My first peer-reviewed journal publication was a commentary in the flagship journal for our scientific society — Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice. The journal is unique in its call-and-response style of printing a focal article alongside short commentaries. The commentaries would debate with, disagree with, or expand on the focal article. For someone who grew up focusing on competitive speech and debate all through high school, it was (and is) a great fit!

Five years later, I’m thrilled to announce my first focal article in the journal — and accordingly, I’d love to see peoples’ responses in commentaries. Agree with our ideas? Disagree fiercely and want a chance to publicly prove us wrong? I’m looking forward to it!

Our article, available here, argues that research in industrial and organizational psychology has focused almost exclusively on large businesses, to the detriment of exacerbating the scientist-practitioner gap when it comes to small businesses. In other words, we believe that many of the theories, “practical recommendations”, and topics of study presented in I-O research are not relevant nor practical for small business owners and managers. To add to our argument, we collected data from small business owners and managers who read and responded to the abstracts and “practical implications” sections of top I-O journal articles published in our field.

At the end, we presented the following potential perspectives that commentaries could take in response to our focal article:

1. Is the problem of the scientist–practitioner gap overstated? Perhaps you disagree with our data, or our interpretations of the data, and instead argue that there isn’t as big of a problem as we make it out to be.
2. Does the scientist–practitioner gap even matter? Is it potentially even a good thing to keep the “academic theory” in one place (i.e., peer-reviewed publications) and the “applied practice” in another?
3. Is the focus on small businesses warranted? Maybe small businesses aren’t actually that different from large businesses, or, conversely, they are so different and varied that it would be impossible or impractical to study them in large-scale research studies.
4. What are some potential solutions to improve the practical applicability of the “practical implications” sections? For example, some have suggested that peer-reviewed journal articles always include a practitioner as either an author or reviewer to ensure that findings are translated into tangible next steps for practitioners. What are the pros and cons of a solution like this?
5. Another suggestion was to only allow “practical implications” sections for meta-analyses or similar articles that can provide more generalizable recommendations drawn from a larger body of research, as opposed to just one study. What are the pros and cons of a solution like this?
6. How might the “gap” be impacted by the pressures mounted from tenure and promotion criteria? For example, what if tenure committees required faculty members to demonstrate expertise in communicating or applying their research to practitioners? What are the pros and cons of a solution like this?
7. What about journals? Should we have more “bridge” journals recognized as part of top-tier academic lists? How can we reduce the access costs of journals for practitioners, and should we?

Please consider writing a response commentary! Instructions for doing so are available here. Anyone can submit a commentary, and they do not need to be long! Prior commentaries can be as short as 6-8 pages, and they focus on high-quality writing and interesting ideas, rather than extensive literature review (and rarely are empirical data presented in commentaries). If you have thoughts on this topic, please submit a response! Commentaries are due by July 1, 2024.