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.

Please follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Manuscripts that do not conform to our Instructions to Authors may be returned without review.

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

Contact our Peer Review Coordinator Katt Fambroughopens in new window, if you have questions about submitting a manuscript or if you do not receive confirmation of your submission within three business days.

Some institutional spam filters may block emails from our editorial office or from APA Journals. If this happens, add “apa.org” to your safe address list and ask your IT service to add it to their white list.

Our Editorial Manager system will ask you for the following items during the submission process.

Article Type: Indicate whether the manuscript is a regular article, a brief report, a viewpoint, or a submission for a special issue or series. Some special issues and special series submissions require permission or are by invitation only; please obtain permission if needed before choosing one of the special article types.

Files: You will be asked to upload the following files:

• Cover letter. The letter should briefly describe the paper; explain how it fits within the journal’s scope; and confirm that it has not been published, is not under review elsewhere, and does not contain data that are under review or that have been published elsewhere. It should also confirm that all authors have reviewed the final version of the paper that is being submitted.
• Manuscript. See the Manuscript section (below) for instructions.
• Tables and Figures: Place tables and figures at the end of the manuscript, after the references, with one table or figure per page. Include page numbers on the table and figure pages.
• Supplemental Materials: You may place a variety of materials in an online-only supplement, such as 1) methodological details, tables, and figures that are not essential for inclusion in the manuscript itself but that enhance the report; 2) computer code needed to reproduce the major analyses; 3) nonproprietary questionnaires, survey forms, other data collection instruments, scripts, or experimental stimuli; and 4) qualitative response material. There is no specific limit on the length of the supplemental document, and it does not count against the manuscript’s page limit. Refer readers to the supplement at appropriate points in the text of the manuscript. See Supplementing Your Article with Online Material for more information.
• Reporting Checklist: If you have completed a reporting checklist (e.g., CONSORT, PRISMA, or STROBE), submit it as a Reporting Checklist file.

Use Microsoft Word (.doc) or LaTeX (.tex) to create documents for submission. If using LaTeX, submit a zip file that includes a .pdf version of each .tex file.

Manuscripts should adhere to the guidelines provided in the 7^th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. APA Style guidance is available online.

Classifications: Use this checklist to classify the manuscript’s area(s) of interest or specialization.

Suggested Reviewers: Enter the name, institution, email address, and qualifications of at least three potential reviewers.

Questionnaire: The questionnaire asks about 1) serving as a reviewer; 2) funding agencies that supported the submitted work; 3) the larger study or project, if any, on which the current study is based; and 4) potential conflicts of interest.

If your report is based on data from a larger study or project (e.g., an analysis based on a large epidemiological dataset or a secondary analysis of clinical trial data), use the questionnaire to explain the relationship between the current paper and the larger study or project, and briefly explain the current study’s novel or value-added scientific contribution relative to other papers from the same dataset. List any papers that were based on the larger study or dataset and that have been published, are under review, or are in press, about which the editors and reviewers of the current paper should be aware. Cite them in the manuscript as well if readers should be aware of them.

Length: Regular articles are limited to 30 pages, meta-analyses to 35 pages, brief reports to 12 pages, and viewpoints to 1200 words or 1000 words with 1 table or figure. The page limit includes all parts of the manuscript, including the title page, abstract, text, references, tables, and figures. Use a sans serif font such as 11-point Calibri or 11-point Arial, or a serif font such as 12-point Times New Roman, and double-space the text. Authors may request permission to exceed the page limit, but the journal operates under a contractual page budget, so overages are allowed only when necessary. Please write succinctly and place nonessential materials in a supplement, not in the manuscript.

Title Page: The title page should adhere to APA Style and include an APA-style Author Note. The manuscript’s title should be no more than 12 words long, and it should not state an assertion or conclusion. The title should include “a randomized controlled trial,” “a meta-analysis,” “a systematic review,” or “systematic review and meta-analysis,” if appropriate.

APA-Style Author Notes include the following information:

• Paragraph 1 : Authors’ ORCIDopens in new window iDs if available. Authors will be asked to identify the contributions of all authors at submission using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT)opens in new window . All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before submission. Authors may claim credit for more than one role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one author.
• Paragraph 2: Changes, if any, in author affiliations that occurred after the study ended.
• Paragraph 3: Disclosures and acknowledgements, if any, including: a) Study preregistration information including registry name and record number, e.g., “Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT999999.” b) links to data, materials, and code. c) Financial support including funding agencies and grant numbers. d) Disclosure of any real or potentially perceived conflicts of interest including financial interests or affiliations that might be seen as influencing the research. If there are no conflicts of interest, this should be clearly stated. e) Acknowledgements of nonfinancial assistance such as staff or student contributions to the research.
• Paragraph 4: Corresponding author’s contact information, including an email address.

Abstract: Empirical reports must include a structured abstract with < 250 words and these headings:

• Objective: Brief statement of the purpose or aims of the study.
• Methods: Essential information about the study design, procedures, and measures.
• Results: Primary findings; include sample size and primary statistical results, if possible.
• Conclusions: Main conclusions based on the primary findings.

Papers such as narrative reviews or invited commentaries for which a structured abstract would be inappropriate should include an unstructured manuscript with a maximum of 250 words.

The journal will provide a Spanish translation of abstracts for all papers accepted as of March 1, 2023. This abstract will be added in post-production after acceptance and will be included in the online (html) version and the end of the article in the PDF version.

Keywords: List up to five keywords below the abstract. Use National Library of Medicine medical subject heading ( MeSHopens in new window ) vocabulary or APA psychological index terms .

Body of the Manuscript: Empirical reports should include:

• a clear statement of the research question, hypothesis, specific aims, or purpose of the study;
• essential information about the methods even if a separate methods or protocol paper is cited;
• descriptive statistics to characterize the sample, the sample size, and the measures;
• a CONSORT-style participant flow diagram, if appropriate;
• disclosure of the study’s limitations; and
• conclusions that are consistent with the findings.

The methods section of reports of research involving human participants must provide information about institutional review board or ethics board approval, including the name(s) of the institution(s) that approved the study, or an explanation of why the study was exempt from approval and oversight. Informed consent and assent procedures should also be briefly described.

Reports should explain the significance or novel contribution of original research without overstating the study’s translational, clinical, or public health significance.

If the purpose of the work is to attempt to replicate or extend previous studies, this should be disclosed, and minor innovations or superficially novel features should not be overstated.
The statistical methods should adhere to the APA Task Force on Statistical Inference guidelines. Statistical results, tables, and figures should adhere to APA Style guidelines.

Viewpoints are short, high-level opinion articles on important topics related to the science of health psychology/behavioral medicine including current topics, emerging trends, or critical events. Viewpoints may refer to the science itself, methods, dissemination, clinical perspectives, or policy. Viewpoints should be focused, scholarly, and clearly presented. They should not be linked to specific articles (not a response). The bar for publication is high, and authors must make a case for significance of the topic and breadth of impact.

Viewpoints may have no more than four authors with the first author being the senior with sufficient expertise and experience to be authoritative on the opinion. The maximum length is 1200 words or 1000 words with 1 table or figure. The viewpoint should be sourced but references are limited to 10 and should be as current as possible.

Please note that although the published version of the article does not include an abstract, the APA PsycNet team requires abstracts for indexing purposes and increased findability. Authors will be asked to provide an abstract during the submission process for this purpose only.

Health Psychology publishes work across the entire spectrum of translational research in health psychology and behavioral medicine, including observational, experimental, and interventional studies. Programmatic research is especially welcome. If the study is integral to an ongoing, well-focused program of research, its relationship to previous and planned work should be described.

When applicable, authors are encouraged to position their study within an established framework or model for translational research, intervention development or optimization, or implementation science, such as the ORBIT Model (Czajkowski et al., Health Psychology 2015;34(10):971-982).

Health Psychology publishes many kinds of observational, epidemiological, and experimental studies. However, studies with the following characteristics are seldom accepted:

• studies with little or no direct relevance to physical health or medical illness
• studies with limited ecological validity or generalizability
• mediation analyses based on cross-sectional data
• small qualitative studies

Health psychology is an applied science that draws upon many areas of basic research. Translational and intervention optimization models such as ORBIT, the NIH Stage Model, or the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) encourage us to ground our health-related behavioral intervention research in basic social and behavioral science research, the science of behavior change, and in other areas of psychosocial, clinical, and public health research. These models also promote a programmatic approach to intervention development, optimization, testing, and implementation.

The journal welcomes basic research that is conducted to inform health-related behavioral intervention development or other clinical or public health applications of health psychology. We also welcome early-phase research on health-related behavioral interventions, such as intervention development, optimization, and dose-finding studies; proof-of-concept evaluations; and feasibility studies. However, these reports must meet certain criteria to be considered for publication.

• The study should be embedded in a translational or intervention optimization model and in programmatic line of research whose long-term goal concerns maintaining physical health, preventing medical illness, or improving significant medical or public health outcomes.
• The report should not claim that the study is definitive or that it has significant practice or policy implications; it should instead point to specific next steps in the line of research.
• It should not include severely underpowered statistical tests of efficacy hypotheses; see Freedland KE. Health Psychology 2020;39(10):851-862 for further information.

Small, early-phase studies must compete against larger and more definitive studies in the journal’s priority ranking system. This is especially challenging for small or preliminary studies that are conducted primarily to guide the investigator’s own work and that may be of limited interest to other researchers. Thus, early-phase research reports should highlight aspects of the study that would be informative for other investigators.

The journal welcomes reports based on randomized controlled trials of health-related behavioral interventions. However, secondary or exploratory analyses of RCT outcome data should not be submitted until the primary findings of the trial have been published. Manuscripts that do not include outcome data, such as analyses that are limited to baseline data, may be submitted before the primary findings have been published.

Meta-analyses and meta-regression analyses of research in health psychology and behavioral medicine are welcome. They must provide significant added value if other meta-analyses of the same area of research have already been published.

Research on questionnaires or other assessment instruments should be based on modern psychometric methods. A convincing case should be made for a new, modified, or translated measure, and it should be relevant to a large segment of the journal’s readership.

Health Psychology welcomes reviews and tutorials on the following methodological topics:

• Advanced statistical procedures that are applicable to multiple areas of health psychology or behavioral medicine research but that are underutilized.
• Standard statistical methods that are widely misunderstood, misused, or neglected in health psychology and behavioral medicine research.
• Nonstatistical methodological issues that affect the quality or impact of health psychology and behavioral medicine research.

Authors should 1) present advanced methods in a clear and accessible manner for readers who are not statistical experts; 2) provide guidance about the assumptions and utilization of statistical procedures, examples, and computer code; and 3) provide links to sample datasets if applicable.

Selected letters to the editor are published online, on the journal’s website. Submit letters to the editor by email to Katt Fambroughopens in new window with a cover letter disclosing any potential conflicts of interest. If the letter is accepted, the target article’s authors may be invited to respond.

Work submitted to Health Psychology should adhere to the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelinesopens in new window. For empirical reports, include a brief "Transparency and Openness" subsection at the beginning of the methods section. This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the TOP guidelines; the purpose is to gather all required disclosures and links in one location to make it easier for readers, reviewers, and editors to find this information. This is an example of a brief transparency and openness statement for an RCT:

In this article, we report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures that were included in the study, and we follow the CONSORT guideline for reporting parallel group randomized trials. 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). The trial was pre-registered on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT99999999).

Empirical reports submitted to Health Psychology are required to meet certain TOP standards. Adherence to other TOP standards is optional but the manuscript must disclose the level of adherence. The list below summarizes these requirements; see the TOP guidelinesopens in new window for details.

• Citation Standards: Level 2, Required—All data, program code and other methods must be cited in the text and listed in the References section.
• Data Transparency: Level 1, Disclose—The article must disclose whether or not the materials are posted to a trusted repository. In both the Author Note and the Transparency and Openness subsection in the Method section, state whether the data are available, and if so, where to access them. The preferred method is to provide a link to a trusted repository. Trusted discipline-specific, institutional, and open research repositories are acceptable. See the OpenAIRE Guideopens in new window for information and re3data.orgopens in new window help with finding repositories.
• Analytic Methods (Code) Transparency: Level 2, Required—Provide the computer code needed to reproduce the major analyses in a supplement or via a link to a trusted repository in the Transparency and Openness subsection in the Method section. Explain exceptions in the Statistical Analysis section.
• Research Materials Transparency: Level 2, Required—Provide key nonproprietary materials such as questionnaires or survey forms in a supplement or via a link to a trusted repository in the Transparency and Openness subsection in the Method section. Provide citations for proprietary materials. Explain exceptions in the Method section.
• Reporting Standards; Design and Analysis Transparency: Level 2, Required—Adhere to relevant Equator Networkopens in new window reporting guidelines, such as CONSORT for randomized trials or PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Submit a completed reporting guideline checklist as a Document for Reviewers and include a participant flow diagram in the manuscript. Adhere to the APA Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for items that are not addressed in the Equator Network guidelines.
• Preregistration of Studies: Level 2, Required—State whether the study was preregistered in an established registry, and if so, provide the link or information needed to access the record. Randomized controlled trials must be pre­registered in clinicaltrials.gov or another established registry in the WHO Registry Network. Reports of RCTs that are unregistered or that were registered retrospectively may be rejected without peer review.
  • Study preregistration is defined as creation of time stamped, read-only documentation of study design and, if applicable, hypotheses, before the participants are enrolled.
  • Access to a masked version of the preregistered study should be available at submission via stable link or supplemental material.
  • Study design includes items such as experimental conditions, operationaliza­tion of variables, sampling plans, etc. For studies other than RCTs, a protocol or methods paper may be cited in lieu of study preregistration if it was published prior to the enrollment of study participants.
• Preregistration of Analysis Plans: Level 2, Required—State whether the statistical analysis plan was preregistered in a trusted repository or established registry such as clinicaltrials.gov, and if so, provide the link or information needed to access it. Documentation of the analysis plan must be time stamped, accessible, and read-only.
  • The analysis plan may include information about planned analytic strategies, specific planned models, statistical decision rules, assumption checks, etc. It may also identify analyses that are meant to be confirmatory tests of a priori hypotheses. The goal is to clearly differentiate between preplanned vs. post hoc (and perhaps data-dependent) analyses.
  • A priori analysis plans are defined as ones that are preregistered before the data are collected. Blinded ex post analyses are defined as ones that were not preregistered but that were planned before the relevant data were seen. Post hoc analyses are defined as ones that are conducted after the analyst or investigator has seen the data.
  • Access to a masked version of the preregistered analysis plan should be available at submission via stable link or supplemental material.
• Replication: Level 1, Disclose—The journal encourages submission of replication studies. Submissions should include “A Replication of XX Study” in the subtitle of the manuscript as well as in the abstract.

Health Psychology is strongly committed to advancing diversity in all areas including but not limited to age, socioeconomic background, race/ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, abilities, and the intersection of multiple underserved identities. In this context, the editorial team strives for inclusive excellence; the belief that our mission to advance population health is facilitated by promoting diversity in who we are (representation), the scope of work, and how that work is achieved. Through these efforts we aim to create a more welcoming space to advance understanding of public health challenges, optimize the associated research efforts, harmonize research with the very communities we aim to benefit, and establish a sustainable pipeline of inclusion and representation for the journal’s future stewardship.

Please review the journal’s full EDI statement and a summary of the journal’s practices in support of equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Health Psychology 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 resolutionsopens in new window 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 welcomes submissions which feature Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and other historically marginalized sample populations. The journal particularly welcomes submissions which feature collaborative research models (e.g., community-based participatory research [CBPR]; see Collins, et al., 2018opens in new window) and study designs that address heterogeneity within diverse samples. Studies focused exclusively on BIPOC and other historically excluded populations are also welcome.

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

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

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

CRediT includes 14 contributor roles, as described below:

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

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

Authors 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 must 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 must disclose the year(s) of data collection in both the abstract and in the method section in order to appropriately contextualize the study.

Authors are encouraged to include a positionality statement in the author note. Positionality statements are intended to address potential author bias by transparently reporting how the identities of the authors relate to the research/article topic and to the identity of the participants, as well as the extent to which those identities are represented in the scientific record. The statement should be included in the author note and expanded upon in the Discussion section. See this example from Jovanova, et al. (2022):

• Sample positionality statement: “Mindful that our identities can influence our approach to science (Roberts, et al. 2020), the authors wish to provide the reader with information about our backgrounds. With respect to gender, when the manuscript was drafted, four authors self-identified as women and four authors as men. With respect to race, six authors self-identified as white, one as South Asian and one as East Asian.”

For more guidance on writing positionality statements, see Roberts, et al. (2020) and Hamby (2018).

The journal welcomes submissions that proactively challenge racism and other forms of oppression. In line with the APA Guidelines on Race and Ethnicity in Psychology (2019)opens in new window, authors are encouraged to include reflexive statements in the Discussion section, addressing the following questions.

• What are the policy implications of these findings?
• Could this research be misinterpreted or misused to negatively affect underrepresented groups? Does the research have the potential to cause harm to vulnerable groups? If so, how can this be addressed and mitigated?
• Does the design or framing of this research reinforce negative stereotypes about marginalized populations?
• What roles do the researcher(s)’ values and worldview play in the selection of this topic or design of the study?

Authors must state whether data, code, and study materials are posted to a trusted repository and, if so, how to access them, including their location and any limitations on use. If they cannot be made available, authors must state the legal or ethical reasons why they are not available. 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. 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.

In a subsection titled "Transparency and Openness" in the Methods 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 [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 [repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].

In a subsection of the discussion titled “Constraints on generality,” authors are encouraged to include a detailed discussion of the limits on generality (see Simons, Shoda, & Lindsay, 2017). 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.

Authors submitting manuscripts to Health Psychology must include a brief statement (2-3 sentences/70 words max) summarizing the public health significance/implications of their work. For example, this statement may describe how the current research advances some fundamental knowledge of health and disease, vulnerable populations, sheds light on hypothesized mechanisms, or contributes knowledge that may enhance prevention and health, contribute to illness management, or aid coping and recovery. Hyperlinks and URLs are not permitted in this description. The statement should be included within the manuscript on the abstract/keywords page and should be written clearly for the educated public.

All manuscripts submitted to Health Psychology undergo an initial editorial evaluation which may result in rejection without external peer review.

Manuscripts that are sent out for external peer review receive single-masked reviews. This means that the reviewers are anonymous, but the authors are not.

The manuscript’s title page should include the name and affiliation of every author. Identifying information should not be masked on the title page, in the Abstract or in body of the manuscript, or in citations or references. Masked manuscripts may be returned to the authors without review.

Tables should adhere to APA Style. 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.

Use Times or Symbol font or Microsoft’s Equation Editor for equations or formulas.

If possible, provide executable source code in an online-only supplement, not in the manuscript itself. If it is essential to include code in the manuscript, submit a separate file with the code exactly as you want it to appear. Use 8-point Courier New font and do not add any extra indents, line spaces, or line breaks. Segments >40 characters will be printed as images; shorter snippets of code will be typeset in Courier New and run with the rest of the text.

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.

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.

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

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.

All necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials, photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments) must be provided for accepted papers.  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

The APA Journals Publishing Resource Center provides further guidance for authors and reviewers.

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.