Introducing the BPS Occupational Digest

This is a place for news, reviews and reports on how psychology matters in the workplace. It's intended for HR professionals, occupational psychologists, managers, consultants, students or anyone who is curious about how people operate at work and ideas on how to improve that.

This blog is produced by the British Psychological Society to promote psychology and make it more accessible. It builds on the successes of its inspiration the BPS Research Digest and magazine The Psychologist. The Occupational Digest is funded by the Division of Occupational Psychology, the part of the Society that looks after that profession in the UK.

We have a lot of ideas on how to make this site valuable, accessible, and distinctive. Our initial priority will be summary reports of research findings, following the format that made the Research Digest such a success. Over the coming months, we will be looking to you to help us understand what is most useful - so we can do more of it! One way to do this is to use the comments function for this, or any post: acess this by clicking where it says 0 comments (or 1, or 14) at the bottom of the post. Alternatively you may contact me directly by email on alex [dot] fradera [at] gmail [dot] com.

I'm your editor, Alex Fradera, and I look forward to the conversation we're about to start.

Two month review: how are you finding the Occupational Digest?

It's coming up to two months since the Occupational Digest was born, which still makes us a young pup in the blogosphere. But it's time enough to have given you a flavour of what it's about, and the perfect time for us to hear what you think about it.

To date we've covered emotional abilities, how arrogant people perform, wellbeing breaks at work, weight and pay, and much more - check the archives in the right-hand sidebar for more. How have you found our coverage, in terms of detail, breadth, style, or any other consideration?

Are there new findings in the psychology of work that you'd like to see covered in the Digest?

If you're a subscriber to the email digest, how have you enjoyed that service?

Later in the year we will start to roll out features to complement our focus on reporting evidence based insights in the psychology of the workplace. What would you be keen to see arriving on the blog?

As always, please feel free to post comments in this post or email me directly at alex dot fradera at gmail dot com. We'd love to get your views.

Organizational Psychology Review and open access to articles

In the last post we looked at a study from a brand new journal, Organizational Psychology Review. I've read the opening sally from the editorial team and it gives a good picture of the purpose of the journal. The intent is to open a space for articles that attempt to synthesise specific findings to get a bigger picture. They hope this will allow practice "to move beyond an ill-understood ‘bag of tricks’ to better informed actions". This is firmly in line with what the Occupational Digest is all about, so I'm very happy to be adding this to my list of journals to follow.

It's worth emphasising that the journal will be accessible without charge for the next three years (until December 2013). To gain access you need to register but this is fairly straightforward.

I should also thank the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology for opening access to their article on Job Demands - this is a really useful way to raise awareness of the good work being published, and I encourage others to do likewise (and tell me!). If you are a publisher and you would like your articles featured on the Occupational Digest, do get in touch as enthusiasm is contagious.