After 31 years of building APA's publishing arm into a hugely successful enterprise, Gary VandenBos, PhD, is retiring from his career as APA's publisher and executive director of its Office of Publications and Databases. APA's new publisher will be Jasper Simons (see sidebar).
VandenBos leaves behind a publishing program that expanded dramatically during his tenure. When he took over as publisher in 1984, APA publishing was a relatively small, $5 million program with 17 journals, one database (PsycINFO) and one book, the Publication Manual. Today, the office is a powerhouse for APA, publishing 92 journals, seven databases and 80 books a year. Annual revenue has jumped from $5 million to $90 million.
Part of what drives that growth is the tripling of sales of the style manual, thanks in part to an effort spearheaded by VandenBos to expand its audience beyond psychology. "The Publication Manual is the best guide for organizing and communicating scientific information, but the world didn't know it," says VandenBos.
VandenBos also launched the highly successful Psychotherapy Video Series, 150 videos featuring experts demonstrating psychotherapy techniques with various types of patients, as well as the APA Clinical Training Video Series, another 400 streaming videos featuring therapists working with clients.
"We basically created a resource I would have liked to have had as a grad student 40 years ago," says VandenBos. "I would read a book by a therapist who would use phrases like, 'Build and strengthen the transference.' What does that mean? Show me."
PsycTESTS, the latest addition to APA's databases, also grew out of VandenBos's frustration with the status quo. "This is something I wish I'd had when doing research," he says. Launched in 2011, the database now houses more than 30,000 psychological measurement tools. "We wanted to help psychologists stop reinventing the wheel and put that time and effort into the greater effort of doing research rather than developing tools to do research."
VandenBos's many responsibilities have also included serving as managing editor of APA's flagship journal American Psychologist, as editor-in-chief of the APA Dictionary of Psychology and as co-editor of APA's open-access journal Archives of Scientific Psychology. In all of those roles, VandenBos sees a unifying theme to his work: getting knowledge into use.
"Much of what I've done in APA publishing has really been about how best to package particular kinds of content for particular audiences and deliver it through various media," he says.
True to his nature, VandenBos isn't leaving APA altogether in December. He will consult part-time for APA next year, helping to launch new tools for psychology students and psychologists, such as an online APA Style Center that will help users learn how to use APA style, design research projects, write better and publish their work. He also plans to do more writing and editing, see patients in the clinical practice he has maintained since 1974 and teach a few classes at Norway's University of Bergen.
"I'm not going to miss budgets and administrative meetings and personnel management," says VandenBos. "What I'm likely to miss is the highly varied opportunities to touch different pieces of psychology my job has afforded me."
— Rebecca A. Clay