Online Only – The Next Big Thing for Zeitschrift für Psychologie

The history of publishing scientific articles is one of continuous innovation, driven by the need to communicate new research findings to the scientific community in a timely and efficient manner. In the early days of modern science, scientific knowledge was disseminated through a variety of channels, including personal letters, manuscripts, and books. However, as the volume of scientific research grew, these methods became increasingly impractical.

In the 17th century, the first scientific journals began to appear. These journals provided a dedicated forum for scientists to publish their findings and to stay informed of the latest research in their field. Early scientific journals were typically published by scholarly societies or universities.

In the 19th century, the commercialization of scientific publishing began. Commercial publishers began to produce scientific journals on a larger scale, and both they and the scholarly society publishers introduced new subscription models to make journals more affordable for individual scientists.

The 20th century saw a number of significant innovations in scientific publishing. The introduction of offset printing in the 1950s made it possible to produce scientific journals more quickly and cheaply. The development of electronic publishing in the 1970s and 1980s revolutionized the way scientific journals were produced.

Today, while many scientific journals are still being published in printed format, their online versions are becoming increasingly popular, as they offer a number of advantages over print journals, such as increased accessibility, faster publication times, and enhanced features. In recent years, there has been a growing movement toward open access publishing, which means that journal articles are freely available to read online. This has helped to democratize access to scientific knowledge and to promote the dissemination of research findings.

The following overview summarizes some innovations in the history of scientific publishing along with milestones of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie:

• 1665: The first scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, is published.
• 1734: The first peer-reviewed scientific journal, Acta Eruditorum, is published.
• 1873: The first abstracting journal, Chemical Abstracts, is published.
• 1890: Zeitschrift für Psychologie was founded by Hermann Ebbinghaus, Arthur König, and colleagues, with the title Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane
• 1904: Zeitschrift für Psychologie becomes the organ of the newly established Society for Experimental Psychology, the predecessor of the German Psychological Society
• 1938: The first scientific citation index, Science Citation Index, is published.
• 1991: The first online preprint server, arXiv, is launched.
• 2000: The first open access scientific journals are launched.
• 2002: Zeitschrift für Psychologie publishes contributions online (in addition to the printed version)
• 2007: Zeitschrift für Psychologie is published exclusively in English
• 2009: Zeitschrift für Psychologie offers an open access publishing option (Hogrefe OpenMind)
• 2024: Zeitschrift für Psychologie is published exclusively online

The editors of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie are convinced that the time has now come to take another step and make the journal appear exclusively online. This step opens up benefits for authors and readers by reducing the time lag between acceptance and publication of papers, by enhancing replicability and reproducibility, and by extended impact assessment.

Faster publication times for individual papers. In general, online journals can be published more quickly than their printed counterparts. Specifically, the Zeitschrift für Psychologie will publish individual papers immediately online following their production, reducing the time gap from acceptance to publication to a minimum. Upon the publication of all papers belonging to a thematic issue, the corresponding articles will be bundled as thematic collections. Therefore, authors and readers can already take advantage of individual publications before all papers of a thematic collection have been produced.

Enhanced replicability and reproducibility. Contributions to the Zeitschrift für Psychologie are required to submit all electronic supplements rendering replication and reproduction easy. As the journal moves to an online-only format, the integration of tools facilitating replication and reproduction will be on the agenda of the journal. Examples include the publication of multimedia content, such as videos, audio files, and interactive graphics. This can help to make research more engaging and accessible to readers and researchers. Furthermore, video protocols and vivid depictions of experimental settings and procedures can be integrated. Moreover, tools for data inspection and live execution of analyses can be offered.

Extended impact assessment. Online-only journals provide more data on how articles and their elements (data, analysis code, and multimedia content) are being used compared to printed or mixed journals. This can include metrics such as download counts, page views, and citations. These data can be used to track the reach and impact of individual articles and their elements, as well as the entire journal.

The editors of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie look forward to the well-received adoption of the journal’s online-only transformation and encourage researchers and readers to contribute works harnessing the possibilities of this new format.