Arpsych topic selection

Topic Selection — Is This an ARPsych Topic? (arpsych-topic-selection)

When to trigger

• A user wants to write "a review" and needs to know whether ARPsych is the right home
• An invitation is possible but the angle on the topic is undecided
• The candidate topic feels either too narrow (one lab's program) or too vast (all of memory)
• You must distinguish an ARPsych-scale survey from a Psychological Bulletin meta-analysis

The three gates a topic must pass

ARPsych commissions reviews that the whole field will read for a decade. A topic earns a slot only if it clears all three:

Gate	Question	Fails when
Maturity	Is there enough accumulated, settled-enough work to synthesize?	The area is 3 papers old and moving weekly — premature; the review would date in a year
Importance	Will cognitive/social/developmental/clinical/neuro/I-O readers and adjacent fields care?	The topic matters only to one specialty's insiders
Synthesis-readiness	Is the literature fragmented in a way a framework could resolve?	The field is already tidy (a textbook chapter covers it) — nothing to add

A topic that is mature + important but already well-synthesized does not need an ARPsych review; the value is the new organizing idea, not the recap.

Scoping the topic to the volume

ARPsych articles have a length assigned in the invitation letter (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准) — typically a focused subfield, not an entire domain. Calibrate scope so the review is:

• Comprehensive within its frame — a reader trusts it covers the relevant work (see arpsych-comprehensiveness-and-balance)
• Bounded — "X across the lifespan" or "the mechanisms of X", not "everything about X"
• Current — ARPsych prizes the recent frontier plus the foundational anchors; a pure history belongs elsewhere
• Forward-looking — the topic must support a genuine future-directions close, not just a wrap-up

A good test: can you name, in one phrase, the organizing question the review will answer (not the area it will cover)? "How do X and Y jointly shape Z?" beats "research on Z."

Sibling-venue triage (route away if mismatched)

If the topic is really…	The home is…	Tell
a stand-alone meta-analysis you want to run and submit	Psychological Bulletin	you have an effect to estimate, not a field to map
a clinical-psychology survey	Annual Review of Clinical Psychology (sister)	the audience is clinical scientists specifically
a short, provocative argument or commentary	Perspectives on Psychological Science	it is an opinion essay, not a survey of record
an original study with new data	a primary journal	you ran the study yourself

Checklist

• Topic clears Maturity, Importance, and Synthesis-readiness gates
• One-phrase organizing question is written (not just an area label)
• Scope is bounded to a plausible single-article length (per invitation norms)
• The topic supports a real future-directions agenda, not a recap
• Not better served by Psychological Bulletin / ARClinPsych / Perspectives
• Recent frontier + foundational anchors both exist in the literature
• The new contribution is an organizing idea, not a summary of known facts

Anti-patterns

• Proposing an entire domain ("emotion", "memory") — unscopeable in one review
• Pitching a topic that is one lab's research program dressed as a field
• Choosing a topic so new it cannot yet be synthesized (review will be obsolete fast)
• Choosing a topic already covered by a recent ARPsych/Annual Reviews article (check the archive)
• Confusing "I want to publish a meta-analysis" with "the field needs a review" (→ Psych Bulletin)
• No organizing question — only a subject heading

Output format

【Organizing question】"<the one question the review answers>"
【Maturity / Importance / Synthesis-readiness】pass/fail each + why
【Scope】subfield + boundary (in/out) + plausible length
【Future-directions potential】Y/N — what the open agenda would be
【Sibling check】not Psych Bulletin / ARClinPsych / Perspectives because…
【Next step】→ arpsych-proposal-and-commissioning (get it to the Editorial Committee)