PubPub and the American Psychological Association Announce APA Open for OA Journals

PubPub has partnered with the American Psychological Association (APA) to release APA Open, an innovative platform for APA’s new open access journals. All articles will be freely available to the public, with licenses designed for easy reuse in the classroom or professional settings. Additionally, the new platform will empower authors to move beyond traditional, static article design by incorporating multimedia features, interactive tables and graphs, and easy sharing options for their research.

“APA has a long history of setting standards across psychology and the behavioral sciences, and, as a program, APA Journals is committed to supporting our authors as they publish on the forefront of the field,” said the APA Journals Publisher Rose Sokol-Chang, PhD. “We are excited to partner with PubPub to develop new opportunities for our authors and readers to engage in ways that extend beyond traditional publishing.”

PubPub, the flagship project of the Knowledge Futures Group, was launched in 2017.  The open source platform supports dozens of peer-reviewed scholarly journals and books from the MIT Press and other not-for-profit university and society-based publishers, and nearly a thousand grassroots publications created and maintained by individual scholars and academic departments. PubPub socializes the process of knowledge creation by integrating conversation, annotation, and versioning into short and long-form digital publication.

Both APA and PubPub are committed to open science, sharing research across disciplines, and supporting academic communities internationally. APA Publishing hopes to engage with new scholars, readers, and organizations through this project. The first journal released on this platform is Technology, Mind, and Behavior, which will showcase research about human–technology interaction and development. The journal will address the full range of contemporary and emerging technologies. These include but are not limited to artificial intelligence, robotics, mobile devices, social media, virtual/augmented reality, gaming, geographic information systems, autonomous vehicles, nanotechnology, and biomedical technologies. The journal is helmed by the inaugural editor, Danielle S. McNamara, PhD, professor of psychology and director of the Science of Learning and Educational Technology Lab at Arizona State University.

“We are thrilled to partner with APA on the publication these new open journals,” notes Heather Ruland Staines, Head of Partnerships for the Knowledge Futures Group. “PubPub excels in community engagement, so we’re particularly excited to see how Technology, Mind, and Behavior is able to nurture community growth and build upon new ideas through its publication and experimentation on the platform."

About the Knowledge Futures Group

The Knowledge Futures Group, founded at MIT, is a community of technologists, information creators, and scholarly publishers that is committed to addressing a core set of pressing and complex issues within research-intensive institutions.  The KFG’s goal is to develop open tools, infrastructure, and transparent business models that will bend the arc of knowledge creation and consumption toward equity and independence. 

About the American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association (APA) is the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA Publishing is the world’s largest nonprofit publisher of psychological science, setting standards for scholarship in the field through journals, books, videos, databases, and educational products for researchers, practitioners, educators, students, and the public.