JABA's Circulation History

The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis was born at a propitious time for behavioral science and immediately attracted an impressive number of subscribers. About 1,500 subscriptions were sold before the first (Spring) issue was mailed in mid-April, 1968. By the time the Summer issue appeared, circulation had doubled to 3,000. At the end of the first year, paid subscriptions totaled 4,271, consisting of 761 institutions (mostly libraries) plus 1,558 individual and 1,952 student subscribers. Circulation continued to rise until it reached a total of 7,097 in 1975. However, it has decreased almost every year since then as support for research in the social sciences has diminished.

JABA's experience in losing subscribers since the heady days of the 1970s is not unique. For example, JABA's total circulation for 1992 of 4,636 (1,923 institutions, 1,927 individuals and 786 students) was off by 26% from 1979, when it had 6,290 subscribers. (The year 1979 was chosen for comparison because it was the year that JABA's institutional subscriptions peaked, at 2,344.) Over the same period, Behavior Therapy (BT) dropped from 3,276 to 2,731 (14%), Behavior Modification (BM) from 2,232 to 1,322 (41%), JEAB from 3,062 to 2,357 (23%), and Psychological Bulletin (PB) from 9,887 to 7,572 (23%). However, the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) was down only 9%, from 6,153 to 5,647, and the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (JCCP) actually rose from 9,741 to 10,488.

This table contains 1992 comparison data for some of the journals that cite JABA often or are cited heavily by JABA, as well as for other well-established journals that are useful as benchmarks in assessing our performance. It shows that we still have a respectable number of subscribers.

Our 1992 institutional circulation of 1,923 approximated that of some of the journals published by the American Psychological Association (e.g., Developmental Psychology, 2,223; Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2,305; Journal of Experimental: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 1,893. But it fell short of matching PB, 2,778; JAP, 2,726; JCCP 2,599; Journal of Educational Psychology, 2,912; or Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2,935. These numbers are a good estimate of the probable maximums that can be reached for journals in psychology. The APA's Psychological Assessment, founded in 1989, had only 895 institutional subscribers by the end of 1992, a figure that testifies to how difficult it has become to convince librarians to add new journals. [In 1996 this journal had 966 institutional subscribers. See American Psychologist (1997), 52, 908.]