The next challenge for the Journal of Consumer Psychology

As most of you have probably learned by now, JCP has been officially chosen as one of the top 45 academic journals in business by the Financial Times (FT). This decision was based on the votes of deans, vice deans, or associate deans of 171 prominent universities throughout the world. In marketing we now have five journals listed on FT's list. recognition by the academic community has been made possible only through the dedicated commitment and hard work of my predecessors whom I formally acknowledge at the end of this editorial. Having achieved this milestone, JCP should strive to achieve even greater recognition and prestige. So what is JCP's next goal? This question is of critical importance and must be discussed. As I indicated in my inaugural editorial (October 2008), the goal of JCP is to acquire extraordinary knowledge in the area of consumer psychology in a timely manner, and to widely disseminate it to the academic and business community, and general public. To accomplish this goal, not only should JCP institute innovative policies and execution plans for encouraging new high quality manuscript submissions, but it should also employ reliable measurement standards to gauge progress with fulfillment of its goal. In this editorial I would like to share with JCP subscribers and readers the journal's current policies and plans as well as the measurement criteria that will allow us to at least partially assess and monitor JCP's progress toward fulfilling its goal. JCP has been currently employing and executing several noteworthy policies to accelerate the high quality manuscript submission rate. They are listed below: 1. In 2009 JCP adopted a policy to review short manuscripts (less than 5,000 words excluding references, tables, and figures). It welcomes manuscripts that either contain novel and interesting ideas with preliminary empirical findings or novel and interesting findings with tentative theoretical explanations (see the 2009 JCP, editorial for more information). The number and the quality of the new manuscripts submitted in the short article format have been rapidly increasing and several of them have already been published in JCP since last year's announcement. 2. Through the special issue format JCP actively engages in publishing articles in several newly emerging areas of research or in currently expanding research areas. In 2009 it formally announced four special issues, which center on the following topics: (1) aesthetic and hedonic experiences (Patrick and Peracchio as the editors of this …