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.

To submit to the editorial office of Naomi I. Eisenberger, PhD, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word format (.doc) or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file.

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

All tables and figures should be included in the manuscript file.

General correspondence may be directed to the editor’s officeopens in new window.

Emotion is now 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).

Masked reviews are optional, and authors who wish masked reviews must specifically request them when they submit their manuscripts.

For masked reviews, the manuscript must include a separate title page with the authors' names and affiliations, and these ought not to appear anywhere else in the manuscript. Footnotes that identify the authors must be typed on a separate page. Authors are to make every effort to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to their identities, 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).

If your manuscript was mask reviewed, please ensure that the final version for production includes a byline and full author note for typesetting.

In addition to addresses and phone numbers, authors should supply email addresses for use by the editorial office and later by the production office. The majority of correspondence between the editorial office and authors is handled by email, so a valid email address is important to the timely flow of communication during the editorial process.

Manuscripts for Emotion can vary in length; typically they will range from 10 to 40 double-spaced manuscript pages. Manuscripts should be of sufficient length to ensure theoretical and methodological competence.

Most of the articles published in Emotion will be reports of original research, but other types of articles will be considered.

• Articles that present or discuss theoretical formulations of emotion and related affective phenomena that evaluate competing theoretical perspectives, or that offer innovative commentary or analysis on timely topics of inquiry.
• Comprehensive reviews of the empirical literature in an area of study if they contain a meta-analysis.
• Comments on articles published in the journal.
• Direct replications; submissions should include “A Replication of XX Study” in the subtitle of the manuscript as well as in the abstract.

To facilitate a more complete understanding of the reported results, submissions based on empirical findings must report effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals for the primary findings in each study.

To promote best research practices, authors must follow the TOP guidelines indicated below.

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 Emotion must at least meet the Level 2 (“requirement”) for disclosure; citation; data, code, and materials transparency; design and analysis transparency; and study and analysis plan preregistration. 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 the study follows JARS (Appelbaum, et al., 2018). All data, analysis code, and research materials are available at [stable link to permanent 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.

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 note the legal or ethical reasons for not doing so. 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 (or the legal or ethical reason why it is not available).

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 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].

If you cannot make your data available on a public site, authors are required to follow current APA policy to make the materials and data used in a published study available in a timely manner to other researchers upon request.

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. Preregistrations must be available to reviewers; authors may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material. Links in the method section and the author note should be replaced with an identifiable copy on acceptance.

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.

Authors are required to list, in the cover letter, all published or in press manuscripts that use the same dataset and describe how the current manuscript differs from those previously published.

The goal of this practice is to prevent duplicate or piecemeal publication, as specified in the APA ethical guidelines.

Large datasets involving intensive data collection are often used for multiple manuscripts, but authors should explain how the purpose of the research and analyses reported in any given manuscript are distinct from those in previously published or accepted work. Authors also can provide this information to readers in supplementary material.

All authors must read and adhere to APA's 2018 articles on reporting standardsopens in new window (“Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) 2”; see also “Reporting Standards for Research in Psychology” [PDF, 97KB]opens in new window), which include (but are not limited to) reporting demographic characteristics of the sample, sample size, power and precision, reporting all measures and methods, and including effect sizes and confidence intervals.

All submissions based on empirical findings must report effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals.

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 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.

Emotion is committed to improving equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in scientific research, in line with the  APA Publishing EDI framework and APA’s trio of 2021 resolutions to address systemic racism in psychology.

The journal encourages submissions which extend beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) samples (Henrich, et al., 2010opens in new window). The journal particularly welcomes submissions which feature Black, Indigenous, and other people of color and other historically marginalized sample populations.

To promote a more equitable research and publication process, Emotion has adopted the following standards for inclusive research reporting.

Authors must include a detailed description of the study participants in the Method section of each empirical report, including (but not limited to) the following:

• age
• sex
• gender
• racial identity
• ethnicity
• nativity or immigration history
• socioeconomic status
• clinical diagnoses and comorbidities (as appropriate)
• any other relevant demographics (e.g., disability status; sexual orientation)

In both the abstract and in the discussion section of the manuscript, authors must discuss the diversity of their study samples and the generalizability of their findings (see also the constraints on generality section below).

Authors are also encouraged to justify their sample demographics in the discussion section. If Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) or all-White samples are used, authors should justify their samples and describe their sample inclusion efforts (see Roberts, et al., 2020opens in new window for more information on justifying sample demographics).

The method section also must include a statement describing how informed consent was obtained from the participants (or their parents/guardians), including for secondary use of data if applicable, and indicate that the study was conducted in compliance with an appropriate Internal Review Board.

Authors are encouraged to disclose the year(s) of data collection in both the Abstract and in the Method section in order to appropriately contextualize the study. 

In a subsection of the discussion titled "Constraints on generality," authors should include a detailed discussion of the limits on generality (see Simons, Shoda, & Lindsay, 2017opens in new window). In this section, authors should detail grounds for concluding why the results are may or may not be specific to the characteristics of the participants. They should address limits on generality not only for participants but for materials, procedures, and context. Authors should also specify which methods they think could be varied without affecting the result and which should remain constant.

Please note that authors will be asked to confirm their adherence to several policies prior to submitting their manuscripts. Below are the list of questions and statements that will need to be confirmed prior to submitting a manuscript:

1. Have you provided a justification for your sample size in the manuscript and noted it in the cover letter?
2. Have you indicated whether you will publicly share your materials and data in the cover letter?
3. Have you listed in the cover letter all published or in press manuscripts that use the same dataset and indicated how the current work is distinct from prior work using the same dataset? Or, if the data are new, does your cover letter include a statement that the data have not been used in prior published or in press manuscripts? 
4. As required by JARS/MARS, my manuscript reports a) 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); includes 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.
5. This manuscript has been prepared consistent with APA Publication Manual (7th ed.) guidelines.
6. I have stated whether data and study materials are available and, if so, where to access them. In both the author note and at the end of the method section, I have either specified where the data and material will be available or noted the legal or ethical reasons for not doing so. For submissions with quantitative or simulation analytic methods, I have stated whether the study analysis code is available, and, if so, where to access it. In both the author note and at the end of the method section, I have either specified where the quantitative or simulation analytic methods will be available, or noted the legal or ethical reasons for not doing so.
7. I have stated whether or not any work was preregistered and, if so, where to access the preregistration. If any aspect of the study is preregistered, I have included the registry link in the method section and the author note. For example: This study’s design was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI]; This study’s design and hypotheses were preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI]; or This study was not preregistered.
8. I affirm that I have adhered to the APA Publication Manual (7th ed.) guidelines for bias-free language and other community-driven language guidelines, as relevant to my research.
9. I have included the specific year(s) when the data were collected in the abstract and in the method section.
10. I have included a detailed description of the study participants in the method section, including (but not limited to) age, sex, gender identity, ethnicity, nativity or immigration history, socioeconomic status, clinical diagnoses and comorbidities, and other relevant demographics (e.g., disability status; sexual orientation).
11. I have discussed the diversity of the study sample and the generalizability of the findings in both the abstract and the discussion section.
12. I have justified the sample demographics in the discussion section and have described my sample inclusion efforts.
13. I have included a subsection of the discussion section titled “Constraints on Generality” with a detailed discussion of the limits on generality of the research.

Manuscripts for Emotion will typically range from 10 to 40 double-spaced manuscript pages, including the cover page, abstract, text, references, tables and figures, with margins of at least 1 inch on all sides and a standard font (e.g., Times New Roman) of 12 points (no smaller).

For manuscripts that exceed 40 pages, authors must justify the extended length in their cover letter (e.g., the inclusion of multiple studies). The entire manuscript must be double spaced.

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

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 email addresses and fax numbers, if available, should be provided for all authors for possible use by the editorial office and later by the production office.

Manuscripts submitted to Emotion will be evaluated based on the extent to which they make theoretical and empirical contributions that advance an understanding of emotional processes. Articles will be evaluated in terms of the overall theoretical and empirical contribution of the work, including the soundness of the research methodology, appropriateness of the statistical analyses, and accuracy in interpreting the findings.

Most of the articles published in Emotion will be reports of original empirical research, but other types of articles will be considered.

These include:

• Articles that present or discuss theoretical formulations of emotion and related affective phenomena that evaluate competing theoretical perspectives, or that offer innovative commentary or analysis on timely topics of inquiry.
• Comprehensive reviews of the empirical literature in an area of study that contain a meta-analysis and/or present novel theoretical or methodological perspectives.
• Comments on articles published in the journal.
• Case studies from either a clinical setting or a laboratory that raise or illustrate important questions that go beyond the single case and have heuristic value.

Emotion also publishes brief reports. Manuscripts submitted as brief reports should not exceed 2,500 words (author notes, abstract, text), exclusive of references, tables, and figure captions. There should be no more than two figures or tables and no more than 30 references.

Emotion will consider commentaries on articles previously published in this journal. Comments will be sent out for external review and must meet a high threshold for publication.

Comments will be evaluated based on how accurately and fairly they represent the target article, the importance of the comment in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the target article, and the clarity, conciseness, and tone of the writing. External reviewers will include individuals not associated with the target article as well as the corresponding author of the target article.

Two types of commentaries will be considered.

A brief comment is written in response to a single article previously published in Emotion. The primary purpose is to provide a meaningful insight, concern, alternative interpretation, clarification, or critical analysis. The comment should provide a richer and more comprehensive understanding of a methodological, conceptual, or interpretation issue that significantly adds to the literature.

Brief comments should not exceed 265 lines of text including references. This limit does not include the title page, abstract, or author notes.

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. For example — "The importance of focusing on external validity: A brief comment on Testing the Efficacy of Two Differing Types of Stress Management Interventions for the Treatment of Essential Hypertension (Jones & Smith, 2012)."

Brief comments must be submitted in a timely manner, no later than nine months after publication of the original article.

Upon acceptance of a brief comment, the author(s) of the original paper would be invited to submit a response; if the authors' response is acceptable, both the brief comment and response would be published together. Such responses to a brief comment also should not exceed 265 lines of text including references.

The purpose of an extended comment is similar to that of a Brief Comment (i.e., to provide a meaningful insight, concern, alternative interpretation, clarification, or critical analysis), but it would be written in response to a series of articles previously published in Emotion or that involves a more extensive and far-reaching conceptual or methodological issue.

An example might include a comment describing and analyzing the limitations of a particular statistical or methodological procedure used in several studies previously published in Emotion; the comment also must include recommendations for addressing such limitations.

Extended comments will be evaluated on the timeliness of the topic and the potential contribution to the scientific literature relevant to the scope of Emotion.

This type of article should not exceed approximately one half the length of the original paper (note that 1 journal page equals approximately 3–3.5 manuscript pages). Unless permission from the editor is received, no extended comment should exceed 20 manuscript pages inclusive of all references, tables, and figures.

If the extended comment is accepted, the author(s) of the original article(s) will be contacted to write a response; and, if the authors' responses are accepted, both the extended comment and response(s) would be published together. This invited response should not exceed approximately one half the length of the extended comment.

The title of this type of article need not include a subtitle representing the original article(s).

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual).

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 websiteopens in new window.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To determine whether you are allowed to reproduce an image, look for the copyright on the work. Here are some examples of copyright statements you might see:

• Regular copyright or "all rights reserved" copyright
  This kind of copyright is indicated by the word copyright or the copyright symbol.
  Examples: Copyright 2015 by the American Psychological Association. © 2014 Elizabeth T. Jones, all rights reserved.
• Creative commons copyright
  Creative commons licenses are indicated by the words creative commons or CC. In general, creative commons licenses allow you to reproduce and/or adapt a work (including images) without getting permission from the copyright holder, so long as you give credit to the original author in the form of a copyright statement.
• Public domain
  Works that are not bound by copyright are considered in the public domain. This means you can reproduce them and/or adapt them however you want, so long as you credit the original author in the form of a copyright statement. Assume a work is under copyright unless you see the words public domain on it or the work was produced by the U.S. Government (in which case it is automatically in the public domain). Copyright does expire, but that can take a long time.
• No copyright indicated
  If no copyright is indicated, treat the work as copyrighted. U.S. copyright law states that a work is copyrighted as soon as it is fixed in tangible form (e.g., you can see it on a computer screen or on paper), even if the work doesn't say copyright or have the copyright symbol, and even if it is not mass produced or professionally published. For example, you automatically own the copyright to papers you write for a class.

For more information on copyright and permissions, visit the APA Style blogopens in new window.

• 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.