Guidelines for contributors

Most articles in History of Psychology are approximately 10,000 words including notes and references. The maximum length is 13,000 words including notes and references.

Authors are expected to write clearly and concisely and avoid repetition. Articles may be edited for length, even those that fall within the word limit.

History of Psychology is an historical journal. Familiarize yourself with the journal’s range, purpose, and intended audience before you submit your manuscript. It is a good idea to read some articles in the journal to see how historical articles are constructed: the kinds of questions they ask, the kinds of arguments they make, and the standards of evidence they employ.

Consider carefully whether your manuscript is comparable to the articles published in History of Psychology. The main audience of the journal consists of professional historians and psychologists with specialized historical interests.

Our readership is primarily interested in original historical arguments and/or new, archive based historical investigations. Broad, survey-type reviews written for a general audience are unlikely to be published.

The history of psychology is a professional, scholarly field in its own right. A number of journals are devoted to it, among them The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, History of the Human Sciences, and Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society.

In your manuscript, you need to situate your work historiographically, that is, explain its relationship to the existing scholarly literature on the topic. This is your opportunity to explain what new and original insights you are contributing to the historical understanding of your topic.

If historians have not treated your topic, explain why not and justify your attention to it. A manuscript that contains no historiography (i.e. no references to articles from History of Psychology and/or related historical journals) is unlikely to be published.

If you are new to the history of psychology as a scholarly field, you might consider presenting a paper at one of the field’s many scholarly conferences.

Cheiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences; ESHHS: The European Society for the History of the Human Sciences; and the History of Science Society, which sponsors an interest group called the Forum for the History of the Human Sciences.

Each of these conferences holds an annual meeting. Division 26 of the APA, the Society for the History of Psychology, of which History of Psychology is the official journal, is also a meeting place for those with historical interests.

The feedback you receive at these conferences will strengthen your manuscript and improve its chances of acceptance.

Authors are strongly encouraged to edit papers for clarity, organization and readability before submission. History of Psychology reviewers are reading your manuscript mainly for content.

Minor grammatical errors will likely be corrected, but reviewers cannot be expected to make detailed revisions to organization or expression. Poor grammar and awkward sentence structure will prevent your ideas from coming through clearly.

History of Psychology welcomes and encourages submissions from international authors. If English is not your first language, consider having your manuscript professionally edited before you submit by someone with considerable English-language editorial experience.

Historical articles are usually organized into three parts: an introduction that presents the argument, a main body that develops and supports the argument with evidence, and a conclusion that sums it up.

Each of these sections should be properly developed and well proportioned. For example, if your manuscript is 40 pages long, your introduction and conclusion should not consist of a single paragraph nor should they take up more half the manuscript.

Lengths of introductions and conclusions will vary, but as a general rule, most introductions and conclusions in History of Psychology research articles are approximately 4-5 substantive paragraphs each.

The introduction is an extraordinarily important part of any article, especially an historical one: this is where you grab your reader’s interest and explain why your topic is so important and exciting. You’re giving your reader a reason to keep reading.

The introduction needs to accomplish several things, usually in this order:

• Paragraph 1: Set the scene. What/where/when/whom are you researching? What is the problem area you are working in and why is it important? What is the larger context for your inquiry? Readers of History of Psychology may not know much or anything about your main historical actor/s and/or events: supply enough background so that we can understand what you are talking about.
• Paragraph 2: Ask your question. What is your central, specific historical problem or question? This paragraph narrows down the topic area of the paper.
• Paragraph 3: Answer your question. What is the argument you present in answer to the question? And what primary source evidence will you use to support and develop the argument? Sum up, in one paragraph, the main contributions of your paper given the context you have established in paragraphs 1 and 2. What is the general approach that you take? Why are your specific results significant? (Unlike scientific papers, which don’t present the main argument until the "discussion" section at the end, historical articles present their main argument right up front.)
• Paragraph 4: Situate yourself within the relevant historiography. How are you building on others' work and how are you departing from it? What are you doing that is new and original, and different from what other scholars have already done? How are you contributing to the scholarly conversation on your topic?
• Paragraph 5: Set your agenda. "The remainder of this paper is structured as follows…" Give the reader a roadmap for the rest of the paper. Your paper will probably seek to accomplish several aims: set out these aims in the order that you address them in the paper.

Each paragraph should have a strong opening sentence that encapsulates the idea of that paragraph. There should be transitions between paragraphs and between sections in your essay.

Be consistent with use of verb tenses: past tense should be used when speaking of the past.

Consult the submission procedures outlined online.

Double-space your entire manuscript, including text, block quotations, tables, and notes. Use APA or Chicago Manual style for referencing.

History of Psychology practices double-blind peer review. Authors should therefore take steps to preserve their anonymity. The author's name and affiliation should appear only on a separate title page.

Remove any identifying information from your file’s metadata, such as the first page of the manuscript and the running heads (in Microsoft Word, under the File menu, select "properties"). Do not reveal your identity in the notes through the use of the first person.

The solicitation of qualified outside readers and the gathering of evaluations often take two to three months and sometimes more. We appreciate your patience with the process.