When Behavior Analysis in Practice (BAP) was founded 15 years ago, questions were raised about whether a practitioner-focused journal was really needed to complement our field's well-established applied research periodicals. Like research journals, BAP publishes primary research reports for which scholarly citations are one measure of impact. Unlike most research journals, it also was intended to achieve dissemination impact, which implies influence on people who may not conduct research or leave behind citations. Using altmetric data as an objective measure of dissemination impact, we present evidence that BAP is becoming a leader in this domain among applied behavior analysis journals, and thus appears to be accomplishing exactly what it was designed to. We recommend explicitly relying on dissemination impact data to help shape the journal's future development.
Keywords: Altmetrics; Applied behavior analysis; Bibliometrics; Dissemination.
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