. I consider myself to be an interdisciplinary behavioral psychologist because my ultimate objective is to better understand and enhance human behavior. The mind is an important driver of human behavior along with the social and physical context of the individual and groups. Understanding the mind, and how it acts as an intermediary to behavior, has been an important aspect of my own career and, in turn, is an important aspect of TMB. Finally, technology is the heart of this journal. How does and can technology impact and help us to understand the human mind and behavior?

Understanding human–technology interaction will require reaching beyond our own disciplines to understanding others’ points of view, others’ theories, and others’ approaches. Developing an understanding of how technology touches our lives and minds will require considering and reading about a wide range of research. As an editor, I am consistently surprised and excited to see the amazing studies that are being conducted in this field. As such, the potential range of topics in TMB is wide reaching. These include but are not limited to artificial intelligence, robotics, mobile devices, social media, virtual/augmented reality, natural language processing, gaming, geographic information systems, autonomous vehicles, nanotechnology, and biomedical technologies (e.g., brain–machine interfaces and genetic engineering). You can look forward to reading and experiencing the effects of technologies across a wide range of disciplines.

TMB is part of APA Open: a new, interactive open access platform. TMB appears solely online and thus empowers authors to go beyond the printed word. PubPub, the platform hosting APA Open, supports adding a wide range of multimedia that can be embedded within articles, including video and audio, interactive charts and graphs, interactive slideshows, interactive content, programming code, equations, and more. PubPub includes footnotes, citation features, and author annotations—encouraging commentaries, responses, and conversations around articles. TMB authors are strongly encouraged to use the PubPub technologies to dynamically present and discuss their research findings to immerse readers in ways that go beyond standard PDF experience.

TMB is open access. Open access allows research to be distributed online and free of cost to readers. Hence, all articles in TMB are freely available to the public. The importance of conveying our understanding of the impact of technology on human mind and behavior to the public cannot be overstated. Conventional (non–open access) journals cover publishing costs through access fees such as library subscriptions, site licenses, personal subscriptions, or pay-per-view charges. TMB provides open access because that is the right thing to do. Science should not be limited to those sufficiently fortunate to have the finances to purchase articles or access to privileged universities that provide access to libraries. Science should be available to everyone. One of the most salient beneficiaries of open access are readers in developing countries, where some universities can find it difficult or impossible to pay for subscriptions required by conventional journals. Open access also extends the reach of scientific research beyond our immediate academic circles. Open access articles are accessible by anyone who has access to the Internet. This affords access to researchers in other fields, practitioners, journalists, politicians, and interested laypersons.

Open access papers are more accessible to everyone and thus are more likely to have a larger, sustained impact. However, one aspect of open access is that authors are responsible for a (relatively) small fee if their manuscripts are accepted for publication. Many federal funding agencies require open access and thus now allow financing open access processing charges from federal grants. Authors who do not have access to such funds, or funds from their academic institutions, may consider applying for a waiver or discount for the article-processing charge. In sum, the TMB processing charge should not be a barrier to sharing your scientific works.

Finally, TMB is dedicated to open research practices. Once a paper is published, APA requires authors to share their data with qualified researchers for the purpose of verifying published findings through reanalysis using identical or alternate statistical methods. To facilitate transparent and open research practices, TMB asks authors to indicate whether the data, methods used in the analysis, and materials used to conduct the research will be made available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure. Authors are encouraged to provide open access to their data. Authors are asked to provide access to all the materials (scripts, questionnaires, surveys, technologies, etc.) used in the study. This can be done using traditional appendices, links to supplementary materials, or through PubPub. In sum, TMB authors are asked to provide complete, comprehensive, and transparent descriptions of their methodologies and targeted populations to facilitate and enhance replication and generalizability of their findings.

TMB publishes various types of papers, including multistudy papers, single-study papers, reviews, meta-analyses, brief reports, replications, registered reports, and invited articles. As does any journal, we seek to publish novel, cutting-edge findings; however, the notion of open science also includes the publication of replications and negative findings (i.e., lack of replication).

Consider submitting your best work to TMB.

We hope that TMB provides a home for your research and a primary source when you have questions about the intersections among technology, mind, and behavior. I am confident that these intersections will surprise and inspire, and I am hopeful that they will also help to mend.


Open Access License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-ND). This license permits copying and redistributing the work in any medium or format for noncommercial use provided the original authors and source are credited and a link to the license is included in attribution. No derivative works are permitted under this license.

Contact Information: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Danielle S. McNamara, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Psychology Building, 950 S. McAllister, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104, United States. Email: [email protected]

© 2020 The Author(s)

Received April 05, 2020
Accepted April 05, 2020


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