APA Announces PsycCRITIQUES™, a Database of Book Reviews in Psychology

DATE: August 30, 2004
CONTACT: William C. Hayward
(202) 336-5652

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Psychological Association (APA) has announced that PsycCRITIQUES, a new searchable database of book reviews in psychology, will launch in September 2004. The database will replace APA’s respected print journal Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, providing major enhancements, very current reviews, and much more content. APA will publish the final print issue of Contemporary Psychology in December 2004.

In each weekly release, PsycCRITIQUES will deliver approximately 15 reviews of psychological books, most from the current copyright year. Weekly issues may also sometimes feature a review of a popular first-run film or a comparative review of several current trade books. A retrospective review evaluating the impact on the literature of a book published 20 to 50 years earlier will also appear occasionally.

"We're pleased to now be in a position to provide a new level of timely access to expert evaluations of the current book literature in psychology," said Gary R. VandenBos, PhD, APA Publisher. "Alongside PsycINFO, PsycCRITIQUES will be another important tool to help researchers develop bibliographies and decide which books they want to read."

Optional e-mail alerts will provide the table of contents and abstracts from each weekly issue. To enable researchers to study evaluations of the book literature over time, PsycCRITIQUES will include a backfile of approximately 4,000 reviews from 1995–2003. Reviews will be indexed with vocabulary from APA’s Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms to facilitate precise retrieval.

The migration to PsycCRITIQUES will take place between September 2004, when the database will go live, and December 2004, when the final print issue will be published. During this period, free access to PsycCRITIQUES will be provided for current individual and institutional subscribers, who will have the opportunity to renew into paid subscriptions or site licenses for access to the electronic database. Paid access to PsycCRITIQUES will begin in January 2005.

About PsycINFO and APA

APA's PsycINFO® databases are leading information resources in the behavioral sciences. The PsycINFO abstract database provides access to international professional literature in psychology and such related disciplines as neuroscience, medicine, psychiatry, social work, nursing, sociology, business, education, pharmacology, and physiology. Providing both a deep backfile and timely access to current research through weekly updates, PsycINFO spans the history of the discipline, from the origins of psychology in the nineteenth century to the cutting-edge findings of today’s behavioral sciences. PsycARTICLES, an essential complement to PsycINFO, is a one-stop source for electronic access to the full text of articles from APA’s authoritative, peer-reviewed scholarly journals. PsycEXTRA is a database of the gray literature in psychology and related behavioral fields, providing access to relevant material published outside the traditional peer reviewed journal or scholarly book. PsycBOOKS, a full-text database of scholarly titles published by APA Books, launches in August 2004.

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA’s membership includes more than 150,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 53 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting health, education, and human welfare.

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