Journal of Psychiatric Research

About Journal of Psychiatric Research

DEPTH-135-OCT2026: researched profile — verify figures on the official publisher page.

About the Journal of Psychiatric Research

The Journal of Psychiatric Research is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by Elsevier. Founded in 1961 to report the latest work in psychiatry and cognate disciplines, it is dedicated to innovative and timely studies across four broad domains: clinical studies of psychiatric illness and normal human behavior; basic research relevant to psychiatry; the application of clinical laboratory techniques such as neuroimaging, brain spectroscopy, molecular biology, and computational methods; and advances in research methodology, including the translation of findings from bench to bedside.

Unlike clinically oriented journals aimed primarily at practicing physicians, the Journal of Psychiatric Research occupies the space between basic neuroscience and clinical psychiatry. Its pages carry work on the biochemical, physiological, genetic, environmental, social, psychological, and epidemiological dimensions of mental illness, alongside studies in neuropsychopharmacology, neuroendocrinology, electrophysiology, genetics, experimental psychology, and epidemiology. This breadth has made it a long-standing venue for biological psychiatry, neuroimaging, inflammation research, and treatment-mechanism studies.

Note on society affiliation: the journal is not listed as the official journal of any professional society in the official sources consulted. Elsevier's psychiatry marketing materials describe it as a journal that "supports open access" without naming a society affiliation. Readers who encounter claims of a society link should treat them as unverified unless confirmed on the journal's official Elsevier page.

History

The journal was established in 1961 and has been published continuously since, initially under the Pergamon imprint — third-party bibliographic records name "Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd." as the historical publisher — before becoming a straight Elsevier title. Its stated founding purpose was to provide a dedicated outlet for the rapidly expanding psychiatric research of the early 1960s, a period when psychopharmacology, biological psychiatry, and epidemiologic psychiatry were all taking modern form.

Across more than six decades the journal has kept a consistent identity while its scope language has been periodically refreshed to absorb new methods: brain imaging and spectroscopy, molecular biology, and computational sciences were explicitly added to its remit as those fields matured. It has remained a monthly publication throughout, one of the longer-running monthly psychiatry titles in the Elsevier portfolio.

Aims and Scope

Elsevier's official description defines four areas of interest. First, clinical studies of all disciplines relating to psychiatric illness as well as normal human behavior, encompassing biochemical, physiological, genetic, environmental, social, psychological, and epidemiological factors. Second, basic studies pertaining to psychiatry in fields such as neuropsychopharmacology, neuroendocrinology, electrophysiology, genetics, experimental psychology, and epidemiology. Third, the growing application of clinical laboratory techniques in psychiatry, including brain imaging and spectroscopy, molecular biology, and computer sciences. Fourth, advances in basic and clinical research methodology, including the "bench to bedside" transfer of new research findings.

In practice this means the journal publishes original research articles, reviews, and methodological papers spanning molecular psychiatry, neuroimaging, psychoneuroimmunology, genetics, and clinical trials research, with an emphasis on work that connects biological mechanisms to clinical phenomena.

Editorial Leadership

The current Editor-in-Chief is Eric Hollander, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, New York), as listed on Elsevier's official editorial board page. Associate Editors include Noboru Hiroi (University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio), Marcus Ising (Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich), and Susanne Walitza (University of Zurich, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry).

Stale-source flag: the journal's Wikipedia entry lists Florian Holsboer and Alan F. Schatzberg as editors in its infobox and names Eric Hollander as editor-in-chief in its article text — an internal inconsistency. Elsevier's current board page resolves this: Holsboer and Schatzberg are now listed as Emeritus Editors (alongside J. F. Greden of the University of Michigan), while Hollander holds the Editor-in-Chief position. Third-party biographies that still describe Schatzberg as co-editor-in-chief reflect his former role and should be treated as outdated. Readers should always confirm the masthead on the official Elsevier journal page.

Key Facts

Research Themes and Scholarly Influence

Several research programs have become closely associated with the Journal of Psychiatric Research over its six-decade history, and tracing them gives a good sense of the journal's place in the field. The oldest and most continuous thread is biological psychiatry itself: from neuroendocrine challenge studies and early neuroimaging work in the 1980s and 1990s through modern genetics and molecular studies, the journal has consistently published work that tries to anchor psychiatric diagnosis and treatment in measurable biology.

A second defining theme is psychoneuroimmunology. The journal carried influential early work on cytokines in depression and suicide, including postmortem-brain studies of inflammatory markers in suicide victims and investigations of the immune–endocrine response to experimental endotoxin challenge. These papers helped move the inflammation hypothesis of depression from peripheral blood markers into brain tissue and mechanistic models, and they continue to be cited as the field tests anti-inflammatory strategies for mood disorders.

A third theme is the rapid-acting antidepressant literature, particularly ketamine. The journal published NIMH intramural-program studies on ketamine's effects on suicidal ideation and anxiety, mechanistic comparisons of repeated ketamine infusions with electroconvulsive therapy, studies of ketamine's effects on cognition and on the kynurenine pathway, and work on ultra-high-field imaging of ketamine's subjective effects. Together these papers form a coherent body of work on how a single pharmacologic probe illuminates depression's neurobiology.

The journal has also been a venue for high-impact epidemiologic and global-health psychiatry, exemplified by Global Burden of Disease analyses of depression, and for the microbiota–gut–brain axis, where its fecal-transplantation studies are among the most cited in psychiatry. More recently it has published COVID-19-era research on maternal infection, choline, and fetal brain development, reflecting its willingness to take on timely translational questions. Methodologically, the journal's explicit scope commitment to "bench to bedside" transfer means it welcomes papers that pair a clinical question with a laboratory technique — the neuroimaging, spectroscopy, and computational studies named in its aims — rather than purely descriptive clinical reports.

For authors, the practical implication is that the journal rewards mechanistic depth: a clinical observation gains strength here when accompanied by a biomarker, an imaging finding, a genetic analysis, or a clearly specified translational pathway. For readers and systematic reviewers, its archive is a useful single source for the biological-psychiatry literature of the last sixty years, complementary to the more clinically oriented society journals.

Citation metrics place the journal solidly in the upper tier of psychiatry titles without reaching the very top of the field: a 2024 Journal Citation Reports impact factor of 3.7, a SCImago Journal Rank of 1.487, and a Scopus h-index of 172, with Q1 rankings in both Biological Psychiatry and Psychiatry and Mental Health. As with all metrics, these figures describe past citation performance, not the quality of any individual paper, and they move from year to year — authors should consult the current Journal Citation Reports and SCImago releases rather than treating any single vintage as definitive.

Landmark Papers

The following papers, all published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, are frequently cited in reviews, guidelines, and subsequent research. Each DOI was individually verified against PubMed, institutional repository, or publisher records as resolving to the correct article.

1. Changes in the Global Burden of Depression from 1990 to 2017: Findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study (2020)

Authors: Qingqing Liu, Hairong He, Jin Yang, Xiaojie Feng, Fanfan Zhao, Jun Lyu. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2019.08.002

Using Global Burden of Disease data, this study documented the rise in depression's worldwide burden between 1990 and 2017 — roughly a 50% increase in incident cases — and has become one of the most cited recent papers in the journal, widely used to frame the public-health case for depression prevention and treatment investment.

2. Transferring the Blues: Depression-Associated Gut Microbiota Induces Neurobehavioural Changes in the Rat (2016)

Authors: John R. Kelly, Yuliya Borre, Ciaran O'Brien, et al. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2016.07.019

A foundational paper in the microbiota–gut–brain axis literature: fecal microbiota transplantation from depressed patients into microbiota-depleted rats induced anhedonia, anxiety-like behaviors, and altered tryptophan metabolism in the recipient animals, suggesting a causal contribution of gut microbiota to depressive features.

3. Proinflammatory Cytokines in the Prefrontal Cortex of Teenage Suicide Victims (2012)

Authors: Ghanshyam N. Pandey, Hooriyah S. Rizavi, Xinguo Ren, et al. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2011.08.006

A postmortem study finding elevated mRNA and protein levels of IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α in Brodmann area 10 of 24 teenage suicide victims versus matched controls — a key early human-brain evidence base for the inflammation hypothesis of suicidal behavior.

4. Hippocampal Volume and Total Cell Numbers in Major Depressive Disorder (2013)

Authors: Justin A. Cobb, Joy Simpson, Gouri J. Mahajan, et al. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2012.10.020

Using unbiased stereology in postmortem hippocampal tissue, this study examined whether cellular pathology underlies reported hippocampal volume reductions in depression, finding dentate granule cell loss related to illness duration in untreated subjects — an important structural-neuropathology contribution.

5. Improvement in Suicidal Ideation After Ketamine Infusion: Relationship to Reductions in Depression and Anxiety (2014)

Authors: Elizabeth D. Ballard, Dawn F. Ionescu, Jennifer L. Vande Voort, et al. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2014.07.027

From the NIMH intramural ketamine program, this analysis of two randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trials showed ketamine reduced suicidal ideation within hours, partly independent of its effects on depression — among the earliest controlled-trial evidence for ketamine's anti-suicidal properties.

6. Kynurenine Pathway Metabolism and Neurobiology of Treatment-Resistant Depression: Comparison of Multiple Ketamine Infusions and Electroconvulsive Therapy (2018)

Authors: Andrew P. Allen, M. Naughton, J. Dowling, et al. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2018.02.011

A head-to-head mechanistic comparison of repeated ketamine infusions versus ECT in treatment-resistant depression, examining kynurenine-pathway metabolites, cortisol, and cytokines — a distinctive contribution linking two rapid-acting interventions through shared neuroimmune pathways.

7. Rapid and Longer-Term Antidepressant Effects of Repeated-Dose Intravenous Ketamine for Patients with Unipolar and Bipolar Depression (2018)

Authors: Wei Zheng, Yan-Ling Zhou, Wei-Jian Liu, et al. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2018.09.013

An open-label study of six ketamine infusions in 97 Chinese patients with unipolar and bipolar depression, demonstrating rapid onset within four hours and sustained benefit across the infusion series — one of the larger repeated-ketamine cohorts including bipolar depression.

8. Maternal Choline and Respiratory Coronavirus Effects on Fetal Brain Development (2020)

Authors: Robert Freedman, Sharon K. Hunter, Amanda J. Law, et al. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2020.05.019

Published during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study found that higher prenatal choline levels were associated with better infant self-regulation outcomes in mothers who had contracted respiratory viral infections during pregnancy, suggesting a nutritional buffer against infection-related effects on fetal brain development.

9. Ketamine Specifically Reduces Cognitive Symptoms in Depressed Patients: An Investigation of Associated Neural Activation Patterns (2021)

Authors: A. Stippl, M. Scheidegger, S. Aust, et al. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.02.028

A neuroimaging study showing that ketamine's antidepressant effect includes a specific improvement in cognitive symptoms tied to distinct neural activation patterns — extending the ketamine literature beyond mood and suicidality into cognition.

Publishing With the Journal

Access model. The journal operates on a hybrid model: Elsevier's psychiatry portfolio materials list the Journal of Psychiatric Research as a title that "Supports Open Access," meaning authors can choose open-access publication alongside the traditional subscription route. ScienceDirect hosts the journal's online content and archive.

Article processing charges. No APC figure was confirmed from the official sources consulted for this profile. Elsevier publishes per-journal APCs on its journal pages, which should be checked at submission time since fees are revised periodically.

Submission. Manuscripts are submitted through Elsevier's online editorial system (linked from the journal's ScienceDirect and Elsevier journal pages). Authors should consult the current Guide for Authors for article types, formatting, and ethics requirements.

Open access status. Hybrid: subscription by default with an open-access option. Authors with funder OA mandates should select the open-access route and verify the applicable license and fee on Elsevier's site.

Archive and discovery. The journal's full backfile extends to its 1961 founding, with the online archive hosted on ScienceDirect alongside current monthly issues. Bibliographic records use the CODEN JPYRA3 and the ISO 4 abbreviation J. Psychiatr. Res., and the journal is tracked in Scopus and major biomedical abstracting services, which is how most readers encounter its content through database searching rather than browsing individual issues.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of the Journal of Psychiatric Research?

The print ISSN is 0022-3956 and the electronic ISSN is 1879-1379.

Who publishes the Journal of Psychiatric Research?

Elsevier Ltd. It was founded in 1961 and has been published monthly throughout its history.

Who is the editor-in-chief?

Eric Hollander of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, per Elsevier's official editorial board page. Note that Wikipedia's infobox still names former editors Florian Holsboer and Alan Schatzberg, who are now Emeritus Editors — that entry is outdated.

What is the journal's impact factor?

3.7 in the 2024 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate), as cited in Elsevier's 2025 psychiatry journals flyer. Older figures such as 4.465 (2015) appear in secondary sources.

Is it the official journal of a professional society?

No society affiliation was identified in the official sources consulted; it is not listed as an official society journal.

Is the journal open access?

It is a hybrid journal — subscription by default, with an open-access publishing option supported by Elsevier. Confirm current APCs and licenses on the official journal page.

What article types does the journal publish?

Original research articles, reviews, and methodological papers across clinical and basic psychiatric research, with emphasis on work connecting biological mechanisms to clinical phenomena — including neuroimaging, molecular, genetic, and computational studies.

How often is the journal published?

Monthly, continuously since its founding in 1961.

What are the journal's standard abbreviations and identifiers?

The ISO 4 abbreviation is J. Psychiatr. Res. and the CODEN is JPYRA3. The print ISSN is 0022-3956 and the electronic ISSN is 1879-1379.

Sources and Verification Note

This profile was researched from Elsevier's official journal and editorial-board pages (via elsevierhealth.com), Elsevier's 2025 psychiatry journals flyer (Journal Citation Reports 2024 figures), PubMed records for all landmark papers, the University College Cork institutional repository (CORa) for the Allen et al. record, SCImago/Scopus-derived metrics via Resurchify, and the journal's Wikipedia entry, used only as a clearly marked secondary source and flagged where outdated. Editorial appointments and APCs should be re-verified on the official Elsevier journal page, as they change over time. Last researched: October 2026.