Our journal accepts original empirical (qualitative and quantitative, systematic and meta reviews) and theoretical contributions that significantly advance the knowledge in the field of psychology and its various subdisciplines.
Originality and Ownership of Work
Before submitting to this journal, the following criteria need to be met:
- The manuscript is original – that is, it has not been published in another journal or other outlet that may compromise its Creative Commons copyright.
- The manuscript is not currently submitted to and/or under consideration at another journal or alternative outlet.
- All authors have consented to its submission to the journal. All authors agree with providing additional information about them (e.g., their emails, affiliations).
- The authors are legally entitled to submit the manuscript and grant us the rights to publish it open access following the Create Commons (CC-by) licenses.
- Permission to use any potential third-party materials was obtained. The authors agree to attach documentation of this permission to your submission or to provide it when requested.
- All information in the manuscript is correct and accurate and complies with the field’s highest ethical and scientific standards.
- All information and data were obtained legally and comply with the laws and regulations of the authors’ countries and the U.K.
- All authors agree that their names, affiliations, and contact details may be published on our journal and third-party websites.
- The authors acknowledge the contributions of other scholars or entities through citations whenever applicable.
In addition, the authors agree with our terms of use and service by submitting their work for consideration.
Format
Length
The standard word limit for empirical submissions (“research articles”) is 5,000, including the abstract but excluding the references, tables, and figures. The word limit for short paper (“research reports”) is 2,000, including the abstract but excluding the references, tables, and figures. For review papers, the word limit is 10,000, including the abstract but excluding the references, tables, and figures. Authors can request waivers to this policy under special circumstances (by contacting our support). Commentaries have a limit of 2,000 words. There is no word limit for submissions introducing new methods, statistical libraries, or similar.
Format and Reference Style
For empirical articles, authors are expected to follow the structure of introduction, methods, results, discussion, and, optionally, conclusions. The text should have double spacing, and the font size should be 11 or 12. Submissions should be formatted following APA7.
Abstract
Each contribution should include an abstract of no more than 200 words.
For Empirical Papers
Open Science Requirements
We follow the Guidelines for Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP). Before submmiting, authors should familiarize themselves with the different requirements outlined bleow (click on tabs for detailed information).
All data, program code and other methods must be appropriately cited. Such materials are recognized as original intellectual contributions and afforded recognition through citation.
a. All data sets and program code used in a publication must be cited in the text and listed in the reference section References for data sets and program code must include a persistent identifier, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
b. Persistent identifiers ensure future access to unique published digital objects, such as a text or data set. Persistent identifiers are assigned to data sets by digital archives, such as institutional repositories and partners in the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS).
c. Data set citation example: Campbell, Angus, and Robert L. Kahn. American National Election Study, 1948. ICPSR07218-v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1999. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07218.v3
You can find information on how to create a doi for your datasets in a few seconds: https://help.osf.io/article/220-create-dois
The policy of the advances.in/psychology is to publish papers only if the data, methods used in the analysis, and materials used to conduct the research are clearly and precisely documented and are maximally available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure.
- Authors reusing data available from public repositories must provide program code, scripts for statistical packages, and other documentation sufficient to allow an informed researcher to precisely reproduce all published results.
- Authors using original data must
a. make the data available at a trusted digital repository (Note: If all data required to reproduce the reported analyses appears in the article text, tables, and figures then it does not also need to be posted to a repository.)
b. include all variables, treatment conditions, and observations described in the manuscript
c. provide a full account of the procedures used to collect, preprocess, clean, or generate the data
d. provide program code, scripts, codebooks, and other documentation sufficient to precisely reproduce all published results
e. provide research materials and description of procedures necessary to conduct an independent replication of the research. - In rare cases, despite authors’ best efforts, some or all data or materials cannot be shared for legal or ethical reasons. In such cases, authors must inform the editors at the time of submission. This will be taken into account during the review process. Authors are encouraged to anticipate data and material sharing at the beginning of their projects to provide for these circumstances. It is understood that in some cases access will be provided under restrictions to protect confidential or proprietary information. Editors may grant exceptions to data and material access requirements provided authors:
a. explain the restrictions on the dataset or materials and how they preclude public access.
b. provide a public description of the steps others should follow to request access to the data or materials.
c. provide software and other documentation that will precisely reproduce all published results.
d. provide access to all data and materials for which the constraints do not apply. - Data, program code, research materials, and other documentation of the research process should be made available through a trusted digital repository. Trusted repositories adhere to policies that make data discoverable, accessible, usable, and preserved for the long term. Trusted repositories also assign unique and persistent identifiers. For example these services are offered by partners in the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS) and most institutional repositories. Author maintained websites are not compliant with this requirement.
a. Dissemination of these materials may be delayed until publication. Under exceptional circumstances, editors may grant an embargo of the public release of data for at most one year after publication.
b. Articles accepted for publication will not be assigned a publication date until the above conditions have been met. Authors are responsible for ensuring that their articles continue to meet these conditions. Failure to do so may lead to an editorial expression of concern or retraction of the article.
The policy of advances.in/psychology is to publish papers where authors follow standards for disclosing key aspects of the research design and data analysis. Authors are required to review the standards available for many research applications from http://www.equator-network.org/ and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications. At manuscript submission, authors must confirm that they reviewed the standards, report whether any standards were relevant for the research application, and confirm that they followed those standards in the manuscript.
The policy of advances.in/psychology is to publish papers where authors indicate whether the conducted research was preregistered in an independent, institutional registry (e.g., http://clinicaltrials.gov/, http://socialscienceregistry.org/, http://osf.io/, http://egap.org/design-registration/, http://ridie.3ieimpact.org/). Preregistration of studies involves registering the study design, variables, and treatment conditions prior to conducting the research.
- Authors must, in acknowledgments or the first footnote, indicate if they did or did not preregister the research in an independent, institutional registry.
- If an author did preregister the research, the author must confirm that the study was registered prior to conducting the research. A link to the preregistration in an institutional registry must be made available to the journal prior to publication. The journal, or an entity acting on behalf of the journal, will verify that preregistration adheres to the specifications for preregistration and then provide certification of the preregistration in the article.
The policy of advances.in/psychology is to publish papers where authors indicate whether or not the conducted research was preregistered with an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry (e.g., http://clinicaltrials.gov/, http://socialscienceregistry.org/, http://osf.io/, http://egap.org/design-registration/, http://ridie.3ieimpact.org/). Preregistration of studies involves registering the study design, variables, and treatment conditions. Including an analysis plan involves specification of sequence of analyses or the statistical model that will be reported.
- Authors must, in acknowledgments or the first footnote, indicate if they did or did not preregister the research with or without an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry.
- If an author did preregister the research with an analysis plan, the author must:
a. confirm in the text that the study was registered prior to conducting the research with links to the time-stamped preregistrations at the institutional registry, and that the preregistration adheres to the disclosure requirements of the institutional registry or those required for the preregistered badge with analysis plans maintained by the Center for Open Science.
b. Report all pre-registered analyses in the text, or, if there were changes in the analysis plan following preregistration, those changes must be disclosed with explanation for the changes.
c. Clearly distinguish in text analyses that were preregistered from those that were not, such as having separate sections in the results for confirmatory and exploratory analyses.
The policy of the advances.in/psychology is to encourage submission of replication studies, particularly of research published in this journal.
Sample Size
If relevant, authors are asked to justify how the sample size was determined in the Methods section (e.g., through a power analysis).
Data Exclusions
Authors are asked to specify any data exclusions made and whether other variables are available in the dataset that were not analyzed for the present research.
Statistical Reporting
As a standard, all estimates should be presented with two decimals, except for estimates of statistical significance (e.g., p-values) that should be presented with three digits. Points should be used instead of commas to indicate decimals (e.g., b = 1.22). Exact p-values (e.g., p = .002) rather than cutoffs (e.g., p < .01) should be presented. The authors are asked to present 95% confidence intervals for means and effect sizes where relevant and feasible.
Supplementary Materials
Authors are encouraged to present additional information that may interest some readers, such as extra analyses, figures and tables, and datasets in an online repository such as www.osf.io. The authors should link to this repository in the method section of their manuscript.
In most cases, supplementary Materials should be used instead of appendices.
Research Ethics Statement
All research is expected to comply with the ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association. If the manuscript involves research with human or non-human animal subjects, the authors should specify in the Methods section the institutional review board that reviewed the study and the number of the review (e.g., “The institutional review board of the University of Soverfield approved the present research (Nr. 22454433)”). If an institutional review board is unavailable to the authors, they should specify how national and international ethical standards were adhered to. At a minimum, informed consent needs to be obtained from human research subjects. The authors should confirm this by adding the following or similar sentence to the manuscript (“Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to participation.”) or explain exceptions to this standard when applicable.
Funding and/or Conflict of Interest
Research conflicts of interest occur when financial or other factors affect an investigator’s professional judgement in conducting or reporting research. When asked about it in the submission system, the authors need to specify any potential funding and conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
When asked about it in the submission system, the authors can acknowledge people or institutions who helped realize the work presented in the manuscript but who do not qualify as co-authors.
Authorship and Author Contributions
advances.in/psychology adopts the definitions and requirements of authorship from McKnutt et al. (2018) in PNAS:
“Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; AND to have approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author’s contribution to the study); AND to have agreed both to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.”
Authors should specify their contributions to the submitted work using their initials in the relevant field in the submission systems. For instance, in the case of an experiment, this section could read as:
“K.T., P.J., and D.R. designed the study. K.T. collected the data. P.J. and F.D. analyzed the data and wrote up the results. K.T. and P.J. drafted the introduction, methods, and discussion sections. All authors provided critical revisions.”
Tables and Figures
Tables and figures need to be numbered in the order that they are referred to in the text. The authors should present tables and figures right after they were first mentioned in the manuscript (this option is preferable as it facilitates the reviewers’ work) or after the reference list. The authors must ensure that tables and figures are sufficiently described with titles and captions and that figures are presented in a high resolution (e.g., 600 dpi) or a lossless format. We may adjust, change, or request a different version of the figure image during production.
All information provided in the figures should be in English. Authors are encouraged to present the exact statistical results in the figures. If this is not possible, they can use characters to specify the statistical significance (e.g., *, **, or ***) of a comparison or similar. In this case, they need to explain the use of the symbols in the figure note (e.g., *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001).
Constraints on Generality Section
Every empirical research using inferential statistics must be understood in light of its samples and methods and the population it aims to generalize to. Therefore, we encourage authors to add a “Constraints on Generality” section to their discussion. There they can define the target population for their statistical inferences and discuss to what extent their sample warrants such a generalization. Other limitations (including for work that does not use inferential statistics) may also be addressed in this section. More information can be found here.
Double-blind Review
Due to the strong biases in single-blind review favoring authors with high status or from institutions with high status, we practice a double-blind review in this journal. Please make sure that author credentials do not appear in the manuscript or any other submitted material. Also make sure that links to pre-registration or supplementary data are anonymized and do not track IP numbers.
Revisions
When submitting a revision, authors are asked to:
- Submit a manuscript with anonymized tracked changes that allow the editor and reviewers to evaluate the revisions quickly. You can learn how to anonymize tracked changes here.
- Submit an anonymized revision letter that presents a point-by-point list showing how each of the reviewers’ and editor’s comments was addressed.
