Changes to member network periodicals

Periodicals have been available instead as digital downloads via the BPS shop, and our communications team have been emailing network members with a download link.

Given the uncertainty of lockdowns and office closures over the coming months, it's not practical to return to printing and posting in 2021, as we cannot safely predict when our staff will be back on site. After discussion with our Board of Trustees, we've had to take the decision that the periodicals will need to remain as digital delivery only via the BPS shop between January and September 2021.

We do appreciate how important printed copies are to some of you. We've taken on board invaluable feedback from network editors and chairs and it's helped us to scope a new digital publication system.

We've chosen a system that integrates with a print-on-demand (POD) service, which will allow you to order a printed copy online of your own periodical and have it delivered to your door, using a voucher or discount code as part of your network membership. You can also choose to view or download the periodical digitally in the new system. We expect our new digital publication system will launch in September 2021, and we've started work already to progress the project.

We hope the new digital publication system will dramatically improve discoverability and reach for the periodical content – here are some of the benefits we're looking forward to:

Supporting author career development

• DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) making citations easier
• Online metrics to measure engagement, including citations from Web of Science, Crossref and Twitter, plus download reporting

Widening the audience

• Embargo periods to allow cross-network access
• Individual subscriptions to reach non-psychologist professionals
• Institutional subscriptions to reach universities
• Abstracts searchable through Google Scholar

Increased searching power

• Hosting at article level with meta-data tagging
• Filtered searches including content type, date, title 
• Semantic enrichment to tailor user experience

Improvements to accessibility

• Responsive to screen size, whether desktop or mobile
• Compliant to standard WCAG 2.1 AA, making content accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities