The editors of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence are delighted to announce the 2014 recipient of its Emerging Scholar Best Article Award. The award goes to the article’s lead author, who must be an “emerging scholar” (i.e., an untenured researcher, such as a graduate student, post-doctoral scholar, research scientist, or assistant professor). The recipient of the award is selected by a random group of editorial board members who evaluate manuscripts’ innovative and substantive contributions to the empirical understanding of adolescence. In addition to receiving a commemorative plaque, the winner receives a financial award generously provided by Springer, the journal’s publisher.

The 2014 winner is Allison B. Brenner, for her article entitled “The Physiological Expression of Living in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods for Youth” (Brenner et al. 2013). Her study investigated how adolescents living in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods may experience an accumulation of exposures to stressors that wear down their physical systems, resulting in hyper-activation of the stress response. Brenner found that, for a large group of African American youth, both individual and neighborhood-level factors influenced their cortisol levels. More specifically, her findings revealed that high effort coping and psychological stress associated with cortisol and that atypical cortisol responses resulted from exposure to neighborhood socio-economic disadvantage. In addition, she also found that neighborhood disadvantage indirectly affected cortisol as it interacted with intra- and interpersonal factors. She and her colleagues concluded that living in disadvantaged neighborhoods may take psychological and physiological tolls on adolescents, and it also may exert synergistic effects through individual coping and vulnerabilities.

Since the journal publishes 12 issues per year, each typically containing up to 15 manuscripts, the editors view the award as a considerably distinctive accomplishment. Each of the issues has multiple articles authored by emerging scholars. The selection of articles for the award involves a two-step process, with the first round involving the selection of the strongest articles from each issue and the second round involving another group of editors who rank the selected articles. As in prior years (see Levesque 2011, 2012, 2013), the process resulted in a pool of very impressive articles.

The articles selected as potential winners addressed a variety of important topics that reflect the journal’s commitment to better understanding development from contextual perspectives that take diversity seriously. Notably, for example, some of the finalists addressed gender’s role in the experience of trauma’s effects (Espinosa et al. 2013) as well as the role of sexual identity in the experience of violence (Edwards and Sylaska 2013) and mental health (Bregman et al. 2013; Johns et al. 2013). Others focused on emotional and behavioral problems (Telzer and Fuligni 2013; Georgiades et al. 2013), while others studied teen dating violence (Temple, et al. 2013) and other aspects of peer relationships’ effects (Taylor et al. 2013; Marion et al. 2013). Yet others centered on the role of media in adolescent development, such as the relative effects of cyberbullying (Sticca and Perren 2013) and the positive effects of video game use (Adachi and Willoughby 2013). As in the past, most finalists adopted longitudinal approaches, complex research designs, and innovative statistical analyses to understand developmental issues.

I would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the important contributions of co-authors to the winning article, finalists, and the journal itself. Notably, two of the co-authors of the winning article, José A. Bauermeister and Marc A. Zimmerman, were co-authors of another manuscript that was a finalist (Johns et al. 2013); and the other co-author, Cleopatra H. Caldwell, has been an active contributor to the journal. Also notably, several other co-authors of the manuscripts that became finalists have published multiple times in our journal. Paul Adachi, Teena Willoughby, Andrew Fuligni, Sonja Perren, and Wendy Kliewer all have been frequent contributors. I remain grateful for their contributions, both to the journal and to research focusing on the understanding of adolescence.

On behalf of the editorial board, I again would like to congratulate Allison Brenner and her colleagues, as their success comes at a remarkable time in the growth of our journal and field. Observers of the study of adolescent research no doubt have noticed that it has grown immensely over the past years. That growth has been reflected in the pages of this journal. The changing depth, breadth and volume of our journal have developed from the commitment of emerging scholars. That is what, for us, makes Brenner as well as her cohort of emerging scholars very deserving of accolades, and it also makes us indebted to the senior editors at Springer, particularly Judy Jones, for their support of an award that has no parallel in our field.