It’s been little over a year since we started this blog, with the hope of attracting a couple of hundred readers. Instead, we’ve had over 70,000 hits with over 35,000 visitors from 155 countries. The top 10 countries for visitors included:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Germany
5. The Netherlands
6. Australia
7. India
8. Singapore
9. Sweden
10. Switzerland

So much, so predictable! But who does JDM research in Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Vanuatu, Sudan, Rwanda, Ghana, Nicaragua, Bermuda, Bhutan, Barbados or Bolivia? If that’s you, get in touch – we’d love to speak to you and hear about JDM research in your country. This year, we’ll address one of the issues highlighted by professor Dan Ariely in his interview and start to look at what impact culture might have on decision making science through a series of interviews focusing on the challenges (and opportunities!) cross-cultural psychology might pose for JDM.

In case you missed them the first time, the top 10 posts from the year are:

1. Research Heroes: Richard Thaler
2. In The Wild: Rory Sutherland
3. Outside The Matrix: Paul Litvak
4. The Seven Sins of Consumer Psychology
5. Research Heroes: George Loewenstein
6. Viewpoint: The role of revealed research preferences
7. Outside The Matrix: Jolie Martin
8. In The Wild: Kelly Peters
9. Research Heroes: Colin Camerer
10. Research Heroes: Gerd Gigerenzer 

We’ve been incredibly lucky in being able to interview some amazing people in our field, and we can’t thank them enough for giving their time to answer our questions. On behalf of all the people who have thanked us for running the blog, please know that your contribution is widely appreciated and makes a big difference to young researchers around the world.

The original aim of the blog was to give young researchers a voice. We’ve taken some steps in that direction by growing the team with sub-editors Caroline Roux, Shereen Chaudry and Leigh Caldwell as well as our dedicated contributor Troy Campbell. In 2014, we’ll start to feature young researchers more regularly through a new interview series. We’ll also widen our net for career advice to include researchers who have are making waves early on in their career and shaping the field as they go.

We’d also welcome submissions from readers: if you’re a young researcher and have just published an awesome paper you want to tell the world about, get in touch. Since subtle hints and words of encouragement have so far fallen on deaf ears, let us put this bluntly: blatant self-promotion is OK, and strongly encouraged. One of the main goals of this blog is to give young scholars a platform to share and discuss their work, but we cannot achieve this goal without your contribution!

Finally, one of the emerging trends in our field is the rising popularity of field studies and applying the science both in the policy and commercial worlds with many of our Research Heroes highlighting the need to connect our work with the outside world. However, such work is extremely challenging and we have much to learn from the pioneers, so in 2014 we’ll also be speaking to those who have made early inroads into taking decision making science out of the lab and into the Real World.

As always, we welcome your feedback and contribution – please don’t hesitate to get in touch and let us know what you think!

We hope that you’ll enjoy the next year with us.

Elina & Neda