Final Editorial

I began formally serving as masthead editor of Sex Roles in January of 2007. Now, 9 years later, I publish my last issue. Having this opportunity to contribute to the field of feminist research in the social sciences and psychology has been a wonderful honor. Sex Roles has been one of the most, if not the most important journal in this field since its initiation in 1975. As we explain in the mission statement, Sex Roles is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes original research reports and theoretical articles that illuminate the underlying processes and consequences of gender role socialization, gendered perceptions and behaviors, and gender stereotypes. The journal has been published monthly since 1981. In 2014 we received submissions from 43 countries. We had 520 new submissions in 2014 along with many revisions. Thus, we are a very high volume journal that publishes papers on a broad array of topics.One of my goals in editing the journal was to insure that the articles we published were excellent in terms of research design and analysis. I also wanted to help build theory in the area of gender research. All empirical papers were asked to provide a clear theory explaining the logic for why whatever behaviors were predicted by the authors would be expected to exist. Each paper was asked to provide formal, testable predictions based on this theoretical analysis. I feel that our increasing impact factors [now 1.735 for the 1 year impact factor, 2.067 for the 5 year impact factor and 9.7 cited and citing half-life] reflect this focus on theory and empirical excellence. Clearly, other researchers value our publications.Another goal was to further internationalize the journal. I did this in two major ways. First, we encouraged authors from many different countries to contribute as authors, as well as serving as reviewers and as members of our Editorial Board. By 2014, nearly 50 % of the first authors of papers published that year in the journal were from countries other than the United States. We published one special issue on Spain, and expect the second issue of Spain to be published in 2016. We are working now on a special issue on Muslim women.A second way the journal was internationalized was to be more sensitive to where samples came from. One of my basic editorial assumptions was that all gender-related behavior has a strong cultural component.