Guidelines for Authors and Reviewers of Prospective Resources

In developing and reviewing prospective resources for teachers of psychology, faculty should put themselves in the role of teachers and advisors at various levels and ask themselves, “How can this information be useful to me?” and “How will this information help me become a better teacher or advisor?” To get an idea of the kinds of resources that have been developed to date, authors and reviewers can visit http://teachpsych.org/page-1603066#. Additional points are addressed below.

1.     Resources must be the original work of an author, must not contain any libelous or unlawful statements, and must not infringe on the rights of others. Resources that might meet “fair use” guidelines in a single class cannot necessarily be posted on our website because of copyright restrictions on reposting without explicit permission from the copyright holder.  This includes using material from textbook instructors’ manuals, cartoons or other images seen on the Internet or in magazines, sections of the APA Publication Manual, etc.

2.     If a prospective resource has been published elsewhere, the author must provide written permission from the initial publisher at the time the material is submitted for review.

3.     Resources should not duplicate existing teaching resources in psychology.

4.     Materials should speak to an obvious or important need of teachers and/or advisors.

5.     Resources should either have widespread appeal (to teachers of psychology at all levels—high school, college/university--including graduate assistants) or speak to the needs of a particular segment of teachers (high school teachers or graduate assistants, for example).

6.     Where appropriate, materials should be evidence-based. That is, the authors should use existing scientific literature about best practices in teaching and learning to inform the development of their resource. A short description of how the resource meets these guidelines should be included at the beginning of the resource.

7.     Resources should include clear and succinct instructions for use if these are necessary.

8.     Materials should be formatted so that they are easy for instructors to use—e.g., ready for photocopying to save instructors the time and trouble of retyping or reformatting them.

9.     Resources should be as brief as possible in order to have a broader appeal to instructors.

10.   As with other manuscripts, materials should be written clearly and in APA style, be free of grammatical and spelling errors, contain no errors of fact, and include references, if appropriate.

11.   Authors typically retain copyrights of teaching resources and give permission to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) to distribute the documents for a minimum of 4 years. (Authors will be asked to sign a publication agreement after the manuscript has been reviewed, edited, and formatted for posting on the website.)

12.   Reviewers who mark changes to the submitted manuscript should take care to disguise their identity to preserve anonymity of the review process. (In Microsoft Office, you can go to the FILE menu, Options, Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office or Authorship, and pick a username/initials that are anonymous.)

Please address any questions to the Vice President for Resources, vp-resources@teachpsych.org.