Psychonomic Society: Strategic Plan 2024-2030

HISTORY

 The Psychonomic Society (PS) was established in 1959 by a select group of experimental psychologists who recognized the need for a scientific society that would support and promote communication about research focusing on experimental and cognitive psychology. They sought to create a less formal society with a focus on experimental research. The discipline of cognitive psychology grew tremendously over the ensuing decades, and the PS remains the preeminent scientific organization devoted to cognitive psychology and its allied disciplines. The success of the PS is evident in its 7 highly respected, peer-reviewed, journals covering all aspects of cognitive and experimental psychology.

Membership has grown to over 4,200 researchers from 64 different countries. The Annual Meeting of the PS is the premier scientific event and is a place where senior and junior researchers come together to share news and engage in vigorous discussions about new approaches and findings.

REMAINING A LEADER IN THE 21ST CENTURY

 For over six decades, the PS has played a critical role in promoting scientific research. Psychology as a science has evolved considerably over the years, expanding to include new neuroscientific and computational perspectives and methodologies. These changes have put pressure on the Psychonomic Society to maintain its broad membership even as more specialized societies have proliferated. There is a need to continue to broaden the Society’s membership base, in order to modernize the notion of an informal Society open to all. Contributions from scientists across borders and varying career levels are essential to delivering the Society’s mission and vision for years to come. The Society has responded to these pressures over the years by increasing its membership efforts world-wide, leading to an impressive increase in international scientists over the past 5 years.

There are dramatic shifts coming to the publishing world, with Open Access becoming the norm as governments require free access to research that is paid for with taxpayer funds. The Society maintains its contract with Springer Publishing to produce its 7 journals, which continue to bring in a substantial revenue stream that the Society has used to create various new programs and to fund an endowment that will support the Society deep into the uncertain future.

MISSION AND VALUES OF THE SOCIETY

The bylaws of the Society inform this Strategic Plan: “The mission of the Psychonomic Society is to foster the science of cognition through the advancement and communication of basic research in experimental psychology and allied sciences.” We achieve this goal through two main mechanisms: (1) an Annual Meeting devoted to the presentation of scientific papers, and (2) the publication of scholarly journals in a variety of domains related to cognition.

The Psychonomic Society values basic science, scientific integrity and rigor, diversity and inclusivity in membership, and global impact.

The Governing Board maintains associations with other organizations that seek to promote the advancement of behavioral research. Through association with the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences the Society is represented in political lobbying efforts to influence the U.S. national scientific research agenda.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

The purpose of a Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) is to identify future goals and propose steps to achieve these goals. The process to plan for the next seven years of the PS was guided by the SPC comprised of Governing Board members, Society members, and the Executive Director (see Appendix A).

To inform proposed future directions, the current SPC examined current views from a cross section of members in national and international focus groups, gathered data from a Society member survey, sought advice from experts in the publishing industry through a commissioned report, and attended discussions by consultants specializing in offering guidance on strategic planning to scientific societies.

The SPC reflected on the information gathered and engaged in discussions at a 2-day retreat, as well as over a 10-month period, about how the PS could best achieve its Mission and Vision. The goal was to prepare this document to help guide the Society from 2024 to 2030.

PRIORITIES, GOALS and ACTION PLANS

The SPC has developed a set of programmatic and institutional priorities for our 2024-2030 Strategic Plan, focuses on 4 key areas: Membership, Meetings, Journals, and Finances. Within each, priorities were identified. The current status within each priority was assessed, and specific goals were identified as presented in the ensuing pages.

MEMBERSHIP – Overview of Priorities

1. Continue to support robust membership in the Psychonomic Society from individuals from a variety of backgrounds

• We have experienced significant growth world-wide, with non-North American members now making up 42% of our membership. The future will focus on increasing specific subgroups of members to retain and regain members post-pandemic.

2. Enhance the value of a Psychonomic Society membership

• Develop additional membership-only perks, such as professional development and career workshops.
  

3. Promote practices to ensure the Society is diverse, inclusive and welcoming to all members

• Increase the diversity of countries represented in the Society and provide additional opportunities and resources for members at a variety of career stages and backgrounds (identity, geography, culture, language, institution type) to engage at annual meetings and network online outside of meeting events.
  

4. Promote practices to support graduate and undergraduate students in the Society

• Continue to create opportunities and provide resources for student engagement in governance, communication of science, and participation in the Society.

MEETING - Overview of Priorities

1. Continue to be the premier scientific meeting for communicating basic cognitive and experimental psychology research

• Ensure that the meeting is accessible to all interested participants, with in-person as well as affordable partial hybrid options.
• Promote environmentally responsible and sustainable practices.
• Facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas by incorporating novel conference events such as hackathons, small-group discussions/debates about new or controversial research areas, and lunchtime workshops with non-academics from allied fields.
  

2. Increase diversity of Annual Meeting participants with respect to identity, geography, language, institution type, and career stage

• Track diversity of meeting participants. 
  
• Increase diversity of presenters.
• Continue to explore program innovations such as ceding talks to graduate students and creating new presentation types for graduate student members, such as data blitzes.
• Facilitate mentoring across geographic locations and level of training.

3. Enhance and modernize the Annual Meeting

• Integrate recommendations from our Task Force on Carbon Neutrality when planning meeting locations and insist on green initiatives for services at meeting locations.
• Determine member interest in holding “hub” events, with multiple physical meetings in different places at the same time that are video-linked, with social interactions at each node, or holding meetings biennially with the “off” years in partnership with other Societies.
  
• Create Meeting poster slots for industry or government scientists and promote industry networking via recruitment booths and on-site workshops.
  
• Explore adding new, non-traditional session format (e.g., data blitzes, problem-focused hackathons).
  
• Create more extensive social media posts and website stories using our Digital Content Editorial Team. 
• Add cost-neutral social events to the program.

JOURNALS – Overview of Priorities

1. Globalize publishing operations

• There are tremendous opportunities to increase our impact by better serving emerging scientific communities who publish in languages other than English around the globe.
• Advocate and promote Springer’s policy of publishing abstracts in a second language, on request by authors.

2. Increase racial, ethnic, and career stage diversity in our journal editorial staffs

• The Society’s journals can best serve science and society if they represent the full breadth of cognitive and experimental psychology researchers.
• Increase the representation of scientists from low- and middle-income countries and from countries whose majority language is not English as editors, editorial board members, and reviewers for our journals.

3. Transition to an open access ecosystem

• Create “cascade” journals to share submissions and locate the best fit for a manuscript. This will speed publication times, reduce redundancy in the review process, and better promote research publications within our collection of Society journals. 
•  We believe that scientific publishing will continue on a trajectory from reader-pays to author-pays models. The Society will investigate the pros and cons of moving the Society’s journals to a more integrated, open-access ecosystem.

4. Enhance Psychonomic Society communications

• Use social media platforms and press releases to maximize impact.

FINANCE – Overview of Priorities

1. Make the Society’s finances more robust to changes in the publishing industry

• Diversify income sources as a hedge against upheavals in the publishing industry.
• Be open to introducing meeting registration fees and increasing membership dues, both of which are extremely low compared to peer organizations.
•  Foster collaborative relationships with industry partners to support aspects of our meeting (e.g., symposia, travel fellowships), and enhance fundraising and estate planning operations to increase support for awards, enhance programming, and create new cutting-edge initiatives.

2. Maintain balanced budgets

•  All new actions taken by the Society will be accompanied by a cost estimate and considered in light of current revenue streams and ongoing financial commitments. 

3. Ensure good governance in management, oversight of investments, and budgetary decision-making

• Careful attention should be paid to the organizational structure that underlies management and financial decisions for the Society. 
  

4. Reduce conference expenses and make those expenses more predictable

• Maintain in-person conference quality and openness while constraining costs.
• The annual in-person North American conference will be the major priority of the Society, with emphasis on the in-person aspect of the meeting. Hybrid options will only be considered if a large portion of the membership demands those options and if a hybrid meeting can be delivered in a cost-effective way.
•  Joint conferences with scientific societies outside North America will also serve to enhance offerings to members worldwide. 

5. Increase and protect the Society’s quasi-endowment

• The quasi-endowment should be fully funded to protect core operations of the society in a financial calamity. On a regular basis, our Society will recompute the costs of running core operations and fund the quasi-endowment to a level that can support those operations with earned interest and with capital gains under normal market conditions in perpetuity.

Strategic Planning Committee:
Aaron Benjamin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA (Co-Chair)
Myra Fernandes, University of Waterloo, Canada (Co-Chair)
Angela Gutchess, Brandeis University, USA
Michael Kane, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol, UK
Penny Pexman, Western University, Canada
Adam Sanborn, University of Warwick, UK
Duane Watson, Vanderbilt University, USA
Jeffrey Zacks, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Louis Shomette, Psychonomic Society (Executive Director)

Additional Sub-committee members:
James Pomerantz, Rice University, USA
Michelle Rivers, Texas Christian University, USA
Karen Schloss, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

View the 2013-2020 Strategic Plan here.