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Publications and Communications Board: 2023 Annual Report

APA Publishing serves three important functions, as a content provider of important research, as a standard setter for scholarly publishing in psychology, and as APA’s primary source of income. Total revenue for APA’s core scholarly and professional publishing program (including APA Journals, APA Books, APA Style and Publication Manual, Academic Writer, APA PsycInfo, APA PsycLearn, APA PsycTests, and APA PsycTherapy) totaled over $100 million in 2023.

Journal Editor Appointments

The Publications and Communications Board (P&C Board) is pleased to have made six editorial appointments to APA Core journals in 2023, naming the following editors to six-year terms, beginning in 2024 as the Editor-elect year (and 2025 as the debut masthead year).

  • Clinician’s Research Digest, Lorraine T. Benuto, PhD
  • Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Jeffrey J. Starns, PhD
  • Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes, Sandra L. Murray, PhD
  • Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Susan J. Simonian, PhD, ABPP
  • Psychology and Aging, Hannes Zacher, PhD
  • Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Tess M.S. Neal, PhD

In addition, the P&C Board made eight editorial appointments for journals in the Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF) imprint of specialized and co-owned journals:

  • Decision, Tim Rakow, PhD
  • Evolutionary Behavioral Science, Dario Maestripieri, PhD
  • Families, Systems, and Health, Rodger Kessler, PhD, and C.R. Macchi, PhD
  • Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, Katsunori Yamada, PhD
  • Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, Kristen M. Abraham, PhD
  • Psychology of Violence, Brad Bushman, PhD
  • Training and Education in Professional Psychology, Jennifer L. Callahan, PhD
  • Translational Issues in Psychological Science, Jacklynn Fitzgerald, PhD

In 2023, the P&C Board also opened 13 searches for the following APA Core and EPF journals; incoming editors to begin in 2025:

  • Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice
  • International Journal of Stress Management
  • Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition
  • Journal of Psychotherapy Integration
  • Journal of Rural Mental Health
  • Neuropsychology
  • Psychological Methods
  • Psychology of Consciousness
  • School Psychology
  • Spirituality in Clinical Practice
  • Stigma and Health
  • Technology, Mind, and Behavior
  • Traumatology

APA Journals

APA Journals produces an array of scholarly journals that cover the spectrum of psychology. Journals published more than 64,100 pages in 2023 across 88 journals and 2 Clinician’s Research Digests, representing almost 4,900 articles assigned to 516 journal issues.

The Publications and Communications Board, with the Board of Scientific Affairs, released the latest iteration of the Journal Article Reporting Standards—for Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (JARS-REC)—in the fall of 2023. These standards offer instructions for addressing race, ethnicity, and culture when preparing journal manuscripts. The P&C and BSA formed a working group that included liaisons from several psychological associations, and the final product has been approved as a collaborative effort conducted in cooperation with the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, the Coalition for the Advancement & Application of Psychological Science, the Society for Behavioral Medicine, the Society for Neuroscience, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the Society for Research on Adolescence. The need for JARS-REC arose from the longstanding recommendation by experts within the field of psychology to incorporate race, ethnicity, and culture into research, ensuring the inclusion of generalizability and cultural relevance. The JARS–REC marks a significant stride in addressing the longstanding gaps related to race, ethnicity, and culture in psychological science by providing clear guidelines for authors, reviewers, and editors.

APA Journals continued to build upon journal-level initiatives recommended in APA Journals’ Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Toolkit for Journal Editors. These include journal diversity statements, which eight APA Core titles have adopted; detailed participant descriptions, which 13 APA Core titles now require; sample justifications, which 8 APA Core titles now require; and reflexivity or positionality statements, which 11 APA Core titles now recommend. APA also implemented an editorial fellowship initiative. Twenty journals will offer fellowships to early-career psychologists (ECPs) from historically excluded groups designed to improve access to journal leadership positions in 2024. During 2023, more than 67 fellows participated in the program’s first year.

APA Journals continued a partnership with Bowie State University to spotlight student researchers of color in psychology and conducted a webinar for Bowie State students and faculty on a Practice Innovations special journal issue on race, culture, and practice in Spring 2023. In 2024, APA plans to expand the spotlight series to other Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCUs), including Morgan State University and Alabama A&M University.

APA Journals has worked closely with the peer review vendor, Aries Systems, for several years to launch an improved mechanism for collecting demographic information from authors and reviewers in the peer review system (Editorial Manager). Staff shared updated journal-level demographic data with editors early in 2023 based on peer review participants during the 2022 publication year.

In 2023, APA Journals published more than 60 special issues or sections of journals. The following are examples of special issues: American Psychologist’s Foundational Contributions of Black Scholars in Psychology; Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts’ Musical Aesthetics; Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice’s Salutogenic Effects of Self-Transcendence; Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology’s Innovative Theory and Methods for the Next Generation of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Sciences; Consulting Psychology Journal’s The State of Black Leadership: What Can Be Done To Create Sustainable Change; Psychology of Addictive Behaviors’ Addictive Behavior as Behavioral Allocation; Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice’s Data Analytic Methods in Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy; Health Psychology’s Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal; The Humanistic Psychologist’s Human-Animal Relations; Law and Human Behavior’s Racial Justice in the Criminal Justice and Legal Systems; Harmonization of Neuropsychological and Other Clinical Endpoints: Pitfalls and Possibilities; Psychoanalytic Psychology’s A Snapshot of Development and Treatment During the Time of COVID-19; Practice Innovations’ Contemporary Perspectives in Forensic Practice; Spirituality in Clinical Practice’s Multicultural Considerations Regarding Spirituality in Clinical Practice; Psychological Services’ Improving Access and Quality of Mental Health Care for Diverse Populations; Translational Issues in Psychological Science’s Translational Research on Concussion and Traumatic Brain Injury; and Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy’s Trauma Among Youth, Adolescents, and Emerging Adults.

APA Books and Videos

APA publishes books to meet the needs of scholars, clinicians, researchers, and students in all areas of psychology. The product lines encompass an array of resources, including the APA Books, and Magination Press imprints, APA Style, and APA Videos.

Since its release in October 2019, the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association has broken records set by the previous edition and continues to make an impact in academia. As of December 2023, nearly 1.7 million copies of the Publication Manual have been sold by APA and its distributors and retailers, including Amazon.

In 2023, the APA Style team collaborated with APA’s EDI office and other APA departments and committees to publish the second edition of the Inclusive Language Guide and with APA Journals, the Science Directorate, working group members, and other experts to publish the all-new Journal Article Reporting Standards for Race, Ethnicity, and Culture. The team conducted five APA Style training webinars in 2023, with more than 15,000 registrants, which represented attendees (researchers, academic librarians, instructors, and students) from at least 66 countries and also expanded this engagement via the APA Style Monthly email newsletter, which reached 30,000 subscribers in December. APA Style team members participated in a four-part podcast series hosted by Choiceopens in new window that covered the origins of APA Style, principles and myths of referencing, and inclusive writing. The APA Style team also conducted 10 in-person conference presentations, including at the annual meetings for the Society for Scholarly Publishing, Council of Science Editors, National Council for Teachers of English, and 2023 APA Convention, where APA launched the first-ever APA Style merchandise store.

In 2023 APA Publishing released 52 scholarly and trade titles, 2 two-volume reference handbooks (APA Handbook of Neuropsychology and APA Handbook of Psychotherapy), and the first revised edition of an APA Handbook the three-volume APA Handbook of Research Methods, and 20 Magination Press (APA’s children’s book imprint) titles. In addition, APA Books released titles to ProQuest Ebook Central, EBSCO, OverDrive, RedShelf, and VitalSource, JSTOR, and Amazon Kindle. Magination Press books are found on online reading platform Epic! (129digital books), as ebooks on Amazon Kindle (233 ebooks), and available as digital copies on various online bookshops and library platforms such as Overdrive, B&N, or bookshop.org (233 books).

Book awards and honors bestowed upon APA titles are generous. Included here is a list of awards and honors received for Magination Press titles.

California Eureka Nonfiction Awards
Evelyn Hooker and the Fairy Project by Gayle Pitman: Gold Medal

International Latino Book Awards
Something Happened to My Dad by Ann Hazzard and Vivianne Aponte Rivera: Gold Medal for Children's Fiction Picture Book-English

Algo Le Pasó a Mi Papá: Una Historia Sobre Inmigración y la Separación Familiar, by Vivianne Aponte Rivera and Ann Hazzard: Silver medal for Children's Fiction Picture Book-Spanish

The White Ravens
HOME by Tonya Lippert—Included in this prestigious catalog, which is published annually in English by the International Youth Library as a recommendation list for international children's and youth literature.

CBC Children’s Favorites Award 2023, for books published in 2022. Nationwide, thousands of students in classrooms, school libraries, public libraries, and bookstores read and voted on the books and the results are in. All told there were over a half million total votes!

  • Children's favorites K-2nd grade: Don't Hug the Quokka by Daniel Enrico
  • Children's favorites K-2nd grade: Moody Moody Cars by Eileen Kennedy-Moore
  • Children's favorites 3rd-5th grade: The Mother of a Movement by Rob Sanders

Goddard Riverside CBC Youth Book Prize for Social Justice, 2023 shortlist
The Mother of a Movement by Rob Sanders this award selects books that support values such as community, equality, respect, justice, etc. The shortlist was announced on Goddard Riverside’s social media platforms.

Orbis Pictus Nonfiction Award from National Council of Teachers of English
The Mother of a Movement Honor Book by Rob Sanders

APA Books and LifeTools also garnered awards, recognition, and praise, including:

  • Solving Modern Problems with a Stone-Age Brain by Douglas T. Kenrick and David E. Lundberg-Kenrick was awarded the SPSP Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Science.
  • LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Families by Abbie E. Goldberg was a finalist for the 2022 Indies Book of the Year Award.
  • The Truth About Lying: Teaching Honesty to Children for Every Age and Stage by Victoria Talwar and Sex Ed for the Stroller Set: How to Have Honest Conversations with Young Children by Laura Hancock and Karen Rayne each received 2023 National Parenting Product Awards.
  • The Psychology of PCOS by Stacey Williams received the Division 35 Distinguished Book Award.
  • Affirming LGBTQ+ Students in Higher Education, edited by David Rivera, Roberta Abreu, and Kristen Gonzalez won the Division 44 Book Award.
  • Imperfect Parenting by Dona Matthews; The Case Against Conversion “Therapy: by Douglas Haldeman; and LGBTQ Family Building by Abbie Goldberg were named finalists for the Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Awards.
  • Being the Change: A Guide for Advocates and Activists on Staying Healthy, Inspired, and Driven was included on the WE Magazine’s Spring Worth Reading Roundup 2023.
  • Reviews in Choice, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries including: Treatment of Psychosocial Risk Factors in Depression edited by David A. Dozois and Keith S. Dobson; Crises in the Psychotherapy Session by Julian Ford; Psychological Assessment of Bipolar Spectrum Disorders edited by James H. Kleiger and Irving B. Weiner.
  • Breastfeeding Doesn’t Need to Suck: How to Nurture Your Baby and Your Mental Health by Kathleen Kendall-Tackett and Perfectionism in Childhood and Adolescence by Gordon Flett and Paul Hewitt were finalists in the 2023 Prose Awards.
  • Reviews in Doody’s Review Service and inclusion in Doody’s Core Titles for Written Exposure Therapy for PTSD by Denise M. Sloan and Brian P. Marx; Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress by Kevin L. Nadal; Testifying in Court, Third Edition by Stanley L. Brodsky; Clinical Handbook of Fear and Anxiety edited by Jonathan S. Abramowitz and Shannon M. Blakey; Integrated Behavioral Health in Primary Care by Christopher L. Hunter, Jeffery L. Goodie, Mark S. Oordt, and Anne C. Dobmeyer; Practical Ethics for Psychologists, Third Edition, by Samuel Knapp, Leon D. VandeCreek, and Randy Fingerhut; and Treatment of Late-Life Depression, Anxiety, Trauma, and Substance Abuse edited by Patricia Arean.
  • Succeeding with Adult ADHD, Second Edition was welcomed into the CHADD National Resource Center Library collection.
  • Mentions of multiple APA Books could be found in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR in 2023.

The video division of APA Books released 15 individual video titles in both DVD and in streaming format (through our distributors), including the Deliberate Practice Video Series, a short series of 5 videos hosted by Alexandre Vaz that includes Emotion-Focused Therapy Deliberate Practice with Rhonda Goldman and Multicultural Therapy Deliberate Practice with Jordan Harris. The Video division also released Positive Psychology Delivered Online with Tayyab Rashid, Prolonged Exposure Therapy with Sheila Rauch, Shame and Anger in Therapy with Leslie Greenberg, and Client Contributions in Psychotherapy with Kathryn Kline, Jairo Fuertes, Amy Greaves, and Heidi M. Levitt.

The video division also released a total of 347 videos into APA PsycTherapy®, APA’s database of streaming psychotherapy videos. This huge addition included not only the previously unpublished demonstrations recorded in 2022, but also all 300+ videos in the APA Psychotherapy Video Series and other psychotherapy-related APA videos, a 50% increase in the number of videos and a 122% increase in total hours of video in the database. This addition meets the needs of APA PsycTherapy users, who have long asked when we would be adding the APA video series, and provides clinical training programs with a single source for all APA psychotherapy training videos. All future updates to APA PsycTherapy will include the most recent individual APA psychotherapy videos.

In addition to this increase in content, the Video division also enriched approximately 50 other videos with annotated segmentation.

Online Products and Solutions

APA’s platform (APA PsycNet) and databases (APA PsycInfo, APA PsycArticles, APA PsycBooks, APA PsycTests, and APA PsycTherapy) are supported by the Product Management and Content Management departments in APA Publishing.

The Content Management department oversees and implements policy and program development in all matters related to content for the APA PsycInfo and APA PsycTests databases. Initiatives to ensure the quality of the PsycINFO database are ongoing. In 2023, the following additions were made:

  • More than 191,000 records were released into the APA PsycInfo database and by the end of the year, the database contained over 5.4 million records. Of these 1,019,692 records have ORCID IDs and 351,578 are Open Access. In addition, the database contains more than 154 million cited references. The number of journals covered by PsycINFO at the end of 2023 was 2 2,335, 13 journals were dropped primarily due to problems receiving the journal or to journal’s ceasing publication and 55 new journals were added.
  • APA PsycInfo also includes the metadata records for the APA PsycArticles and APA PsycBooks databases:
  • Over 5,300 metadata records were added to the APA PsycArticles database, bringing the total number of records to 238,778.
  • Approximately 621 APA book and chapter records were added to APA PsycBooks. At the end of the year, APA PsycBooks contained 74,334 book and chapter records.
  • The APA PsycTests database grew by 3,754 new records, totaling -74,803 records by the end of the year. Nearly half of the metadata records are accompanied by full tests.
  • The APA PsycExtra database has been transformed into an archive for APA and APA-related content only. More than 600 such archival records were added to APA PsycExtra in 2023.

APA PsycInfo is the most trusted, authoritative abstracting and indexing service in the behavioral and social sciences featuring both global and multidisciplinary content. In 2020 APA launched a free, customized, AI-powered research service with seamless access to full text to assist researchers with keeping up to date with the latest research in psychology. As a researcher engages with research content, the service adapts to the researcher’s preferences based on click and read data, resulting in an experience personalized to individual research interests. With APA PsycInfo as the foundation, the service includes research from nearly 2,300 journals in psychology and related disciplines, dissertations, preprints, PubMed, and national and international conference data. In 2023, APA enhanced the service based on researcher feedback to include an “analyze and filter” tool to help researchers identify prolific authors, isolate prevalent research methodologies, track research trends over time, and more. A new content discovery and engagement tool, “Discover PsycInfo”, serves as a great starting point to find new relevant content from top journals, most frequently read books and chapters, and the most recent dissertations. In addition, a new citation notification service was launched, which helps authors stay informed when and where their publications are cited. The research service supports the research process and brings APA PsycInfo, as well as other research content, deeper into the workflow of researchers, providing greater discoverability of psychological research content while keeping researchers informed about current developments in their specialty area.

APA PsycNet, the publishing platform for APA's scholarly content, hosted over 115 million user sessions in 2023, with 82 million page views and 7.5 million APA journal article and book chapter downloads by institutional subscribers, APA members, and the general public. More than 55 million researchers, students, librarians, and clinicians followed links to APA articles and books from Google Scholar, PubMed, social media, and various discovery services. The platform hit a new monthly record of 3.6 million users in April of 2023. Four million articles and book chapters have been downloaded from APA PsycNet via the innovative “Get access” authentication service. This service does an entitlement check by institutional email domain or IP validation to streamline access to APA content for subscribers on any vendor platform, regardless of their starting point, location, and device.

The smart citation service Scite.ai has been expanded in 2023 to all APA PsycNet users. This service allows users to evaluate the impact of APA publications through citations in context that describe whether the article supports, mentions, or contrasts the cited claims. The 2023 technology stack upgrade improved platform performance, overall functionality, and user experience.

For most of 2023, Academic Writer was sold through three distinct sales models: Academic Writer Direct (B2C), Academic Writer Institutional (B2B), and Academic Writer Course Adoption (B2B). In September, the decision was made to stop the less popular course adoptions model; moving forward, institutional subscriptions will be sold both in the US and internationally.

The year also saw the release of new features to support both institutional sales (B2B) and individual subscriptions (B2C), including, but not limited to:

  • Lessons and quizzes on fundamental writing skills
  • Localized paper settings (e.g., UK spellings and units of measurement)
  • Plagiarism checking services for AW Direct customers

Throughout 2024, the focus will be on expanding our reach for both active AW products (alongside supporting the remaining course adoption customers). The year will begin with a large-scale release in January, which includes (1) a new reference form for generative AI sources, and (2) a back-end rewrite that is expected to yield performance improvements, better scalability, and lower operational costs. Throughout the year, features will be released to directly impact product sales and customer satisfaction.

PsycLearn Plus is an online delivery platform for course materials in undergraduate psychology. It employs evidence-based learning science principles to make challenging concepts more engaging and approachable, helping students deepen their understanding of course material and build learning skills. APA Publishing entered into an agreement with Cambridge University Press & Assessment (CUPA) in fall 2023 to market and sell PsycLearn globally. CUPA will manage the sale and marketing of all PsycLearn full textbook replacement products: Research Methods, Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Introduction to Social Psychology, and a Combined Approach to Research Methods and Statistics, APA’s first courseware product covering a two-semester course.

The Product Management team also greatly expanded PsycLearn’s public reach through the release of a series of 4-12-hour PsycLearn Essentials courses on MOOC providers edX and Coursera. The first course, Qualitative Research in Psychology, went live in December 2022 and eight others were released over the course of 2023: Positive Psychology, Data Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, Learning through Cognitive Psychology, Gender and Sexuality, Psychological Influences on Decision Making, Ethics of Psychological Research, Methods for Quantitative Research in Psychology, and Statistics in Psychological Research. The full list is available on the PsycLearn Essentials page on apa.org and will be updated as new courses release over 2024.

Publications and Communications (P&C) Board

July 2022-June 2023 P&C Board Members

  • Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett, PhD, IBCLC (2019-2025) Chair
  • Danny Wedding, PhD (2019-2025) Chair-elect
  • Richard E. Petty, PhD (2018-2023)
  • Mark Sobell, PhD (2014-2023)
  • Pamela T. Reid, PhD (2022-2024)
  • Michael Roberts, PhD (2020-2026)
  • Steve W. J. Kozlowski, PhD (2021-2027)
  • Mo Wang, PhD (2021-2027)
  • Hortensia Amaro, PhD (2022-2028)
  • Jean Carter, PhD (APA Treasurer, Ex-officio) through December 31, 2022
  • Michael Hendricks, PhD (APA Treasurer, Ex-officio) beginning January 1, 2023
  • Arthur C. Evans Jr. (APA CEO, Ex-officio)

Affiliates
Chief Editorial Advisor
Jennifer Crocker, PhD

Open Science & Methodology Expert Panel Chair
Katherine (Katie) Corker, PhD

Council of Editors
Michael Lamb, PhD (Chair)
Katie Witkiewitz, PhD (Chair-elect)

July 2023-June 2024 P&C Board Members

  • Danny Wedding, PhD (2019–25) Chair
  • Michael C. Roberts, PhD, ABPP (2020–26) Chair-elect
  • Pamela Trotman Reid, PhD (2022–24)
  • Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett, PhD, IBCLC, FAPA (2019–25)
  • Steve W. J. Kozlowski, PhD (2021–27)
  • Mo Wang, PhD (2021–27)
  • Hortensia Amaro, PhD (2022–28)
  • Catherine Haden, PhD (2023–29)
  • Heejung Kim, PhD (2023–29)
  • Michael Hendricks, PhD (APA Treasurer, ex-officio, non-voting)
  • Arthur C. Evans Jr. (APA CEO, ex-officio, non-voting)

Chief Editorial Advisor
Jennifer Crocker, PhD

Council of Editors
Katie Witkiewitz, PhD (Chair)
Elena L. Grigorenko, PhD (Chair-elect)

Open Science Methodology Expert Panel Chair
Katherine (Katie) Corker, PhD (2023)
Lisa DeBruine, PhD (2024)

Date created: February 2024

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