Prentice Hall to Publish APS Readers

The American Psychological Society is pleased to announce a partnership with Prentice Hall to publish a series of Readers using articles from the APS journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. The Readers will accompany Prentice Hall’s psychology textbooks.

Consistently ranked among the top psychology journals for impact on the field, the concise reviews in Current Directions cut across disciplines and specialties. The original concept of the journal offers the means for scientists to quickly and easily learn about new and significant research outside their major field of study.

“This is a clear way for APS to fulfill its core mission,” said APS Executive Director Alan Kraut. “APS Members are committed to sharing meaningful, science-based research with a larger public. These Readers advance that vision by exposing a broad audience to digestible reviews of current directions in psychological research that everyday students can relate to.”

Because of its accessibility to a broad audience, articles from the journal have been used in many college classrooms. Current Directions articles are also similar to one another in length, scope, and style, making it easy for an instructor to use them to plan a course.

“Pearson Prentice Hall is excited and honored to collaborate with APS,” said Yolanda de Rooy, president of Pearson Prentice Hall Humanities and Social Science Division. “Our new partnership will give students and faculty the chance to examine today’s most current issues in psychology in a new and useful way.”

The readers promise to not only increase readership of the journal, but also expand the reach of psychological science into more college psychology classrooms. APS President Henry L. Roediger, III said the Current Directions Readers are a natural fit with APS’s fundamental mission of “disseminating psychological science knowledge.”

Roediger also said that a ready-made resource of topically organized articles would make it easier for professors to explore with their students areas of study with science-based research.

“We have this wonderful resource that I am forever copying for my students,” Roediger said. “It could go a long way in educating all students.”

The Readers will be more than 200 pages each, containing articles from Current Directions organized by experts in the relevant area of study and will include section overviews and critical thinking questions. Readers will accompany Prentice Hall psychology textbooks. Seven Readers are already in the planning stage. Three will be produced in time for use in the Spring 2004 semester: Abnormal Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Social Psychology. Four will be published later in 2004: Cognition/Learning Memory, Human Sexuality, Introductory Psychology, and Personality. More could follow.

Janet Ruscher, chair of the Tulane University department of psychology, and Elizabeth Hammer, Loyola University-New Orleans and President of Psi Chi, will edit the reader on social psychology. Ruscher said the biggest benefit of the readers for the classroom is that authors do not presume prior knowledge of specific areas and jargon.

“They define terms, provide an appropriate background, write in accessible language devoid of jargon, and avoid minute methodological detail,” Ruscher said. “For example, a social psychologist who might struggle reading a neuroscience article in a traditional neuroscience journal easily can read about this type of research in Current Directions. This accessibility also is advantageous for the students, who still are preparing to understand the methodological detail and technical language of full-scale empirical articles.”

For more information about the Readers, please contact Sheryl Adams, Prentice hall Publishing, at [email protected] or (212) 782-3317.