The New Zeitschrift für Psychologie / Journal of Psychology

Abstract

Starting with this, the first issue in 2007, the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie is appearing in a new format and style. There are two main changes. First, the Journal is now being published in English – and accordingly, the original title has been extended to include the English form of the title. It will from now on be called Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology. Second, in the future each issue will be devoted to a particular topic. The need for these changes in the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie results from the changed journal landscape in the field of psychology. There are of course many reasons for the changes. For one, there are few German-speaking researchers who do not wish to publish in English, as English-language papers are necessary for research to be accepted and read by the international psychological community. And for another, through the change in language to one that is more widely understood, and also through the inclusion of the online version of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology in the PsycARTICLESTM database and Hogrefe’s own PsyCONTENT system, readers worldwide can be reached even more easily. PsycARTICLESTM is a database of full-text articles from more than 50 journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, and the Canadian Psychological Association, as well as the Hogrefe & Huber group’s English-language journals. PsyCONTENT is the Hogrefe and Huber group’s own online journal system, including some 28 psychology journals. As has happened with other German-language journals that have changed to the English language and been integrated into both the PsycARTICLESTM and PsyCONTENT systems, the readership and impact of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology, we hope, will increase substantially. The Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, originally called Zeitschrift fur Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, was established in 1890. In other words, it is the second oldest psychology Journal in the world (Gundlach, 1991). Hermann Ebbinghaus was one of the founding editors, with Hermann von Helmholtz, Georg Elias Muller, and Carl Stumpf, among others, serving as co-editors. Karl Buhler, Wolfgang Kohler, Otto Selz, and Max Wertheimer are just some of the psychologists whose pioneering work was originally published in the early days of the Journal. It was because of this long and proud tradition of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie that we were reluctant to abandon the original title, and so led us to the slightly unusual step of simply adding what librarians call the parallel title: Journal of Psychology. During its long history, the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology has always been an outlet for all disciplines within the field of psychology, and not only for a particular specialization or branch of psychology. This tradition will be maintained – although, as indicated earlier in this editorial, only thematic or topical issues will be published in the future. This will ensure that the individual contributions are more homogeneous and, we hope, will increase the attractiveness of the Journal for readers. When the Journal was founded, German was the lingua franca of science. In many disciplines, scientists from around the world published their findings in journals such as Annalen der Chemie (with Justus von Liebig as cofounder), Annalen der Physik (in which, for instance, Max Planck first published a paper on quantum physics), Zeitschrift fur Physik (with Albert Einstein in the founding committee) and, well, Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, in which, for example, Raymond Dodge, David Katz, Kurt Lewin, Hugo Munsterberg, and Charles Spearman published some of their influential work. As was the case then, the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology will continue to publish research from all branches of empirical psychology that is clearly of international interest and relevance. Guest editors – in many, but not all cases drawn from the Journal’s editorial team – will deal with each specific subject or topic. The typical issue of the journal will commence with an introductory overview article on the topic