International Contacts 1968–1985

Requests of Departmental Reprints and Journal Copies

During the last century, following old customs in the scientific society, it was a common procedure within scientific departments to write to colleagues requesting copies of their presentations and/or publications of their work. This was considered a cost effective procedure for learning about new innovative research from all over the world in fields that you were interested in. Scientific journals directed towards psychology were few, and even if a published paper could provide the author with a number of reprints, it took significant time to receive them and often long after the research had been done. As an alternative, many departments provided scientific report series with pre-publications. The newly formed department of psychology, at Umeå University took this procedure during the autumn of 1966. Quite soon after (1968), the department produced a scientific report series, called Umeå Psychological Reports. The existence of the series was spread to national and international libraries and departments, the majority of these departments being psychology departments.
What we see in the present presentation is communication with researchers who were interested in receiving copies of Umeå psychological reports. The review here is mostly limited though, to a group of people consisting of professor Mats Björkman, the first professor of psychology within the new department, and two of his doctoral students. Presumably, our presentation here is quite typical also for other research groups at the department in that period.