Time for change

Covid-19 pandemic, and is likely to continue with the expansion of AI.This poses immediate challenges related to editor workloads, securing sufficient reviews, and providing authors with timely decisions.There are many reasons for the upward trend in submissions; and on the face of it, an increase in research outputs is good -it promises an acceleration in knowledge generation.But the challenge nonetheless remains and it is one both the academic community and publishers will need to find solutions to.In this, it is important to recognise potential barriers to change, some of which may reflect conflicts of interest between publishers and academics.One part of the welcome move toward open science is that many more articles are open access (i.e., not behind a paywall).But the costs of this are still largely met by funders and researchers -and this incentivises publishers to continue to publish ever more papers.This is, of course, on top of the costs borne by academics and researchers -not publishers -of handling submissions, providing reviews, etc., without which the current system would, and maybe is close to, collapse.In other words, the costs of managing the increase in submissions are met by already stretched academics and researchers.Ultimately, then, current publishing models may prove incompatible with the rapid acceleration of research outputs and radical solutions may be needed.This is an issue the new editorial team for SPPE will have to grapple with.In doing this, I think it is important to remember that scientific journals are the products, and therefore the intellectual property, of scientific communities.There is another challenge related to the increase in research outputs.In the past 14 years, SPPE has published well over 2,000 papers.These constitute important contributions to understanding how social contexts, positions, and experiences shape the development and outcomes of mental distress and ill-health.They document shifting trends in the areas of primary interest to researchers (e.g., the flurry of research on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic); and they reflect and contribute to advances in methods and theory.However, the rapid proliferation of research outputs -and of the outlets for these (i.e., new journals, pre-print sites, etc.) -makes keeping up to date more challenging.These