Publishing in Psychology: A description of the current situation in Germany

This paper reviews the current publication situation in the German field of psychology from an author’s viewpoint and examines the authors’ acceptance regarding open access journals. The review is based on the answers of 28 authors to a questionnaire on official statistics about psychological journals and on information obtained from journal editors. The results show that accessibility to journals does not pose problems to authors in Germany. The authors are clearly oriented towards the Anglo-American branch of scientific psychology, writing mostly in the English language and submitting their manuscripts to international journals. The whole publication process takes rather long but could be substantially quicker if the publication lag was abbreviated. Most of the authors appreciate the general idea of open access journals but see serious challenges that need to be overcome when a new journal is to be established. The circumstances under which a new psychological open access journal could be successful are briefly discussed.