EDITORIAL

 

Journeying with Psychology in Society (PINS) and vision for the future

 

 

Ronelle Carolissen

Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University

 

 

We celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the journal Psychology in Society (PINS) in September 2023.

Although I became the chief editor of PINS last year, this is my first editorial piece. I would like to present my vision, hopes, and plans for the journal but also start by briefly sharing my own journey with PINS. It is a journey that started long before I was approached and accepted the role of chief editor.

In 1984, after finishing matric the previous year, I left cape Town, where I lived, to study at the then University of Natal (now University of Kwazulu Natal), Durban. I knew no-one when I arrived on campus at the beginning of that year. The buildings were strange. I was expected to interact with people who were so different from me. During the first few weeks and months, I spent a while looking for symbols, at least, that would make that which was strange more familiar. Banners hanging from the Students' Union loudly proclaiming "Who killed Neil Aggett" peaked my interest. Aggett was a white doctor that was assassinated by the white apartheid state in February 1982.

As a psychology student, I was no different from many first-year psychology students who were determined to be accepted into Honours en route to becoming a clinical psychologist. Lectures were good and I studied hard because I had a goal in mind. But it is during that first year at university that I read my first PINS journal. I was astonished at the sheer ingenuity and complexity of how political activism and professional roles intersected (and, sometimes, did not). This interaction between political activism and professional role was what I later came to know as scholar-activism. PINS, like the banners on the Students' Union, made the strange familiar and helped me connect with others in a place that remained strange throughout my four years at Natal University.

It was also in PINS that I first saw the name, Grahame Hayes, long-time editor of the journal, who would lecture me as a second- or third-year student. Like all the students, I feared this incredibly opinionated lecturer who, nevertheless, had many interesting things to say. One thing that all his past students agree on is: "he did not suffer fools gladly". And that was exactly when I decided that if I get into the 1987 Honours class of 12 students, I will approach him to be my research supervisor. I got into the Honours class and Grahame Hayes agreed to be my supervisor. It is therefore not an exaggeration to say that PINS (along with other activist magazines like SPEAK and WIP (Work in Progress), was not only a strong emotional and political anchor during my undergraduate ad early postgraduate studies but became one of the important beacons of critical thought in my professional life.

I therefore gladly accepted the challenge when I was asked to consider the position of chief editor of the journal. PINS was born in 1983. It was 2022 in when I became the chief editor. The publishing world had changed significantly between the 1980s and 2020s, as had South African universities. Like a good, critical community psychologist, I, along with the editorial board, did a needs and asset assessment of this "community", that is, PINS (which I see as a political-professional community more than just a publication outlet), to evaluate how we could build on the work of previous editors. Around us, most South African journals were charging publication fees while PINS was dependent on a few academics' free labour to run the publication process, from article submission to article production and the final stage of publishing. While PINS had an online presence and is an accredited journal with the DHET. Despite its accreditation, it is difficult to find the important work published there through literature searches on library search engines. We have agreed that we need a system that could accept online article submissions since the email-based submission process via a gmail account is time consuming. All emails, for example, had to be written by hand by the chief editor or guest editor and not merely adapted as is the case on an electronic submission system.

Two challenges that I have heard potential authors voice are: the "review process takes long" (which is a common challenge across many journals), and "we cannot find our articles in PINS on library databases". We will work hard to attract more reviewers and encourage to submit reviews in reasonable time. One of the tasks I saw as a priority was to make it easier to find PINS on library databases. Since 2022, PINS has been hosted by the Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service, which has extensive experience of hosting journals. This volume is the first one published via a full electronic submission and monitoring process!

There are a few advantages of submitting manuscripts to PINS. The journal is accredited with the Department of Higher Education and Training. It has been registered with Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) SA (http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo. php?script=sci serial&pid=1015-6046). 'SciELO SA is South Africa's premier open-access (free to access and free to publish) searchable full-text journal database in service of the South African research community. The database covers a selected collection of peer-reviewed South African scholarly journals and forms an integral part of the SciELO Network project. SciELO SA is managed by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology (DSI) and endorsed by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET)' (http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?lng=en). PINS journal discontinued its affiliation with Scielo in 2017 but we have renewed our relationship with the SciELO SA platform since this year. In previous years, authors could publish in PINS without paying a publication fee. However, the minimal income from subscriptions and sales made it very difficult for the journal to afford crucial services such as copy-editing, journal manager services, and all the costs related to producing a journal.

It had always struck me that a journal like PINS is an important site of African knowledge production in Psychology, in a disciplinary context where knowledge production is dominated by the Global North. PINS situates its continuity and flourishing firmly within contemporary debates on critically engaging with and decolonising Psychology. Here, then, is an example of a 40-year-old academic community-building, critical, antiimperial, and anti-colonial tradition emanating in the Global South! PINS is a very good example of epistemic justice where knowledge producers and knowledge not typically found in mainstream Psychology journals should be foregrounded. It is a home where theory, research and voices that are perceived to be marginalised have been heard and became part of the Psychological canon. This is a home we shall maintain and, where needed, refurbish. PINS has always been, and will even more vigorously continue to be, a place for African and Southern knowledge production, developments and debates on critical, decolonising and decolonial Psychology, community-orientedness, epistemic justice, non-extractive practices, Southern theory, research, and voices. Our challenge is to build on previous traditions, networks and links in a concerted way to enhance our vision and hopes.

To realise our vision, a few important decisions became necessary. As indicated, over the previous year, we entered a relationship with Sunlibraries who now hosts our journal at no cost. Stellenbosch University, where I am based, has been more than supportive, in creating a platform for PINS to become fully digitised. Once authors and reviewers are registered on the PINS Sunlibraries website (https://www.journals.ac.za/pins/user/register). all submissions and the full production process runs on the system. Authors can also check at which stage in the process their submission is.

Sunlibraries assists me with applications such as ensuring that our journal could be readmitted to SciELO.

This year has been a transitional year of major proportions. I had never imagined that driving a process for digitalization would take so much effort. I would now like to present my future vision for the journal. That vision is to:

a) to make PINS a global, Southern, and Africa-centring platform for thinking critically about what "critical psycho-social" work means in terms of Psychology

b) to form collaborations with other disciplines, units and departments that publish "critical psycho-social" work

c) prepare PINS to become part of the international DOAJ (directory of open access journals)

d) to continue to do student and new academic mentoring regarding journal publishing, also for and with PINS

e) to digitise the work of PINS, including using social media to make the work more visible

f) to create a regular symposium around PINS and the underpinning idea of psychology in and for society

Depending on the point of view, forty years can be regarded a long period, but it is just the beginning. I look toward to the future, recognising that I stand on the shoulders of critical giants who have gone before.

In this edition, it is appropriate that we publish a guest editorial by Grahame Hayes, one of the founding editors of PINS. He sketches a brief overview of the history of PINS.

Hayes' guest editorial is followed by a series of psycho-social concerns that PINS regularly covers. These include issues such as adding to the conversation on a more relevant psychology, race, racialization, and gender and their intersectionalities. In this edition, the dialogue on climate change and its contexts is continued from the last volume.

Mapaling and Naidu reflections in which they argue for a community clinical psychology. They raise some of the ongoing challenges inherent in a biomedical psychology. Particularly interesting are their reflections on their respective journeys in clinical psychology that inform their argument.

Makama and Peters' contribution take us back to the Covid years with a poignant auto-ethnography of their experiences of doing a Phd during the pandemic. They highlight the anxiety and their uncertainty at the time, coupled with the precarity of their future positions as Black women in higher education.

Shabalala, Boonzaier and Chirape critique the dominant feminist, cisgendered heteronormative narrative of gender-based violence through the lens of transfeminism by showing how Black trans women are vulnerable to violence and what the nature of that violence entails.

In the final article in this volume, Theron and Hagen argue for the importance of psychological factors in influencing climate friendly food choices. This, they suggest, is significant to understand when working with communities, especially middle-income communities, to develop education programmes and policies to facilitate climate friendly food choices.