The Benefits of Peer Review For the APA Research Paper

The Benefits of Peer Review For the APA Research PaperThe APA (American Psychological Association) has a long history of taking pride in the quality of its psychological research papers. As one can gather from the history of the APA, its standards are based on the idea that psychological research should be able to withstand scrutiny by the readers of the journal.We should take this attitude with us when examining this year's APA research paper. After all, the psychological research that gets published into the journal goes through the same process of peer review as does any other research published in medical journals. In the case of the APA, the reviewers are essentially psychologists, and the reason for this is because of the content of the research papers. Because psychology is a natural science and not a branch of medicine, psychology papers are made available to the public without the usual disclaimers or pressure to follow up their results with randomized controlled trials.This is a change from just a few years ago, when it was common for APA journal editors to ask the authors of the studies to submit only what they said they had done, and no further information on how their results were to be interpreted. In fact, there were certain journals which were more likely to publish results which agreed with the author's views. This was bad for all sides, because it left research open to criticism of the standards being applied.As the years have passed, the change has been towards openness, and open discussion between the author and other psychologists who are not using the same methodology. In these days, it seems that the APA research paper has become more collaborative, with all the participants working together to come up with the best possible conclusion. So it stands to reason that the APA research paper published in this year's Journal of Clinical Psychology will be more open to scrutiny than in the past.However, one needs to look at this as a reflection of the recent changes to the APA. When this year's paper was first completed, the guidelines had changed and were not conducive to the kind of changes that have taken place in the last few years. It is therefore fair to say that the popularity of the APA has gone down in recent years, but perhaps this is not the right perspective to look at it from.To see the trend, it is important to look at the characteristics of the journal that has this year's APA research paper. One of the things that sets this journal apart from other psychological journals is the focus on fact-based and randomized controlled trials. These are the methods used in all kinds of research, and are the basis of the fact-based reporting that is required by the scientific community. All research papers must make clear where the details of their results come from, and they need to report exactly how they came to those conclusions.In the case of the APA paper, it seems that the research team was asked to go through the research again before publication. This practice, where the research team is expected to give full accounts of their findings, is a sign of the importance given to ensuring that the researchers follow their procedures. This means that the research paper published in this year's Journal of Clinical Psychology will be more rigorous, and that will be the real indication of how well the research has been conducted.