Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement

Prior to submission, please carefully read and follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Manuscripts that do not conform to the submission guidelines may be returned without review.

Submission

Please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal.

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.

Submit Manuscript

General correspondence may be directed to:

Annie Roy-Charland
Université de Moncton
Email

The file format should be Rich Text Format (.rtf) or Microsoft Word Format (.doc). The file must exactly copy, in all respects and in a single file, the complete APA-style printed version of the manuscript.

Brief Reports will be no longer than five journal pages, so a Brief Report manuscript should not exceed 16 pages double-spaced 12 point font (including all Tables, Figures, and References). Any manuscript that exceeds this limit will be returned to the authors. Authors of a Brief Report must state that a fuller report will be provided upon request. Papers with a primary focus on psychometrics (e.g., scale development, scale validation, scale translation) should be submitted as Brief Reports.

Regular submissions should not exceed 35 pages double-spaced 12 point font (including all Tables, Figures, and References). Any manuscript that exceeds this limit will be returned to the authors.

Masked review policy

This journal has adopted a policy of masked review for all submissions. Please include with the manuscript a cover sheet, which shows the title of the manuscript, the authors' names and institutional affiliations, and the date the manuscript is submitted.

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

The first page of the manuscript should omit the authors' names, and affiliations but should include the title of the manuscript and the submission date. Footnotes containing information pertaining to the authors' identity or affiliations should be on separate pages.

Every effort should be made to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors' identity.

Manuscript language

Manuscripts may be submitted in English or French.

Author contribution statements using CRediT

The APA Publication Manual (7th ed.) 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, JOURNAL has adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (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 asked to identify the contributions of all authors at initial submission according to this taxonomy. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the CRediT designations will be published as an Author Contributions Statement in the author note of the final article. All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before 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.

Manuscript preparation

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.

Below are additional instructions regarding the preparation of display equations, computer code, and tables.

Display equations

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.

Computer code

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 your article in our production process. To that end, we request separate files for computer code.

In online supplemental material

We request that runnable source code 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 you would like to include code in the text of your published manuscript, please submit a separate file with your code exactly as you want it to appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. We will make an image 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.

Tables

Use Word's insert table function when you create tables. Using spaces or tabs in your table will create problems when the table is typeset and may result in errors.

Academic writing and English language editing services

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.

Submitting supplemental materials

APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the PsycArticles^® database. Please see Supplementing Your Article With Online Material for more details.

Abstract and keywords

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.

Public significance statements

Authors submitting manuscripts to Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science are required to provide 2–3 brief sentences regarding the public significance of the study or meta-analysis described in 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 boxed beneath the abstract for easy accessibility.

All such descriptions will also be published as part of the Table of Contents, as well as on the journal's web page.

This new policy is in keeping with efforts to increase dissemination and usage by larger and diverse audiences.

Examples of these 2–3 sentences include the following:

• "It has been suggested that when people read words, they think of the images and sensations that are linked to that word. That idea was supported by the results of this study, which showed that people seemed to think of words' visual and sensory characteristics, even though they were not required to do so."
• "Different countries have different systems of math education. The basic arithmetic concepts of adults educated in China and Canada were compared. The adults educated in China had stronger knowledge of arithmetic than did the adults educated in Canada, likely due to differences in the way math concepts are taught."
• "People tend to remember words better after reading them aloud than after reading them silently. The reasons for this production effect were examined, and results suggested that there are multiple explanations: saying words aloud seems to make them more distinctive and also seems to store them more effectively in memory."

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

They are meant to be informative and useful to any reader. They should provide a bottom-line, take-home message that is accurate and easily understood. In addition, they should be able to be translated into media-appropriate statements for use in press releases and on social media.

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

References

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/rev0000126

Authored book

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

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/10.1037/0000119-012

Figures

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.

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

Permissions

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, 37KB)

Publication policies

For full details on publication policies, including use of Artificial Intelligence tools, please see APA Publishing Policies.

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

See also APA Journals^® Internet Posting Guidelines.

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).

• Download Full Disclosure of Interests Form (PDF, 41KB)

Ethical Principles

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

In addition, APA Ethical Principles specify 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 adhere to these standards. Specifically, APA expects authors to have their data available throughout the editorial review process and for at least 5 years after the date of publication.

Authors are required to state in writing that they have complied with APA ethical standards in the treatment of their sample, human or animal, or to describe the details of treatment.

• Download Certification of Compliance With the CPA Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists Form (PDF, 109KB)

The APA Ethics Office provides the full Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct electronically on its website in HTML, PDF, and Word format. You may also request a copy by emailing or calling the APA Ethics Office (202-336-5930). You may also read "Ethical Principles," December 1992, American Psychologist, Vol. 47, pp. 1597–1611.

Other information

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.

Editor/Rédactrice en chef

Annie Roy-Charland, PhD, L Psych
Université de Moncton

Associate editors/Rédacteurs en chef adjoints

Pierre Cormier, PhD
Université de Moncton

Marie-Hélène Véronneau, PhD
Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada

Managing editor/Directeur des services de rédaction

Lauren Thompson, PhD
Canadian Psychological Association

Editorial board/Comité de rédaction

Christopher A. Abeare, PhD, C Psych
University of Windsor, Canada

Stéphanie Boutin, PhD
Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada

James E. Cameron, PhD
Saint Mary's University, Canada

R. Nicholas Carleton, PhD, RD Psych
University of Regina, Canada

Dominic Guitard, PhD
Cardiff University, United Kingdom

Sara King, PhD
Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada

Theresa J.B. Kline, PhD
University of Calgary, Canada

Mylène Lachance-Grzela, PhD, L Psych
Université de Moncton, Canada

Denis Lajoie, PhD
Université de Moncton, Canada

Louis Laurencelle, PhD
Université de Trois-Rivières, Canada

Andrée-Anne Légaré, PhD
Université de Sherbrooke, Canada

J. Scott Matthews, PhD
Memorial University, Canada

Brian P. O'Connor, PhD
University of British Columbia, Canada

Allison J. Ouimet, PhD
University of Ottawa, Canada

Stephen D. Risavy, PhD
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Colette Sabatier, PhD
University of Bordeaux, France

Allen E. Thornton, PhD
Simon Fraser University, Canada

Christian Vandenberghe, PhD
HEC Montréal, Canada

Yao Zheng, PhD
University of Alberta, Canada

Abstracting and indexing services providing coverage of Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science

• Advanced Placement Psychology Collection
• Biological Abstracts
• BIOSIS Previews
• Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Psychology
• Canadian Periodical Index Quarterly
• CBCA Reference
• Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Academic Journal Guide
• Current Contents: Social & Behavioral Sciences
• Educational Research Abstracts Online
• IBZ / IBR (Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur)
• Journal Citations Report: Social Sciences Edition
• Mosby's Nursing Consult
• OCLC
• PsycInfo
• PsycLine
• SCOPUS
• Social Sciences Citation Index
• Studies on Women and Gender Abstracts

• Exceptional Canadian Contributions to Research in Depression / Les contributions canadiennes exceptionnelles à la recherche sur la dépression:

  Special issue of CPA’s journal Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, Vol. 54, No. 2, April 2022. This special issue presents a series of state-of-the-art empirical reviews that highlight many of the important contributions—covering cognitive vulnerability, perfectionism, epidemiology, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and emotion-focused therapy—that Canadian psychologists have made to our understanding of depression.

• Emerging Research in Industrial-Organizational Psychology in Canada:

  Special issue of CPA’s Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, Vol. 53, No. 2, April 2021. This special issue discusses important and timely topics, including justice, racial and gender equity, Indigenous employment, and environmental concerns in the discipline of I–O Psychology.

• Attachment Theory and Developmental Psychology / Théorie de l'attachement et psychologie du développement:

  Special issue of CPA's Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2016. The articles address theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues and examine attachment processes as they apply to development across the life span.

• Sexuality Research in Canada / Recherche en sexualité au Canada:

  Special issue of CPA's Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, Vol. 45, No. 3, July 2013. Articles address developmental, relational, and problematic aspects of sexuality, along with examples of basic research in sexual function.

Inclusive reporting standards

• Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (required)
• Impact statements (required)

More information on this journal’s reporting standards is listed under the submission guidelines tab.

Other EDI offerings

ORCID reviewer recognition

Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) Reviewer Recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers without compromising the confidentiality of the peer-review process. This journal has implemented the ORCID Reviewer Recognition feature in Editorial Manager, meaning that reviewers can be recognized for their contributions to the peer-review process.

Translated abstracts

Abstracts which are translated into multiple languages provide accessibility and discoverability for a global community of scholars.

Masked peer review

This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). Research has shown that masked peer review can help reduce implicit bias against traditionally female names or early-career scientists with smaller publication records (Budden et al., 2008; Darling, 2015).

French language publications

The journal published some full articles in French.

Announcements

• CPA call for reviewers
• CPA Award for Best Journal Article

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