Submission guidelines

Submissions are handled only through our Editorial Manager platform, and the only official journal website is through APA. If you believe you interacted with a fraudulent website for this journal, please email APA Journalsopens in new window. Review our resource for authors for more information on identifying predatory journals.

To submit to the Editorial Office of William R. Corbin, PhD, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission portal Microsoft Word (.docx) or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file

All new manuscripts submitted should be prepared according to the 7^th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. APA Style and Grammar Guidelines for the 7^th edition are available.

Please note that the author affiliation in the byline identifies where the author(s) worked (or studied) when the work was conducted. Include a dual affiliation only if two institutions contributed substantial support to the study. If the affiliation has changed since the work was completed, give the current affiliation in the author note (see section 2.6 of the Publication Manual). Affiliation and contact information are not updated postpublication.

Submit Manuscriptopens in new window

General correspondence may be directed to the editor’s office.

William R. Corbin, PhD
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University
950 S. McAllister Avenue
Mailcode: 1104
Tempe, AZ 85287-1104
Email

Every attempt will be made to review manuscripts rapidly and to keep publication lag at a minimum. The opinions and statements published are the responsibility of the authors, and such opinions and statements do not necessarily reflect the policies of the publisher or of Division 50 or the views of the editor.

In addition to addresses and phone numbers, please supply electronic mail addresses and fax numbers, if available, for potential use by the editorial office and later by the production office.

Psychology of Addictive Behaviors is using a software system to screen submitted content for similarity with other published content. The system compares the initial version of each submitted manuscript against a database of 40+ million scholarly documents, as well as content appearing on the open web. This allows APA to check submissions for potential overlap with material previously published in scholarly journals (e.g., lifted or republished material).

Each issue of Psychology of Addictive Behavior will highlight one manuscript with the designation as an “Editor’s Choice” paper. Selection is based on the recommendations of the editor, who considers the paper’s potential impact to the field, the distinction of expanding the contributors to, or the focus of, our science, or its discussion of an important future direction for science.

All titles and degrees should be omitted from authors' names. All manuscripts should include the following footnote typed on a separate sheet in APA format: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to [give the author's full name and mailing address].

Psychology of Addictive Behaviors has firm page limitations on manuscripts. A full-length manuscript should contain no more than 40 pages inclusive of title page, abstract, text, references, tables, figures, and appendices. A brief report is 10 pages, excluding title page, abstract, author note, references, figures, and tables. Margins of 1 inch and font size of 12 point must be employed, per APA style.

Commentaries are also accepted in response to a single article recently published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. The primary purpose would be to provide a meaningful insight, concern, alternative interpretation, clarification, or critical analysis.

Commentaries should not exceed 5 pages, excluding title page, abstract, author note, references, figures, and tables. Margins of 1 inch and font size of 12 point must be employed, per APA style. The title of a Brief Comment should include a subtitle reflecting the actual title and year of publication of the article that engendered the comment. Commentaries should be submitted no later than 6 months after publication of the original article.

In addition to full-length research papers and brief reports reporting novel findings, the journal publishes registered reports, negative findings, replications, commentaries, and reviews. Replication submissions should include “A Replication of XX Study” in the subtitle of the manuscript as well as in the abstract. Preregistration of replication studies is strongly recommended, but not required.

Registered reports require a two-step review process.

The first step is the submission of the registration manuscript. This is a partial manuscript that includes hypotheses, rationale for the study, experimental design, and methods. The partial manuscript will be reviewed for significance and methodological approach.

If the partial manuscript is accepted this amounts to provisional acceptance of the full report regardless of the outcome of the study. The full manuscript will receive rapid editorial review, for adherence to the preregistered design, and expedited production for publication in the journal.

All articles can be published as full-length articles or as brief reports. A registered report should contain no more than 40 pages inclusive of title page, abstract, text, references, tables, figures, and appendices. A brief report is 10 pages, excluding title page, abstract, author note, references, figures, and tables. Margins of 1 inch and font size of 12 point must be employed, per APA style.

The journal has partnered with the Peer Community In Registered Reportsopens in new window (PCI-RR) as an “interested” journal to encourage the publication of registered reports.

Psychology of Addictive Behaviors may offer to review or publish any Stage 1 or Stage 2 Registered Reports within the journal’s disciplinary scope that receives in-principle PCI RR acceptance or recommendation. Eligible registered reports will be subject to Psychology of Addictive Behaviors ’s additional criteria. Further details are available on PCI RR’s websiteopens in new window .

Articles are eligible for open science badges recognizing publicly available data, materials, and/or preregistered plans and analyses. These badges are awarded on a self-disclosure basis.

At submission, authors must confirm that criteria have been fulfilled in a signed badge disclosure form (PDF, 33KB)opens in new window that must be submitted as supplemental material. If the editorial team confirms that all criteria have been met, the form will then be published with the article as supplemental material.

Authors should also note their eligibility for the badge(s) in the cover letter.

For all badges, items must be made available on an open-access repository with a persistent identifier in a format that is time-stamped, immutable, and permanent. For the preregistered badge, this is an institutional registration system.

Data and materials must be made available under an open license allowing others to copy, share, and use the data, with attribution and copyright as applicable.

Open Data:
All data necessary to reproduce the reported results that are digitally shareable are made publicly available. Information necessary for replication (e.g., codebooks or metadata) must be included.

Open Data; Protected Access:
A Protected Access (PA) notation may be added to open data badges if sensitive, personal data are available only from an approved third-party repository that manages access to data to qualified researchers through a documented process. To be eligible for an open data badge with such a notation, the repository must publicly describe the steps necessary to obtain the data and detailed data documentation (e.g. variable names and allowed values) must be made available publicly. Manuscripts with data deposited in ICPSR's database are eligible for this badge.

Open Materials:
All materials necessary to reproduce the reported results that are digitally shareable, along with descriptions of non-digital materials necessary for replication, are made publicly available.

Preregistered:
At least one study's design has been preregistered with descriptions of (a) the research design and study materials, including the planned sample size; (b) the motivating research question or hypothesis; (c) the outcome variable(s); and (d) the predictor variables, including controls, covariates, and independent variables. Results must be fully disclosed. As long as they are distinguished from other results in the article, results from analyses that were not preregistered may be reported in the article.

Preregistered+Analysis Plan:
At least one study's design has been preregistered along with an analysis plan for the research — and results are recorded according to that plan.

Note that it may not be possible to preregister a study or to share data and materials. Applying for open science badges is optional.

As of March 1, 2020 registration will be required for all clinical trials (studies designed to examine the efficacy or effectiveness of a treatment or preventive intervention) reporting primary outcome findings. Prospective registration (i.e., pre-registration) is required if recruitment began on or after March 1, 2020. Retrospective registration will be accepted only if recruitment began before this date.

Clinical trials must be registered at ClinicalTrials.gov or at another recognized registry. A complete list of acceptable trial registries can be found via the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. Differences between registered and reported methods or outcomes must be explained clearly and transparently in the manuscript.

Trial protocols, including statistical analysis plans, must be made available to readers. Both published and unpublished protocols are acceptable. Published protocols should be cited in the manuscript. Unpublished protocols may be provided in online-only supplements or made available by request.

Use of the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Intervention Trials (SPIRIT) checklist is recommended.

For secondary analyses of existing data sets, where primary analyses have already been published (or are in press), registration is not required. For such analyses, registration status must be made transparent in the manuscript, and authors must follow guidelines about data transparency provided below. The article(s) reporting the primary outcomes, and the findings, must be cited in the manuscript.

Manuscripts reporting long-term outcomes of studies for which the primary outcomes have already been published also will not require registration, but authors must follow the guidelines above for secondary analyses.

For studies that are not clinical trials, registration is encouraged, but not required.

Authors must note registration status in their cover letter, in the manuscript, and in the submission portal.

In order to maintain consistency and fairness in the review process and in the reporting of scientific findings, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors requires that ALL manuscripts conform to Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) and Meta-Analysis Reporting Standards (MARS) as described in Applebaum et al. (2018):

Applebaum, Cooper, Kline, Mayo-Wilson, Nezu, & Rao (2018). Journal Article Reporting Standards for Quantitative Research in Psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board Task Force Reportopens in new window. American Psychologist, 73, 3-25.

The editorial team will use consistency with the JARS/MARS guidelines as a review criterion, and manuscripts may be rejected if guidelines are not followed.

When deviating from JARS/MARS guidelines, authors must provide the rationale in their cover letter and describe the limitations of doing so in their manuscript. We also recommend checking reporting guidelines from the Equator Networkopens in new window for your particular study design.

Manuscripts must also report (1) how the sample size was determined, (2) all data exclusions, (3) all manipulations, and (4) all study measures. See Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn (2012) for details; include the following statement in the Method section:

• We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study.

The title of a manuscript should be accurate, fully explanatory, and preferably no longer than 12 words.

If the paper reports a randomized clinical trial (RCT), this should be indicated in the title. Note that JARS criteria must be used for reporting purposes.

All manuscripts must include an abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page. After the abstract, please supply up to five keywords or brief phrases.

Manuscripts published in the Psychology of Addictive Behaviors will include a structured abstract of up to 250 words.

For studies that report randomized clinical trials or meta-analyses, the abstract also must be consistent with the guidelines set forth by JARS or MARS guidelines, respectively. Thus, in preparing a manuscript, please ensure that it is consistent with the guidelines stated below.

Please include an abstract of up to 250 words, presented in paragraph form.

The abstract should be typed on a separate page (page 2 of the manuscript), and must include each of the following sections:

• Objective: A brief statement of the purpose of the study.
• Method: A detailed summary of the participants (N, age, gender, ethnicity) as well as descriptions of the study design, measures (including names of measures), and procedures.
• Results: A detailed summary of the primary findings that clearly articulate comparison groups (if relevant), and that indicate significance or confidence intervals for the main findings.
• Conclusions: A description of the research and clinical implications of the findings.

The APA Publication Manual (7th ed.opens in new window) stipulates that "authorship encompasses…not only persons who do the writing but also those who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study." In the spirit of transparency and openness, this journal has adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomyopens in new window (CRediT) to describe each author's individual contributions to the work. CRediT offers authors the opportunity to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to a manuscript.

Submitting authors will be prompted to select one or more contributor roles for each author at initial submission. All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before submission. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, an Author Contributions Statement will be generated during the typesetting process and published in the author note of the final article. It is not necessary for authors to provide a written Author Contributions Statement upon submission.

CRediT includes 14 contributor roles, as described below:

• Conceptualization: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
• Data curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.
• Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
• Funding acquisition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
• Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
• Methodology: Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
• Project administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
• Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
• Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
• Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
• Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
• Visualization: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
• Writing—original draft: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
• Writing—review and editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision—including pre- or post-publication stages.

Authors can claim credit for more than one contributor role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one author. Not all roles will be applicable to any particular scholarly work.

Authors submitting manuscripts to Psychology of Addictive Behaviors are required to provide 2–3 brief sentences regarding the public health significance of their paper. This description should be included within the manuscript on the abstract/keywords page. It should be written in language that is easily understood by both professionals and members of the lay public.

When an accepted paper is published, these sentences will be used in dissemination by the journal, including e-mail alerts, the Society of Addiction Psychologyopens in new window website, and on social media (Twitter and Facebook). This new policy is in keeping with efforts to increase dissemination and usage by larger and diverse audiences.

Examples include the following:

• "This study indicates that vaping cannabis is increasing among adolescents and adolescent with lower perceptions of risk were more likely to use cannabis."
• "This review found that mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly being studied as a primary treatment for alcohol and other substance use disorders. The review also found that mindfulness-based interventions are as effective as other treatments."
• "This study highlights the importance of including measures of other substances, including alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and other prescription and illicit drugs, in studies examining opioid use disorder and chronic pain."

To be maximally useful, these statements of public health significance should not simply be sentences lifted directly out of the manuscript.

Prior to final acceptance and publication, all public health significance statements will be carefully reviewed to make sure they meet these standards. Authors will be expected to revise statements as necessary.

APA endorses the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines by a community working group in conjunction with the Center for Open Science (Nosek et al. 2015opens in new window). Empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to Psychology of Addictive Behaviors must meet the “disclosure” level for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting and the “requirement” level for data citation and design and analysis transparency. Authors should include a subsection in the Method section titled “Transparency and Openness.” This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the TOP guidelines. For example:

• We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study, and we follow JARS (Kazak, 2018). All data, analysis code, and research materials are available at [stable link to repository]. Data were analyzed using R, version 4.0.0 (R Core Team, 2020) and the package ggplot, version 3.2.1 (Wickham, 2016). This study’s design and its analysis were not pre-registered.

In order to reduce the likelihood of duplicate or piecemeal publication, authors are required to provide, in their cover letter, a list of published, in press, and under review studies that come from the same dataset as the one in the submitted manuscript, as well as a narrative description of how the submitted manuscript differs from the others.

This narrative description should include how the manuscript differs (or does not) in terms of research question and variables studied.

If requesting masked review (see below), then authors also are required to submit a masked version of the narrative description that can be provided to reviewers. Please add this as an appendix table on the last page of the submitted manuscript. Please base your description on the following examples, edited according to your specific data circumstances.

Narrative example: Multiple uses of data collected from the same sample

• The data reported in this manuscript have been previously published and/or were collected as part of a larger data collection (at one or more points in time). Findings from the data collection have been reported in separate manuscripts. MS 1 (published) focuses on variables 1, 2, and 3; while MS 2 (in press) focuses on variables 4, 5, and 6. MS 3 (the current manuscript) focuses on variables 8, 9, and 15. MS 4 (soon to be submitted) will focus on variables 10, 12, and 14.

Narrative example: Publicly available dataset

• The data reported in this manuscript were obtained from publicly available data, [name of project, along with website link to project description]. A bibliography of journal articles, working papers, conference presentations, and dissertations using the [name of project] is available at [website link to bibliography list]. The variables and relationships examined in the present article have not been examined in any previous or current articles, or to the best of our knowledge in any papers that will be under review soon. [Alternatively, clarify any overlap of variables, as done in the narrative example above].

Upon submission of the manuscript, authors will be required to attest to the provision of the required information described above.

Finally, upon acceptance of a manuscript, authors will be required to provide, as part of the author note, a list of related published papers that come from the same dataset, unless such papers are clearly described and referenced in the manuscript (specifically noting that findings come from the same dataset).

Authors must state whether data and study materials are posted to a trusted repository and, if so, how to access them. Recommended repositories include APA’s repositoryopens in new window on the Open Science Framework (OSF), or authors can access a full list of other recommended repositoriesopens in new window. 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.

In a subsection titled “Transparency and Openness” at the end of the Method section, specify whether and where the data and material will be available or include a statement noting that they are not available. For submissions with quantitative or simulation analytic methods, state whether the study analysis code is posted to a trusted repository, and, if so, how to access it.

For example: 

• All data have been made publicly available at the [trusted repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].
• Materials and analysis code for this study are available by emailing the corresponding author. 
• Materials and analysis code for this study are not available. 
• The code behind this analysis/simulation has been made publicly available at the [trusted repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].

Preregistration of studies and specific hypotheses can be a useful tool for making strong theoretical claims. Likewise, preregistration of analysis plans can be useful for distinguishing confirmatory and exploratory analyses. Investigators are encouraged to preregister their studies and analysis plans prior to conducting their research via a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSFopens in new window, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network). There are many available templates; for example, APA, the British Psychological Society, and the German Psychological Society partnered with the Leibniz Institute for Psychology and Center for Open Science to create Preregistration Standards for Quantitative Research in Psychology (Bosnjak et al., 2022).

Articles must state whether or not any work was preregistered and, if so, where to access the preregistration. If any aspect of the study is preregistered, include the registry link in the method section note.

For example: 

• This study’s design was preregistered prospectively, before data were collected; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI]. 
• This study’s design and hypotheses were preregistered after data had been collected but before analyses were undertaken; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI]. 
• This study’s analysis plan was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI]. 
• This study was not preregistered.

If authors would like to have masked review of their manuscripts, then the authors must also submit a title page that shows the title of the manuscript, the authors' byline names and institutional affiliations in order of authorship, and the date the manuscript is submitted.

The title page must also include an author note that identifies each author's departmental affiliation at the time the reported research was conducted, any funding or other acknowledgments, details of any prior dissemination of the ideas and data appearing in the manuscript, and one current address that will provide a point of contact for the interested reader.

The first page of the manuscript should omit the authors' names and affiliations but should include the title of the manuscript and the date it is submitted.

It is the authors' responsibility to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors' identity, including grant numbers, names of institutions providing IRB approval, self-citations, and links to online repositories for data, materials, code, or preregistrations (e.g., Create a View-only Link for a Projectopens in new window).

Please ensure that the final version for production includes a byline and full author note for typesetting.

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7^th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual). APA Style and Grammar Guidelines for the 7^th edition are available.

In particular, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors recommends against the use of terminology that can stigmatize people who use alcohol, drugs, other addictive substances or who have an addictive behavior. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors is in agreement with the consensus statement on Addiction Terminology developed by the International Society of Addiction Journal Editorsopens in new window.

All empirical manuscripts are required to report on sex and gender, and race and ethnicity of the included samples. Studies that are limited by only including predominantly non-Hispanic and white participants need to acknowledge this limitation and note that findings may not generalize to non-White participants. Explicitly describing the study as relevant to primarily white participants could also be captured by the title of the manuscript and/or reflected in the abstract. The examination of race and ethnicity should not be reified as a biological factor and authors should incorporate and explicitly discuss how race and ethnicity may be proxy measures for systemic racism, as well as cultural, social, environmental, economic, and structural factors. For more information please see these standards for publishing on racial health inequalitiesopens in new window (Boyd, Lindo, Weeks, & McLemore, 2020).

Review APA's Journal Manuscript Preparation Guidelines before submitting your article.

Double-space all copy. Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Manual. Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website.

Authors who feel that their manuscript may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing support prior to submission are encouraged to seek out such services at their host institutions, engage with colleagues and subject matter experts, and/or consider several vendors that offer discounts to APA authors.

Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service. Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.

APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the APA PsycArticles^® database.

List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the references section.

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review, 126(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126opens in new window

Authored book

Brown, L. S. (2018). Feminist therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000092-000opens in new window

Chapter in an edited book

Balsam, K. F., Martell, C. R., Jones. K. P., Safren, S. A. (2019). Affirmative cognitive behavior therapy with sexual and gender minority people. In G. Y. Iwamasa & P. A. Hays (Eds.), Culturally responsive cognitive behavior therapy: Practice and supervision (2nd ed., pp. 287–314). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000119-012opens in new window

Data set citation

Alegria, M., Jackson, J. S., Kessler, R. C., & Takeuchi, D. (2016). Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001–2003 [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8opens in new window

Software/Code citation

Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package.  Journal of Statistical Software, 36(3), 1–48. https://www.jstatsoft.org/v36/i03/opens in new window

Wickham, H. et al., (2019). Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43), 1686, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686opens in new window

All data, program code, and other methods must be appropriately cited in the text and listed in the references section.

Tables should adhere to APA Styleopens in new window. Use Word’s Insert Table function to create tables, and do not insert tabs or extra spaces to align columns as this will create problems when the table is typeset.

Preferred formats for graphics files are TIFF and JPG, and preferred format for vector-based files is EPS. Graphics downloaded or saved from web pages are not acceptable for publication. Multipanel figures (i.e., figures with parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.) should be assembled into one file. When possible, please place symbol legends below the figure instead of to the side.

Resolution 

• All color line art and halftones: 300 DPI 
• Black and white line tone and gray halftone images: 600 DPI 

Line weights 

• Adobe Photoshop images 
• Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels 
• Grayscale images: 4 pixels 
• Adobe Illustrator Images 
• Stroke weight: 0.5 points 

APA offers authors the option to publish their figures online in color without the costs associated with print publication of color figures.

The same caption will appear on both the online (color) and print (black and white) versions. To ensure that the figure can be understood in both formats, authors should add alternative wording (e.g., “the red (dark gray) bars represent”) as needed.

Color figure fees

For authors who prefer their figures to be published in color both in print and online, original color figures can be printed in color at the editor's and publisher's discretion provided the author agrees to pay: 

• $900 for one figure 
• An additional $600 for the second figure 
• An additional $450 for each subsequent figure

We strongly encourage you to use MathType (third-party software) or Equation Editor 3.0 (built into pre-2007 versions of Word) to construct your equations, rather than the equation support that is built into Word 2007 and Word 2010. Equations composed with the built-in Word 2007/Word 2010 equation support are converted to low-resolution graphics when they enter the production process and must be rekeyed by the typesetter, which may introduce errors.

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

• Go to the Text section of the Insert tab and select Object.
• Select MathType or Equation Editor 3.0 in the drop-down menu.

If you have an equation that has already been produced using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and you have access to the full version of MathType 6.5 or later, you can convert this equation to MathType by clicking on MathType Insert Equation. Copy the equation from Microsoft Word and paste it into the MathType box. Verify that your equation is correct, click File, and then click Update. Your equation has now been inserted into your Word file as a MathType Equation.

Use Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType only for equations or for formulas that cannot be produced as Word text using the Times or Symbol font.

Because altering computer code in any way (e.g., indents, line spacing, line breaks, page breaks) during the typesetting process could alter its meaning, we treat computer code differently from the rest of the article in the production process. Supply separate files for computer code.

In online supplemental material

Runnable source code should be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit supplementing your article with online material.

In the text of the article

If authors would like to include code in the text of the published article, submit a separate file with your code exactly as it should appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. An image will be made of each segment of code in your article that exceeds 40 characters in length. (Shorter snippets of code that appear in text will be typeset in Courier New and run in with the rest of the text.) If an appendix contains a mix of code and explanatory text, please submit a file that contains the entire appendix, with the code keyed in 8-point Courier New.

Authors of accepted papers must obtain and provide to the editor on final acceptance all necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials (or portions thereof), photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments).

On advice of counsel, APA may decline to publish any image whose copyright status is unknown.

• Download Permissions Alert Form (PDF, 13KB)opens in new window

APA holds policies that apply to all journals published. These include policies on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors; author name changes after publication; the use of generative artificial intelligence; funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures; duplicate publication; data publication and reuse; and preprints. Please also refer to individual journal submission guidance for specific practices and requirements for manuscript submission.

A key convention in the publication of research is the peer review process, in which the quality and potential contribution of each manuscript is evaluated by one's peers in the scientific community. Like other scientific journals, APA journals utilize a peer review process to guide manuscript selection and publication decisions.

In light of changing patterns of scientific knowledge dissemination, APA requires authors to provide information on prior dissemination of the data and narrative interpretations of the data/research appearing in the manuscript (e.g., if some or all were presented at a conference or meeting, posted on a listserv, shared on a website, including academic social networks like ResearchGate, etc.). This information (2–4 sentences) must be provided as part of the author note.

APA policy prohibits an author from submitting the same manuscript for concurrent consideration by two or more publications.

APA requires authors to reveal any possible conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of research (e.g., financial interests in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research).

APA Journals aims to address systemic inequities and bias, promote equitable opportunities for researchers, and foster an inclusive environment within the psychological research and scholarly publishing communities, representative of the wide array of people that psychology consists of and serves. Please refer to individual journal submission guidance for specific EDI practices and requirements for manuscript submission.

The APA Journals™ Program is committed to publishing transparent, rigorous research; improving reproducibility in science; and aiding research discovery. Open science practices vary across subfields and per editor discretion, and APA Publishing supports all efforts to improve openness and transparency, especially as they improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. Please refer to individual journal submission guidance for specific OS practices and requirements for manuscript submission.

The APA Journals Office supports authors’ choices on how to publish their work. We are committed to offering options that we believe comply with most funder and institutional requirements and support both self-archiving (“green”) and APC (paid for via an article processing charge and also known as “gold”) Open Access options. Submitting a manuscript for peer review is free of charge.

APA’s current policies on generative AI include:

• When a generative AI model is used in the drafting of a manuscript for an APA publication, the use of AI must be disclosed in the methods section and cited.
• AI cannot be named as an author on an APA scholarly publication.

APA policy prohibits an author from submitting the same manuscript for concurrent consideration by two or more publications. Preprints are allowed.

Authors of accepted papers must obtain and provide on final acceptance all necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials (or portions thereof), photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments).

On advice of counsel, APA may decline to publish any image whose copyright status is unknown.

It is a violation of APA Ethical Principles to publish “as original data, data that have been previously published” (Standard 8.13).

APA Ethical Principles also state that “after research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release” (Standard 8.14).

APA expects authors to make their data available if asked during the editorial process and for at least five years after the date of publication.

If the manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author is required to sign and submit a Certification of Compliance with APA Ethical Principles (PDF, 26KB).opens in new window

See APA’s Publishing Policies page for more information on publication policies, including information on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors, author name changes after publication, the use of generative artificial intelligence, funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures, duplicate publication, data publication and reuse, and preprints.

Visit the Journals Publishing Resource Center for more resources for writing, reviewing, and editing articles for publishing in APA journals.