Toward an Interdisciplinary and Pluralistic Psychology: Lessons from a Mixed-Methods Bibliometric Review

Abstract

Using highly cited papers in twelve top journals in general psychology as proxies for big ideas, we employed a mixed methods bibliometric analysis to explore overall trends as well as differences among journals related to authorship, interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration, type of article, type of review or research methodology, topic scope and domain, as well as other article features. To investigate whether these bibliometric attributes have changed significantly over time, we compared a historical sample comprised of articles from each journal’s entire publishing lifespan to a contemporary sample limited to the last ten years (2015–2024). Results showed significant differences between journals as well as between historical and contemporary samples on all dimensions in the analysis. Articles in the historical sample had significantly higher citation counts, page counts, and reference counts, while articles in the contemporary sample had longer titles and more authors, institutions, disciplines, and domains. Qualitative findings from reflexive thematic and textual analysis highlighted the breadth of coverage of psychological domains, the prominence of review, theory, and methodological articles, and the lack of qualitative research among the most-cited articles in general psychology. Implications for a more interdisciplinary and pluralistic psychology are discussed.