The window on psychology's literature: A history of psychological abstracts.

Abstract

With the rapid expansion of scientific information at the end of the 19th century, disciplines sought ways to keep their members abreast of the relevant research. Those pressures were felt in the science of psychology in the United States, where psychologists developed a bibliographic aid, The Psychological Index, in 1895 only a little more than a decade after G. Stanley Hall opened America's first psychology laboratory. The Index was useful but was only a listing of titles. More information was needed, which led to the development of a journal of abstracts, first published in 1927. This article traces the history of Psychological Abstracts from its origins in the Index to the evolution of the American Psychological Association's electronic information system known as PsycINFO, of which Psychological Abstracts has become an outmoded part. Nevertheless, for most of its 80 years, Psychological Abstracts was psychology's window on the world of research.

Suggestions to Improve Social Work Journal Editorial and Peer-Review Processes: The San Antonio Response to the Miami Statement

“…Scholars need to clearly establish editorial boundaries with all parties to stop further incursions into editorial processes. Inappropriate intrusion into editorial processes by scholarly society staff happened many years ago (Benjamin & VandenBos, 2006), and it continues to happen in the present (e.g., Leighninger, 2006;Midgley, 2006;and Just as many prior authors have discussed the problems with social work journal processes in the hope for improvement, we offer the preceding hoping that it will lead to continued discussion and improvement. In 1978, Else asked What, then, is the state of publication in social work?…”

Does Social Work Abstracts Work?

“…Gifford, 2004) or institutions with limited resources. Although no overall income data for SWA was found, Benjamin and VandenBos (2006) reported site license revenues of $14,593,360 for Psyc INFO in 2005. Although determining the actual causes of these gaps in SWA coverage was beyond the scope of the current study, we conclude the discussion with a series of questions and assertions. Are the inadequacies of SWA (and other databases) so great that searchers must always search multiple databases to retrieve content from every issue-even for key professional journals?…”

“…Gifford, 2004) or institutions with limited resources. Although no overall income data for SWA was found, Benjamin and VandenBos (2006) reported site license revenues of $14,593,360 for Psyc INFO in 2005.…”

“…A key difference between social work and psychology, though, is that the American Psychological Association (APA, 2006) provides psychology and related disciplines with multiple databases (e.g., PsycINFO, PsycBOOKS, PsycCRITIQUES and PsycEXTRA; which cover articles, books and chapters, book reviews, and nonpeer reviewed literature) in contrast with the single journal-based database (SWA) that NASW provides for its members (SWA comes packaged with The Register of Clinical Social Workers which has limited utility in terms of scholarship). Moreover, there seems to be greater background detail available regarding the APA databases (e.g., Benjamin & VandenBos, 2006; http://www .apa.org/psycinfo/). SWA is described as follows:…”

Normative assessments of scholarly productivity: Moving the discussion forward.

“…Furthermore, in our view, faculty vitae are not at all standardized; the use of them would potentially create many more errors than PsycINFO. This database, although containing some errors and limited in coverage in some ways, is the primary archive of psychology publications available to many and can be said to contain the most recent, most relevant information in psychology (Benjamin & VandenBos, 2006). Vita collection would present challenges to accuracy and judgments about inclusion/exclusion.…”