Submission guidelines

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.

Submissions are handled only through our Editorial Manager platformopens in new window, 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.

CPSP has been published by APA since 2021 and is processed using Editorial Manager.

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 Manuscriptopens in new window

General correspondence may be directed to the editorial office via emailopens in new window.

CPSP considers submissions of the following types:

• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
• Theoretical/conceptual papers that are heavily empirically based
• Invited comments
• Note that papers describing individual research investigations (e.g., randomized controlled trials, correlational analyses, qualitative research) are generally not appropriate submissions. However, research studies focusing on professional issues pertinent to the field of clinical psychology (e.g., survey of clinical psychologists regarding the importance of training in ethical standards) may, on occasion, be considered. In such instances, it is strongly advised to contact the editor-in-chief to determine the appropriateness of a given article.

These involve reviews and evaluations of a body of evidence with specific regard to answering a clearly articulated research question (e.g., “how efficacious is psychotherapy X to reduce Y among populations of Z adults?”). Appropriate individual empirical studies, rather than individual human participants, serve as the unit of analysis. Systematic and explicit guidelines and rules are followed to (a) identify and select the relevant research studies to be included, (b) evaluate the quality of these studies, (c) extract and analyze the data from these studies, and (d) generate appropriate conclusions based on the review. A meta-analysis uses quantitative procedures to conduct the overall evaluation. Authors interested in submitting systematic reviews in CPSP need to document in both a cover letter and within the body of the manuscript that either Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysesopens in new window or APA Meta-Analyses Reporting Standards (as contained in Appelbaum et al. 2018 see Table 9) guidelines were used in writing the paper. Narrative reviews are also welcome if based on a sound empirical basis. Scoping reviews and network meta-analyses are also welcome.

Examples of this type of submission might include proposing a new model of clinical service delivery, post-graduate clinical training, assessment, or any other topic relevant to the field and profession of clinical psychology. They should be original, timely, of high quality, and accessible and of interest to the broad clinical psychologist audience. Most importantly, they should be heavily supported by the empirical literature.

Once a major article is accepted for publication, an action editor will invite 2-3 individuals to submit brief commentaries (maximum of 15 manuscript pages and 10 references) that target 2-3 important and high-level issues related to the topics covered by the original paper. These commentaries are peer-reviewed and by invitation only. Other types of commentaries or letters to the editor are not appropriate.

This journal uses a masked reviewing system for all submissions. 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.

Footnotes containing information pertaining to the authors' identities or affiliations should not be included in the manuscript but may be provided after a manuscript is accepted.

Make every effort to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors' identities.

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

Keep a copy of the manuscript to guard against loss.

Upon receipt of a manuscript, the editor-in-chief (EIC) will make an initial determination whether the paper (a) addresses a topic consistent with the scope and mission of the journal, (b) follows both APA Publications (7th ed.) and CPSP guidelines, (c) provides all of the information requested (e.g., cover letter, information about all coauthors), (d) if relevant, contains a statement regarding the prior approval of an ethics review board (e.g., IRB), and (e) where relevant, adheres to all APA ethical standards regarding the conduct of research and of publishing.

The EIC will then decide as to whether the paper will proceed through the peer review process (i.e., is assigned to an action editor) or rejected due to either being inappropriate or inadequate. If considered for further evaluation, the action editor will invite several individuals to serve as peer reviewers. A minimum of two comprehensive reviews (three is desirable) are required for the process to be complete.

Initial editorial decisions, based on this process, include (a) outright rejection, (b) offer to undergo a major revision, (c) offer to undergo a minor revision, or (d) acceptance. Note that an offer of acceptance after a first review is rare. Offers to revise and resubmit do not contain any guarantees that the paper will ultimately be accepted for publication.

Editorial decisions are based on (a) feedback from invited peer reviewers, (b) input from the action editor, and (c) input from the EIC. The final decision is ultimately made by the EIC. All attempts are made to request only individuals to serve as peer reviewers who have previously published in the topic area addressed in the submission or are experts in the methodological approach used (e.g., meta-analysis).

At times, when appropriate, scholars from other countries or representing a particular participant population may be asked to review a manuscript to provide for as relevant and objective an evaluation as possible. Invited reviewers can receive help from others (e.g., mentee) if appropriate.

If an author or coauthor of a submission is a member of the editorial team (e.g., EIC, associate editor, editorial board member), the EIC will ensure that the identities of these authors remain hidden among whomever serves as the action editor and peer reviewers. Members of the editorial board serve as peer reviewers. These individuals have been chosen to represent a diverse group of individuals (e.g., vary by expertise, sex, race/ethnicity, theoretical orientation, gender/sexual orientation, stage of career, type of employment, geography) who have documented scholarship experience.

The cover letter accompanying the manuscript submission must include:

• all authors' names and affiliations to avoid potential conflicts of interest in the review process;
• addresses and phone numbers, as well as electronic mail addresses and fax numbers, if available, for all authors for possible use by the editorial office and later by the production office;
• a statement indicating that the authors have read and followed the CPSP instructions to authors;
• a statement that the paper has been reviewed and approved by all listed authors and that they agree as to the order of authorship;
• confirmation that this manuscript has not been previously published, is not currently under review by another journal, nor does it contain data that has been published or submitted elsewhere unless explained in detail;
• a description of why the manuscript is consistent with the mission and scope of the journal and what is the novel contribution to clinical psychology; and
• a list of the author contributions using the CRediT system (see below).

Manuscripts should be prepared according to the 7^th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. APA Style and Grammar Guidelinesopens in new window for the 7^th edition are available.

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. Instructions regarding the preparation of display equations, computer code, and tables appear at the end of these submission instructions.

Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style websiteopens in new window.

Authors who think that their submission may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing should 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 required for publication in an APA journal and does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication.

There is no word count, but the maximum page limit is 50 pages, double spaced, including all references, figures, and tables.

Authors submitting systematic reviews/meta-analyses should use the following structured abstract format:

Objectives: include a clear statement of the main research question(s) the review addresses

Methods: specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria used to conduct the review; provide information about the data sources (e.g., databases) used to identify relevant studies along with the date(s) such searches occurred; describe the methods used to determine risk of bias; describe the methods used to synthesize the results

Results: provide total number of included studies, summarize participant characteristics of the included studies; present main outcomes of the review, including summary estimate of effect sizes, their confidence intervals, and if relevant, the directionality of any comparisons

Discussion: provide brief summary of the limitations of the included studies, including limits of generalizability (e.g., majority of participants did not include persons of color or minority individuals); provide overall interpretation of the results and their implication for clinical psychology
If relevant, information regarding funding support and pre-registration (e.g., name and number) should be included in the author notes.

CPSP publishes public health significance statements for each article (not the commentaries). These are designed to increase dissemination and usage by larger and diverse audiences, such as other health professionals and the lay public.

These 2-3 sentence statements should be user-friendly and geared to be informative and useful for all types of readers. They would include a basic message regarding the importance of the paper’s topic and the essential findings with regard to public health issues. If the manuscript is accepted for publication the statements will be boxed on the first page of the article, beneath the abstract, for immediate recognition.

Authors should include such statements on the abstract page below the keywords. Please refer to the Guidance for Translational Abstracts and Public Significance Statements page to help you write this text.

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.

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.

On the submission portal, authors have the option of providing names and contact information of up to three scholars who are qualified to serve as unbiased reviewers for a manuscript. Note that it is the discretion of the action editor to select such individuals. To be potentially chosen as a peer reviewer, these persons

• Should have previously published in peer-reviewed venues in the appropriate topic area
• Have no real or perceived conflict of interest with any of the authors
• Should not have previously provided feedback regarding an earlier draft to any of the coauthors
• Should not be at the same institution as any of the coauthors, nor a coauthor on a previous publication, nor be a former or current advisor, advisee, mentor, etc.

If authors believe that an individual might be biased if selected as a peer reviewer (e.g., previously published an article criticizing the work of the submitting author), they should make that known to the editor-in-chief with an explanation in the cover letter. Providing names of potential reviewers denotes that to the best of their knowledge, authors attest to the validity of the above.

Authors should indicate where changes were made in the text in revisions via colored highlighting or colored font. Please avoid using tracked changes.

Authors should state all sources of financial support for the conduct of the research (e.g., This research was supported by Award XX from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Human Development) in the author note. If the funding source was involved in any other aspects of the research (e.g., study design, analysis, interpretation, writing), then clearly state the role. If the funding source had no other involvement other than financial support, then authors should state that the funding source had no other role other than financial support.

Authors should also provide a conflict of interest statement in the author note disclosing any real or potentially perceived conflict(s) of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationships with other organizations or companies that may inappropriately impact or influence the research and interpretation of the findings. Authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships between themselves, their families, and others that might be perceived by readers as biasing their work. To prevent ambiguity, authors must state explicitly whether potential conflicts do or do not exist.

This journal will consider for review articles previously available as preprints on non-commercial servers such as ArXiv, bioRxiv, psyArXiv, SocArXiv, engrXiv, etc. Authors may also post the submitted version of their manuscript to non-commercial servers at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

CPSP encourages authors to share the data and other artifacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used or otherwise providing the ethical or legal reasons for not sharing the data. The data availability statement should be included in the author note and in the method section.

As part of APA's ongoing efforts to increase transparency and collaboration in scientific research, our journal now offers authors the option of depositing their data into APA's own repository hosted by the Center for Open Scienceopens in new window. This repository will help researchers work on a project privately, with collaborators, or allow them to make parts of or their entire project publicly accessible. The repository will store and archive research data, protocols, and materials, with data being made open once it is published in an APA journal. If you choose to submit your data to the repository, please include the dataset's OSF link as part of your author note, and include the data citation in your reference list.

Authors can also consult the global registry of research data repositoriesopens in new window to help them identify registered and certified repositories relevant to their subject areas.

Preregistration of studies and analysis plans can be useful for distinguishing confirmatory and exploratory analyses. CPSP encourages authors, particularly those submitting manuscripts that report results of a clinical trial, to preregister their studies and analysis plans prior to conducting the research (e.g., Open Science Frameworkopens in new window, ClinicalTrials.govopens in new window, www.isrctn.orgopens in new window). If any aspect of the study is preregistered, include the registry link in the author note and the method section.

Authors should review the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. The standards offer ways to improve transparency in reporting to ensure that readers have the information necessary to evaluate the quality of the research and to facilitate collaboration and replication. The JARS: 

• recommend the division of hypotheses, analyses, and conclusions into primary, secondary, and exploratory groupings to allow for a full understanding of quantitative analyses presented in a manuscript and to enhance reproducibility; 
• offer modules for authors reporting on replications, clinical trials, longitudinal studies, and observational studies, as well as the analytic methods of structural equation modeling and Bayesian analysis; and 
• include guidelines on reporting on of study preregistration (including making protocols public); participant characteristics (including demographic characteristics; inclusion and exclusion criteria) psychometric characteristics of outcome measures and other variables, and planned data diagnostics and analytic strategy. 

JARS-Qual offers guidance to researchers using qualitative methods such as narrative data, grounded theory, phenomenological, critical, discursive, performative, ethnographic, consensual qualitative, case study, psychobiography, and thematic analysis approaches. 

The guidelines focus on transparency in methods reporting, recommending descriptions of how the researcher’s own perspective affected the study, as well as the contexts in which the research and analysis took place. 

Authors should also review the new Journal Article Reporting Standards for Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (JARS–REC). Meant for all authors, regardless of research topic, JARS–REC include standards for all stages of research and manuscript writing, on, for example: 

• Using the title, abstract, and keywords to identify race and ethnicity of participants without signaling Whiteness as default; 
• Discussing the applicability of the theoretical approach to populations for which it was not developed; 
• Addressing limits on generality, recognizing that generalizability is always constrained and is not the primary purpose of every study; and 
• Considering whether findings could be used or misused to cause harm. 

For more, see the Guidance for Authors sections of the table (PDF, 184KB)opens in new window. 

Authors of empirical papers must include a detailed description of the study participants in the Author Note and the Method section of the article, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Age
• Sex
• Gender orientation
• Sexual orientation
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Nativity or immigration history
• Socioeconomic status
• Clinical diagnoses and comorbidities (as appropriate)
• Any other relevant demographics and empirical submissions must include a generalizability statement in the Discussion section, outlining the generalizability of the findings. Authors submitting systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include statements regarding the generalizability of the overall body of literature addressed, in particular, a summary of the participant statistics, when available, as described above. If studies included in a meta-analysis do not provide detailed descriptions of the participant sample, this should be stated explicitly.

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.