The Journal of Creative Behavior

About The Journal of Creative Behavior

About The Journal of Creative Behavior

The Journal of Creative Behavior (JCB) is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the study of creativity, published by Wiley on behalf of the Creative Education Foundation. It was established in 1967, which makes it the original and longest-standing journal devoted specifically to creativity research, and it is identified by print ISSN 0022-0175 and online ISSN 2162-6057. The Journals World record describes the title with the definite article, The Journal of Creative Behavior; the journal is also widely cited in the shorter form Journal of Creative Behavior, and both forms refer to the same publication.

The journal's subject is creativity itself, treated as a phenomenon to be understood, measured, taught and managed rather than merely celebrated. Its stated territory, as summarised in standard references, includes ways to foster creative productivity, creative learning, the management of creative personnel, testing, creativity in business and industry, the development of creative curricula, and creativity in the arts and the sciences. That list captures the journal's character across nearly six decades: psychological in its foundations, educational in much of its application, and deliberately open to work from management, the arts and other fields where creative behaviour is studied or cultivated.

Editors associated with the journal in recent references are Ronald A. Beghetto of Arizona State University and Maciej Karwowski of the University of Wrocław, a pairing that reflects the field's geography, with strong creativity research communities in North America and in Central and Eastern Europe. The journal's citation standing, discussed with its years attached below, places it among the leading outlets in its niche: it has recorded Journal Citation Reports impact factors in the region of three to four in recent editions and particularly strong positions in arts and education categories in Scopus-based listings. For a field as dispersed as creativity studies, JCB functions as a home journal, a place where a shared conversation has been sustained since 1967.

Quick Facts

History and Development

The journal was founded in 1967 by the Creative Education Foundation, the organisation that grew out of the Creative Problem Solving movement associated with Buffalo, New York, and with figures such as Alex Osborn, the advertising executive who popularised brainstorming, and Sidney Parnes, who developed creative problem solving as a teachable method. A foundation devoted to creative problem solving needed a scholarly journal if its ideas were to be tested, criticised and extended by researchers rather than only promoted by practitioners, and the Journal of Creative Behavior was created to be that journal. It is regularly described as the first and oldest publication dedicated solely to the study of creativity, and as a primary outlet for work on creativity.

Across its history the journal has chronicled the maturation of creativity as a research field. Early decades were shaped by psychometric traditions, the measurement of divergent thinking and creative potential, and by the applied world of creative problem solving in education and industry. Later decades brought cognitive approaches to creative thought, sociocultural perspectives that treat creativity as produced through interaction, cultural tools and recognition, and a growing interest in everyday creativity, creative self-beliefs and the conditions that help or hinder creative work in classrooms and organisations. A notable recent example is the sociocultural manifesto on advancing creativity theory and research published in the journal in 2020, an invited commentary reviewed by the editor and associate editor, which argued the field toward participatory and culturally situated accounts of creativity. A home journal earns that status by hosting such field-defining arguments as well as routine empirical reports.

Publication has passed to Wiley, which publishes the journal on behalf of the Creative Education Foundation, giving it the production, platform and distribution of a major scholarly publisher while ownership and identity remain tied to the foundation that created it. The journal appears quarterly, and its volume numbering follows its founding date, with volume 53 in 2019, volume 54 in 2020 and volume 60 reached in 2026 in the publisher's sequence. Even the journal's covers have been noted as exemplifying the creative process, a small detail that signals an editorial culture willing to practise its subject as well as study it.

Scope and Subject Coverage

The journal's scope, in its own long-standing summary, is creativity and problem solving in their many settings. Translated into research topics, that means the creative process and its cognitive foundations; individual differences in creative ability, personality and motivation; the social, cultural and organisational contexts that shape creative work; the measurement and assessment of creativity; creativity in education, from curriculum design to classroom climate; creativity in business, industry and professional life; and creativity in the arts and sciences. Methodologically the journal is pluralist, publishing experimental, qualitative, theoretical and review work, together with meta-analyses that consolidate a scattered literature.

Creative cognition and the creative process

A central strand studies how creative ideas are generated, developed and selected. Research in this area examines divergent and convergent thinking, association, insight, metacognition and the interplay between spontaneous and controlled processes, and a recent research agenda article in the journal set out four challenges for creative cognition, concerning definitions of core terms, the role of domain knowledge, the dynamic interaction of cognitive, affective and metacognitive processes over time, and the place of environmental and interpersonal context. Such agenda-setting work is one of the journal's important functions: the field is fragmented across psychology subdisciplines, and a shared statement of problems helps cumulative progress.

Individual differences, personality and creative self-beliefs

The journal publishes extensive work on how people differ in creativity and in their beliefs about it. Topics include personality traits, emotional states and cognitive styles; creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity; motivation, including intrinsic motivation's well-known place in theories of creativity; and development across the lifespan, from children's everyday creativity to adult achievement. A longitudinal study of creativity training, creative performance and creative self-efficacy published in the journal illustrates the practical edge of this work: whether people's confidence in their own creativity can be changed, and whether that change carries into behaviour, are questions with direct consequences for education and for management.

Creativity in education and creative learning

Education is one of the journal's strongest application areas, reflected in its high category positions in education listings. It publishes work on creative teaching, on curricula designed to develop creativity, on classroom climate and psychological safety, on teacher beliefs and training, and on the assessment of students' creative work. The qualitative portrait of a creative teacher published in the journal, built from interviews and observation across a university course, shows the genre at its best: detailed attention to preparation, to teacher-student connection and to reflective practice, with sub-themes that other teachers can recognise and test in their own settings. For teacher educators, the journal is a principal source on how creativity is actually fostered rather than merely demanded.

Creativity in organisations, business and industry

From its creative problem solving origins, the journal has always addressed work organisations: the management of creative personnel, team creativity, leadership, organisational climate, innovation processes and the planning and training interventions intended to raise creative performance. Research on daily creativity planning, for example, has examined whether planning promotes creative behaviour, connecting the journal's psychological theory to a simple, testable workplace and classroom practice. Organisations that want evidence rather than slogans about brainstorming, idea management or creative climate will find the journal's empirical record more useful than the popular business literature that often cites creativity research at second hand.

Assessment, testing and methodology

Creativity research stands or falls by its measures, and the journal has a long tradition of work on testing: divergent thinking tasks, product assessment, self-report scales, and the validity and biases of each. Methodological contributions in the journal discuss what a test score actually represents, how domain specificity complicates general claims, and how quantitative and qualitative methods can be combined. Readers should attend to this strand even if their interest is substantive, because conclusions about training effects, group differences or climate interventions are only as good as the measures behind them, a point the journal's contributors return to frequently.

Sociocultural perspectives and creativity in the arts and sciences

A growing strand treats creativity as a social and cultural phenomenon, produced through interaction, tools, audiences and systems of recognition, rather than located solely inside an individual mind. The sociocultural manifesto published in the journal gathered a wide group of authors to press that case. Alongside it, the journal continues to publish on creativity in the arts and the sciences themselves, the domains where creative achievement is most visible, examining how recognised creators work and how their fields judge them. This breadth keeps the journal from narrowing into a single paradigm, which is one reason researchers from several traditions continue to publish in it side by side.

What the Journal Publishes

The journal publishes original empirical research articles, theoretical and review articles, and invited commentaries and agenda pieces of the kind described above. Empirical work spans experimental studies, longitudinal and intervention designs, qualitative case studies and portraits, and quantitative syntheses. Because the journal serves several disciplines, authors are expected to write accessibly across them: a psychology experiment should be intelligible to an education reader, and an arts-based study should explain its methods to a psychologist. That cross-disciplinary readability is part of the journal's editorial identity and a common reason manuscripts need revision.

Practical submission information, including current article categories, length expectations, open access options and any article publication charge, is set by Wiley and the Foundation and is maintained on the journal's Wiley Online Library page. One third-party library source records an article processing charge discount arrangement for corresponding authors at certain Dutch institutions under a Wiley agreement running to the end of 2026, which illustrates that charges and waivers depend on the author's institution and territory; no single global fee should be inferred from it. Authors should therefore read the current author guidelines on the publisher's site and, where a charge matters to a funding decision, confirm the amount that would apply to them before submitting.

Readership and Audience

The core audience is creativity researchers in psychology and education, together with scholars in management, the arts and the social sciences who study creative work. Practitioner readers include teacher educators, curriculum designers, trainers and consultants in creative problem solving, and managers responsible for innovation and for creative teams. Because the journal is the field's longest-standing dedicated title, it is also a reference point for new entrants: a doctoral student beginning a creativity project will usually be directed to its archive early, both for theory and for examples of how studies in this field are designed and reported.

For libraries, the journal is a foundational holding for any collection supporting creativity, gifted education, educational psychology or innovation studies, with a back archive running from 1967 that documents the field's whole modern development. Its dual strength in education and in the arts and humanities, visible in its category rankings, means it serves several departments from a single subscription.

Editorial Leadership and Governance

Recent references record Ronald A. Beghetto of Arizona State University and Maciej Karwowski of the University of Wrocław as the journal's editors, with Beghetto identified as editor and Karwowski having served in a senior associate role in work published in the journal; the editor note on the 2020 sociocultural manifesto, for instance, records review by the editor, R. Beghetto, and associate editor M. Karwowski. Editorial leadership by scholars who themselves publish creativity research, Beghetto on creativity in education and on taking creative action under uncertainty, Karwowski on creative self-beliefs and the measurement of creativity, keeps the journal close to its field's active debates.

The journal is peer-reviewed and published by Wiley on behalf of the Creative Education Foundation, whose involvement dates from the founding in 1967. That structure, a learned foundation owning the title and a commercial publisher producing it, is common among established foundation journals and gives the title continuity of purpose. Correspondence about editorial matters should be directed through the journal's page on Wiley Online Library, which carries the current editorial board list; board membership changes over time, and the publisher's list, not a secondary summary, should be treated as authoritative.

Indexing, Abstracting and Metrics

The journal is indexed in Scopus, with coverage recorded from 1967 to the present, and in the Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index, reflecting its standing in psychology and education. It is also carried in education and psychology discovery services and library collections consistent with its subject profile. Researchers confirming coverage for a specific purpose should check the Scopus source list and the Web of Science master journal list directly, since those are the records that appointment, promotion and accreditation processes rely on.

Metrics require the usual care about years and sources, because figures for this journal differ between editions. Standard references record a 2022 Journal Impact Factor of 3.9 in the Journal Citation Reports; a library source records a 2024 Journal Impact Factor of 3. Scopus-based figures also vary by source and year: one listing gives a CiteScore of 4.9 with an h-index of 82 and an SJR of 0.882, while a university library source gives 2024 Scopus metrics with a CiteScore of 7.3 and a 99th percentile position in Visual Arts and Performing Arts, a 92nd percentile in Education and an 89th percentile in Developmental and Educational Psychology, all Q1. SCImago-derived reporting for 2024 gives an SJR of about 0.95, Q1 positions in Visual Arts and Performing Arts, Education and Developmental and Educational Psychology in Scopus categories, and a Q2 position in the Web of Science Psychology, Educational category. The consistent picture across those differing numbers is a journal that stands at or near the top of its niche categories in Scopus terms and solidly in the citation reports for educational psychology. Anyone quoting a single figure should name its source and year and should retrieve the current edition rather than repeating a number from a profile, including this one.

How to Use This Journal in Research and Practice

For a literature review on creativity, the journal is a natural starting point and a necessary inclusion: search it directly as well as through databases, because its archive contains foundational work from before comprehensive digital indexing, and follow the reference lists of its review and agenda articles to map a subfield. When synthesising, note the measures used in each study and the population studied, since creativity findings often depend on both, and use the journal's methodological articles to judge how far results can be generalised.

For practitioners, the journal's most usable contributions are its intervention and climate studies: what training actually changed, how classroom or team conditions affected creative behaviour, and which planning or feedback practices helped. Read those papers for their designs and effect sizes rather than for their headlines, and treat any single study, however appealing, as a prompt for a small local trial rather than as a guarantee. The journal rewards that careful reading, because its authors generally report the conditions of their work in enough detail to judge transferability.

Publishing in The Journal of Creative Behavior

Authors should frame a submission around a genuine contribution to the understanding of creativity: a new test of a theory, a well-designed intervention, a careful measurement study, a synthesis that resolves a disagreement, or a qualitative account that changes how a phenomenon is seen. Manuscripts that merely use the word creativity decoratively, or that report a routine study with creativity added as an afterthought variable, are unlikely to fit. Write for the journal's cross-disciplinary readership, define constructs precisely, and engage with the journal's own prior literature on the question, which for most creativity topics is extensive.

Before submitting, confirm the current requirements on the journal's Wiley page: article types and word limits, reference style, data and ethics statements, open access and licensing options, and the charge, if any, that would apply to the corresponding author's institution. Review timelines and acceptance rates for the journal are not stated in the official sources used for this profile and are treated here as not publicly disclosed; authors planning around a deadline, for a thesis, a grant report or a tenure case, should allow a generous margin and should not rely on third-party websites that publish unsourced turnaround claims.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was The Journal of Creative Behavior founded?

In 1967, by the Creative Education Foundation. It is described as the original and longest-standing journal devoted specifically to creativity research, and Wiley now publishes it on behalf of the Foundation.

What are the journal's ISSNs?

Print ISSN 0022-0175 and online ISSN 2162-6057. Those identifiers distinguish it from other creativity titles such as Creativity Research Journal, which is a separate publication.

Who edits the journal?

Recent references record Ronald A. Beghetto of Arizona State University and Maciej Karwowski of the University of Wrocław in the journal's senior editorial roles. The current board should be confirmed on the journal's Wiley Online Library page.

What subjects does the journal cover?

Creativity and problem solving broadly: creative cognition and process, individual differences and creative self-beliefs, creativity in education and creative learning, creativity in business and industry and the management of creative personnel, testing and assessment, and creativity in the arts and the sciences.

What is the journal's impact factor?

It depends on the edition. Standard references record a 2022 Journal Impact Factor of 3.9, and a library source records 3 for 2024, with Scopus CiteScore figures also varying by year and source. Always quote the figure with its year and source, and check the current Journal Citation Reports for the latest value.

How often is the journal published?

Quarterly, four issues per year, with volume numbering running from its 1967 founding to volume 60 in 2026.

Conclusion

The Journal of Creative Behavior has a strong claim to be its field's defining journal: founded in 1967 by the Creative Education Foundation, published today by Wiley on its behalf, quarterly, peer-reviewed, indexed in Scopus and the Social Sciences Citation Index, and standing at or near the top of its Scopus niche categories in recent listings. Its pages contain the field's arguments with itself, from divergent thinking tests to sociocultural manifestos, alongside the applied studies that teachers and managers actually use. Anyone working on creativity, in research or in practice, will need to read it, and most will eventually need to reckon with what it has published.

Duplicate record note: Journals World also holds a second record for this journal under the title Journal of Creative Behavior (post 12996, slug journal-of-creative-behavior), which at the time of checking carried about 244 words and the same ISSNs, 0022-0175 and 2162-6057. That pair is flagged in the report accompanying this profile for the site's standing merge process; no merge has been performed as part of this profile.