Publishing in an APA publication (not a journal)

[Psychadelic2012]

Is it worth it to publish in an APA "publication" (not even a journal)? I am helping someone publish their dissertation and the methodology is not only non-robust (to say the least), but the main findings are null. I am third author (first author is the author of the diss, second is their advisor). I don't know if we're going to find a peer-reviewed journal to accept it and in this subfield there is an APA publication that will basically accept any article. It will be one of my first publications, and it IS third author, but is this even worth it?

I definitely want to try for a more specialized, lower impact factor, peer-reviewed journal first. However, I'm not sure if it will be accepted.

You may know that I'm moving from an APA-accredited program to an experimental program, so I'm really only interested in pubs that will be good for an academic career. Also, this manuscript is a good reference for an in-progress project of mine that moves the line of research forward.

Thoughts?

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[cara susanna]

If they accept any article, I would say probably not. But others may disagree.

 

[Psychadelic2012]

I'll add this: I'm not sure if they accept ANY article, but I do know that ours would be published based on who is on the editorial board. So, there's that.

 

[cara susanna]

Is it peer-reviewed?

 

[Ollie123]

Are we talking a divisional newsletter or something like that?

I don't know that there is harm in publishing there, but its not likely going to be a big plus. Every little bit helps though. Without knowing details about the methodology or area I will say I'm of the view that there are enough journals these days that virtually anything can be published. Maybe not someplace good, but unless by "not robust" you mean it had an n of 9, was correlational, and you accidentally used the wrong measure, you can probably get it in somewhere. Its just a question of how much time/effort you want to invest in doing so - that's a personal matter based on what else you have going on. If you have 10 other pubs you could be working on, I wouldn't bother. If this is what you've got right now, I say go for it. The only exception would be if this is "really" bad. I'm not talking about the results, but the methods. If its something you'd be ashamed to have your name attached to then obviously I'd avoid getting involved. No study is perfect, so if this was just one with a few after-the-fact "that would have been a good idea" limitations and null results, I wouldn't worry about it. My master's had a grand total of one meaningful effect out of about 20 tests and the primary hypothesis had two directly conflicting findings in opposite directions with no viable explanation for why and I still (somehow) managed to get it published in an APA journal. If its really completely null that raises a few more challenges and you can't aim high in such a situation, but a brief report in a focused journal is not unreasonable and would look better than a newsletter.

 

[Psychadelic2012]

I'm not sure what the review process is, but I don't think it's too critical. Yes, it's a divisional publication (not a newsletter, but not a journal). I would like to aim higher. It has a good N, decent methodology--just very simple and with null findings. I'll leave it at that. I want to say more, but I am paranoid about staying anonymous. This is helpful, thanks. I have time, and the first author basically doesn't care at all, so I would really like to go down the pub list rather than aim really low. But we'll see...