Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology

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

Submission

Beginning April 2012, the completion of the Author Checklist (PDF, 36KB) that signifies that authors have read this material and agree to adhere to the guidelines is now required. The checklist should follow the cover letter as part of the submission, or it can also be inserted into the manuscript file itself. Submissions lacking the checklist will be returned to the author as incomplete.

For masked review, make sure that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors' identity, 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 Project).

Submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal (.doc/.docx or .rtf format).

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7^th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual). APA Style and Grammar Guidelines for the 7^th edition are available.

Submit Manuscript

Submissions mailed to the editorial office will not be processed.

General correspondence may be directed to Kelly E. Dunn, editor.

In addition to complete addresses and phone numbers, please supply email addresses and fax numbers for all authors for potential use by the editorial office and, later, by the production office.

Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology^® publishes six types of manuscripts:

• original research reports (up to 4,500 words, excluding references)
• brief communications (up to 3,000 words, excluding references; no more than 2 total figures or tables)
• perspectives (up to 2,000 words, excluding references; no more than 2 total figures or tables)
• case reports (no more than 2,000 words, excluding references; only 1 figure or table)
• systematic reviews or meta-analyses (up to 5,000 words, excluding references)
• narrative or scoping reviews (up to 5,000 words, excluding references)

Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology does not accept comments, commentaries, or letters to the editor.

In recognition of the reality that institutional spam filters may capture files from APA and the Editorial Manager, please take the following steps to facilitate communication with our editorial office:

• Provide an alternative email address which we can use to contact you in the event of technical difficulties with email communication using your primary address
• Add "apa.org" to your list of "safe" addresses and consider asking your IT administrators to add it to their "white list"
• Contact Peer Review Coordinator Lorie Van Olst if you do not receive confirmation of your submission within three business days or an editorial decision letter within three months

Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology 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).

Editor’s Choice

Each issue of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology will honor one manuscript as the Editor’s Choice.

Selection criteria

The Editor’s Choice article will be selected based on an assessment of the following criteria. In addition to the editor’s own assessment of these criteria, information provided in the peer reviews (numerical ratings and comments) and the AEs’ decision letters will be used as data for selection.

• Diversity: Does the study contribute to understanding/shedding new light on clinical understanding/approaches for diverse groups of people? Does the study contribute to improving services for underserved populations?
• Innovation: Does the study lead to significantly new knowledge, ask unexamined questions, and/or use highly novel methods?
• Methodological rigor: Do the methods meet the highest level of methodological rigor considered gold standard for the particular field of study?
• Clinical significance/impact: Does the study have significant and direct clinical implications that can change/improve/increase services and/or client outcomes?

Selection process

When the editor prepares the table of contents each month, the editor will identify the article that they believe best meets the criteria. The editor will then ask for the AEs’ approval to move forward with the selected article. Approval must come from the majority (over 50%) of the AEs.

AEs who wish to nominate an article for Editor’s Choice are free to do so. The editor will consider this nomination in their selection review process.

Cover letter

To help with the review process, authors should provide up to five scientists who are qualified to review their manuscript without bias or conflict of interest. Please provide prospective reviewers' names, affiliations, academic rank, email address, complete mailing address, and phone number in the cover letter. Submissions lacking reviewer recommendations will be returned to the author as incomplete.

Title page

Include the corresponding author's email and mailing addresses; phone and fax numbers; and the names, degrees, and affiliations of all authors, as well as the number of figures and tables in the manuscript.

Abstract and keywords

All manuscripts must include an abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page. After the abstract, please supply up to five keywords or brief phrases.

Public significance statements

Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology are now required to provide 2–3 brief sentences regarding the relevance or public health significance of their study or review described in their manuscript. This description should be included within the manuscript on the abstract/keywords page.

The public significance statement (similar to the Relevance section of NIH grant submissions) summarizes the significance of the study's findings for a public audience in one to three sentences (approximately 30-70 words long). It should be written in language that is easily understood by both professionals and members of the lay public. This statement supports efforts to increase dissemination and usage of research findings by larger and more diverse audiences.

When an accepted paper is published, these sentences will be boxed beneath the abstract for easy accessibility. All such descriptions will also be published as part of the table of contents, as well as on the journal's web page. This new policy is in keeping with efforts to increase dissemination and usage by larger and diverse audiences.

Guidelines for writing a public significance statement

When writing the public significance statement, consider the following recommendations:

• Answer the following questions: What did the study find? Why are these findings important to the audience you are trying to reach (e.g., practitioners, policy makers, news media, or other parties)?
• Write the statement in language that is easily understood by people outside of your field. Avoid jargon or overly technical language. Avoid using acronyms in the statement, and if you do use them, define them.
• Ensure that the statement adequately represents the study's implications if read separately, without the abstract. For example, specifically refer to "patients with depression" rather than "these patients" or "behavioral interventions for bullying" rather than "these interventions."

Below are several public significance statements that appeared in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, the first APA journal to require public significance statements as a complement to the abstract. These examples are meant to aid you, the author, in writing your own statements; however, keep in mind that you may make different choices depending on factors such as the topic of the study, specific secondary audiences of the journal, and personal preferences and writing style.

Example 1: "This study strongly suggests that (description of a given psychosocial treatment) is an effective treatment for anxiety, but only if it is of mild to moderate severity. For persons with severe anxiety, additional treatments may be necessary."

Example 2: "Defining and Characterizing Differences in College Alcohol Intervention Efficacy: A Growth Mixture Modeling Application," by Henson, Pearson, and Carey (2015) http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0038897

This study suggests that there are distinct subgroups of college students defined by how they respond to alcohol intervention and that interventions need to target freshmen men and those who play drinking games. Although most students initially respond to interventions, most also show decay over the next 12 months, which suggests that we need to determine ways of improving the long-term effects of alcohol interventions.

Reporting standards

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

The JARS:

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

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

21-Word statement

Alternatively, or in addition to JARS, authors may use the “21-word statement,” for which manuscripts must 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.

Randomized clinical trials: Use of CONSORT reporting standards

Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology requires the use of the CONSORT reporting standards (i.e., a checklist and flow diagram) for any study identified as a randomized clinical trial, consistent with the policy established by the Publications and Communications Board of the American Psychological Association. CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) offers a standard way to improve the quality of such reports and to ensure that readers have the information necessary to evaluate the quality of a clinical trial.

Manuscripts that are identified/classified as randomized clinical trials are required to include a flow diagram of the progress through the phases of the trial and a checklist that identifies where in the manuscript the various criteria are addressed. (The checklist should be placed in an Appendix of the manuscript for review purposes.) When a study is not fully consistent with the CONSORT statement, the limitations should be acknowledged and discussed in the text of the manuscript.

For follow-up studies of previously published clinical trials, authors should submit a flow diagram of the progress through the phases of the trial and follow-up. The above checklist information should be completed to the extent possible, especially for the results and discussion sections of the manuscript.

Visit the CONSORT Statement Web site for more details and resources.

Author contributions statements using CRediT

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

Submitting authors will be asked to identify the contributions of all authors at initial submission according to this taxonomy. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the CRediT designations will be published as an Author Contributions Statement in the author note of the final article. All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before submission.

CRediT includes 14 contributor roles, as described below:

• Conceptualization : Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
• Data curation : Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
• 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.

Transparency and openness

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. 2015). Empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology must at least meet the “disclosure” level for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting and the "requirement" level for data citation and design and analysis transparency. 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 we follow JARS (Applebaum, 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.

Data, materials, and code

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 repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF), or authors can access a full list of other recommended repositories. 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 include a statement noting that they are not available. 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.

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 available by emailing the corresponding author.
• 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].

Preregistration of studies and analysis plans

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., OSF, 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. If any aspect of the study is preregistered, include the registry link in the method section.

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 may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material. Links in the method section should be replaced with an identifiable copy on acceptance.

We recognize that there may be good reasons to change a study or analysis plan after it has been preregistered, and thus encourage authors to do so when appropriate so long as all changes are clearly and transparently disclosed in the manuscript.

Disclosures and acknowledgments

Authors are now required to provide a Disclosures and Acknowledgements section. This section should be included on a separate page after the Abstract, as separate paragraphs for each of the points (do not number or provide headers). This section will be automatically incorporated into the online submission system and if the paper is accepted, will appear in the published journal article.

First, authors should state all sources of financial support for the conduct of the research (e.g., This research was supported by NIDA grant X). If the funding source was involved in any other aspects of the research (e.g., study design, analysis, interpretation, writing), then clearly state the role. If the funding source had no other involvement other than financial support, then simply state that the funding source had no other role other than financial support.

Second, a contributors statement should be included indicating that all authors contributed in a significant way to the manuscript and that all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Third, all authors are expected to provide a conflict of interest statement disclosing any real or potential conflict(s) of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationships with other organizations or pharmaceutical/biomedical companies that may inappropriately impact or influence the research and interpretation of the findings. If there are no conflicts of interest, this should be clearly stated.

Fourth, authors are encouraged to acknowledge the assistance or contribution of others in the endeavors of the research.

Fifth, authors who have posted their manuscripts to preprint archives prior to submission should include a link to the preprint.

Review policy

Authors may suggest up to five scientists who are qualified to review their manuscript without bias or conflict of interest. Send prospective reviewers' names, affiliations, academic rank, email address, complete mailing address, and phone number in your cover letter.

Manuscript preparation

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).

Articles about nonhuman animals should specify animals’ species as well as their sex; authors should not refer to nonhuman animals in terms of the human construct gender.

Review APA's Journal Manuscript Preparation Guidelines before submitting your article.

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

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 website.

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

Display equations

We strongly encourage you to use MathType (third-party software) or Equation Editor 3.0 (built into pre-2007 versions of Word) to construct your equations, rather than the equation support that is built into Word 2007 and Word 2010. Equations composed with the built-in Word 2007/Word 2010 equation support are converted to low-resolution graphics when they enter the production process and must be rekeyed by the typesetter, which may introduce errors.

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

• Go to the Text section of the Insert tab and select Object.
• Select MathType or Equation Editor 3.0 in the drop-down menu.

If you have an equation that has already been produced using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and you have access to the full version of MathType 6.5 or later, you can convert this equation to MathType by clicking on MathType Insert Equation. Copy the equation from Microsoft Word and paste it into the MathType box. Verify that your equation is correct, click File, and then click Update. Your equation has now been inserted into your Word file as a MathType Equation.

Use Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType only for equations or for formulas that cannot be produced as Word text using the Times or Symbol font.

Computer code

Because altering computer code in any way (e.g., indents, line spacing, line breaks, page breaks) during the typesetting process could alter its meaning, we treat computer code differently from the rest of your article in our production process. To that end, we request separate files for computer code.

In online supplemental material

We request that runnable source code be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit Supplementing Your Article With Online Material.

In the text of the article

If you would like to include code in the text of your published manuscript, please submit a separate file with your code exactly as you want it to appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. We will make an image of each segment of code in your article that exceeds 40 characters in length. (Shorter snippets of code that appear in text will be typeset in Courier New and run in with the rest of the text.) If an appendix contains a mix of code and explanatory text, please submit a file that contains the entire appendix, with the code keyed in 8-point Courier New.

Tables

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

Academic writing and English language editing services

Authors who feel that their manuscript may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing support prior to submission are encouraged to seek out such services at their host institutions, engage with colleagues and subject matter experts, and/or consider several vendors that offer discounts to APA authors.

Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service.

Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.

Submitting supplemental materials

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

References

List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the references section.

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review, 126(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126

Authored book

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

Chapter in an edited book

Balsam, K. F., Martell, C. R., Jones. K. P., & Safren, S. A. (2019). Affirmative cognitive behavior therapy with sexual and gender minority people. In G. Y. Iwamasa & P. A. Hays (Eds.), Culturally responsive cognitive behavior therapy: Practice and supervision (2nd ed., pp. 287–314). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000119-012

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.v8

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/

Wickham, H. et al., (2019). Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43), 1686, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686

All data, program code and other methods must be cited in the text and listed in the References section.

Figures

Preferred formats for graphics files are TIFF and JPG, and preferred format for vector-based files is EPS. Graphics downloaded or saved from web pages are not acceptable for publication. Multipanel figures (i.e., figures with parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.) should be assembled into one file. When possible, please place symbol legends below the figure instead of to the side.

Resolution

• All color line art and halftones: 300 DPI
• Black and white line tone and gray halftone images: 600 DPI

Line weights

• Adobe Photoshop images
  • Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels
  • Grayscale images: 4 pixels
• Adobe Illustrator Images
  • Stroke weight: 0.5 points

APA offers authors the option to publish their figures online in color without the costs associated with print publication of color figures.

The same caption will appear on both the online (color) and print (black and white) versions. To ensure that the figure can be understood in both formats, authors should add alternative wording (e.g., “the red (dark gray) bars represent”) as needed.

For authors who prefer their figures to be published in color both in print and online, original color figures can be printed in color at the editor's and publisher's discretion provided the author agrees to pay:

• $900 for one figure
• An additional $600 for the second figure
• An additional $450 for each subsequent figure

Permissions

Authors of accepted papers must obtain and provide to the editor on final acceptance all necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials (or portions thereof), photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments).

On advice of counsel, APA may decline to publish any image whose copyright status is unknown.

• Download Permissions Alert Form (PDF, 13KB)

Publication policies

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

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

See also APA Journals^® Internet Posting Guidelines.

APA requires authors to reveal any possible conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of research (e.g., financial interests in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research).

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

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. Posting of a manuscript to a preprint archive (like PsyArXiv) prior to submission is permitted for authors submitting manuscripts to Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology; preprints should be disclosed in the cover letter, and links should be included in the disclosures and acknowledgments section.

Ethical Principles

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

In addition, APA Ethical Principles specify that "after research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release" (Standard 8.14).

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

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

• Download Certification of Compliance With APA Ethical Principles Form (PDF, 26KB)

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

Other information

See APA’s Publishing Policies page for more information on publication policies, including information on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors, author name changes after publication, the use of generative artificial intelligence, funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures, duplicate publication, data publication and reuse, and preprints.

Visit the Journals Publishing Resource Center for more resources for writing, reviewing, and editing articles for publishing in APA journals.

Editor

Kelly Dunn, PhD, MBA
University of Maryland, United States

Associate editor

Jin H. Yoon, PhD
UT Health Houston, United States

Editorial fellows

Chris Kelly, PhD
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States

C. Austin Zamarripa, PhD
Johns Hopkins University, United States

Consulting editors

Samuel F. Acuff, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard University, United States

Michael T. Amlung, PhD
University of Kansas

Alexa A. Anderson (Lopez), PhD
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, United States

Caroline Arout, PhD
Columbia University, United States

Elizabeth R. Aston, PhD
Brown University, United States

Matthew L. Banks, PhD
Virginia Commonwealth University, United States

Mariel S. Bello, PhD
Brown University, United States

Cecilia Bergeria, PhD
Johns Hopkins University, United States

Meredith Berry, PhD
University of Florida, United States

Laura Brandt, PhD
The City College of New York, United States

Gregory Thomas Collins, PhD
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, United States

Ziva D. Cooper, PhD
University of California Los Angeles, United States

Christa L. Corley, PhD
University of Kentucky, United States

Lara Coughlin, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Paul W. Czoty, PhD
Wake Forest School of Medicine, United States

Joao P. De Aquino, MD
Yale University, United States

Suzette Evans, PhD
New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Medical Center, United States

Erin Ferguson, PhD
Brown University, United States

Lindsey K. Galbo-Thomma, PhD
University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, United States

Albert Garcia-Romeu, PhD
Johns Hopkins University, United States

Nioud (Neo) Gebru, PhD
Brown University, United States

Cassandra D. Gipson-Reichardt, PhD
University of Kentucky, United States

Alba González-Roz, PhD
University of Oviedo, Spain

Jillian Hardee, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Brian D. Kiluk, PhD
Yale School of Medicine, United States

Matthew Kirkpatrick, PhD
University of Southern California, United States

Bethea (Annie) Kleykamp, PhD
University of Maryland, United States

Mikhail N. Koffarnus, PhD
University of Kentucky College of Medicine, United States

Suky Martinez, PhD
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States

Ian A. Mendez, PhD
The University of Texas at El Paso School of Pharmacy, United States

Chung Jung Mun, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Lorenz S. Neuwirth, PhD
State University of New York Old Westbury, United States

Raina D. Pang , PhD
University of Southern California, United States

Derek C. Phillips, PhD
Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center, United States

Kirsten Elin Smith, PhD, MSW
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States

Justin C. Strickland, PhD
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States

William Stoops, PhD
University of Kentucky College of Medicine, United States

Michael A. Taffe, PhD
University of California San Diego, United States

D. Andrew Tompkins, MD, MPH
University of California San Francisco, United States

Antover P. Tuliao, PhD
Texas Tech University, United States

Orrin D. Ware, PhD, MPH, MSW
University of North Carolina, United States

Yukiko Washio, PhD, BCBA-D
RTI International, United States

Elise Weerts, PhD
Johns Hopkins University, United States

Abstracting and indexing services providing coverage of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology^®

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• Chemical Abstracts
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• Embase (Excerpta Medica)
• Journal Citations Report: Social Sciences Edition
• MEDLINE
• OCLC
• PsycInfo
• PsycLine
• SafetyLit
• Science Citation Index Expanded
• SCOPUS
• Social Sciences Citation Index
• Studies on Women and Gender Abstracts

• Therapeutic and Abuse-Related Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids:

  Special issue of the APA journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 27, No. 4, August 2019. The articles highlight recent human and rodent psychopharmacology research on cannabis and cannabis derivatives.

• Animal Models of Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Substance Use Disorders:

  Special issue of the APA journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2017. This issue presents 6 original research reports describing the use of mice and rats to model neurodevelopmental, depressive, anxiety, and substance use disorders.

• The Past, Present, and Future of Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse:

  Special issue of the APA journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 24, No. 4, August 2016. The issue contains scholarly contributions that describe the history of APA Division 28 (Society for Psychopharmacology and Substance Use), as well as research highlighting the scientific, clinical, and translational contributions of division members.

• Sex Differences in Drug Abuse:

  Special issue of the APA journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 23, No. 4, August 2015. The articles represent a broad range of drug classes and approaches spanning preclinical research to treatment to better understand the role of sex differences in drug abuse.

• Psychopharmacology of Attention:

  Special issue of the APA journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 21, No. 5, October 2013. The articles not only provide novel data on the relationships among attention, alcohol use, and other drug use, but also offer new insights that could inform development of potential pharmacotherapies for ADHD.

• Perspectives on Prescription Drug Abuse and Relief of Pain:

  Special issue of the APA journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 16, No. 5, October 2008. Includes articles about chronic pain and drug self-administration; evaluation of prescription opioids; sex differences in effects of opioids; strategies to optimize pain management while minimizing drug abuse; opioid misuse and chronic pain treatment; and treatment of addiction to prescription opioids.

Transparency and Openness Promotion

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. 2015). The TOP Guidelines cover eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting that can be followed by journals and authors at three levels of compliance.

For example:

• Level 1: Disclosure—The article must disclose whether or not the materials are posted to a trusted repository.
• Level 2: Requirement—The article must share materials via a trusted repository when legally and ethically permitted (or disclose the legal and/or ethical restriction when not permitted).
• Level 3: Verification—A third party must verify that the standard is met.

Effective July 1, 2021, empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology must, at a minimum, meet Level 1 (Disclosure) for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting as well as Level 2 (Requirement) for data citation and design and analysis transparency. Authors should include a subsection in their methods description titled “Transparency and Openness.” This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines.

The list below summarizes the minimal TOP requirements of the journal. Please refer to the Center for Open Science TOP guidelines for details, and contact the editor (William W. Stoops, PhD) with any further questions. APA recommends sharing data, materials, and code via trusted repositories (e.g., APA’s repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF)). 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.

We encourage investigators to preregister their studies and to share protocols and analysis plans prior to conducting the research. Clinical trials are studies that prospectively evaluate the effects of interventions on health outcomes, including psychological health. Clinical trials must be registered before enrolling participants on ClinicalTrials.gov or another primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). There are many available preregistration forms (e.g., the APA Preregistration for Quantitative Research in Psychology template, ClininalTrials.gov, or other preregistration templates available via OSF). Completed preregistration forms should be posted on a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSF, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network).

The following list presents the eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting, the TOP level required by Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, and a brief description of the journal's policy.

• Citation: Level 2, Requirement—All data, program code, and other methods developed by others must be cited in the text and listed in the References section.
• Data Transparency: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether the raw and/or processed data on which study conclusions are based are posted to a trusted repository and, if so, how to access them.
• Analytic Methods (Code) Transparency: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether computer code or syntax needed to reproduce analyses in an article is posted to a trusted repository and, if so, how to access it.
• Research Materials Transparency: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether materials described in the Method section are posted to a trusted repository and, if so, how to access them.
• Design and Analysis Transparency (Reporting Standards): Level 2, Requirement—Article must comply with APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards. Alternatively or additionally, manuscripts must 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.
• Study Preregistration: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether the study design and (if applicable) hypotheses of any of the work reported was preregistered and, if so, how to access it. Authors may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material or may provide a link after acceptance.
• Analysis Plan Preregistration: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether any of the work reported preregistered an analysis plan and, if so, how to access it. Authors may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material or may provide a link after acceptance.
• Replication: Level 1, Disclosure—The journal publishes replications.

Other open science initiatives

• Open Science badges: Not offered
• Public significance statements: Offered
• Author contribution statements using CRediT: Required
• Registered Reports: Not published
• Replications: Published

Explore open science at APA .

Inclusive reporting standards 

• Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (recommended)
• Author contribution roles using CRediT (recommended)
• Reflexivity (recommended)
• Positionality statements (recommended)
• Data sharing and data availability statements (recommended)
• Impact statements (recommended)
• Year(s) of data collection (required)
• Participant sample descriptions (required)
• Sample justifications (required)
• Constraints on Generality (COG) statements (recommended)
• Inclusive reference lists (recommended)

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

Pathways to authorship and editorship 

Editorial fellowships

Editorial fellowships help early-career psychologists gain firsthand experience in scholarly publishing and editorial leadership roles. This journal offers an editorial fellowship program for early-career psychologists from historically excluded communities.

Other EDI offerings

ORCID reviewer recognition

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

Masked peer review

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

Editor Spotlight

• Read an interview with Kelly E. Dunn, PhD, MBA

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