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 platform, and the only official journal website is through APA. If you believe you interacted with a fraudulent website for this journal, please email APA Journalsopens in new window. Review our resource for authors for more information on identifying predatory journals.

To submit to the editorial office of Susan J. Simonian, PhD, ABPP, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word (.docx) or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file.

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

Most subsequent communication can be accomplished through the email function in the Editorial Manager^® system. If using other means of communication, please include the manuscript number (e.g., 2021-0123).

Submit Manuscriptopens in new window

Susan J. Simonian, PhD, ABPP
College of Charleston, United States

General correspondence may be directed to Lorie Van Olst, the journal’s peer review coordinator.

For potential use by the editorial office and later by the production office, the corresponding author should supply:

• email address
• mailing address
• phone number
• fax number
• affiliation

For all other authors, please supply names, email addresses, and affiliations.

Submit manuscripts in either Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) and keep a copy of the manuscript to guard against loss.

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice^® 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).

Each issue of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice will highlight one manuscript with the designation as an “Editor’s Choice” paper. Selection is based on the recommendations of the associate editors, based on the paper’s potential impact to the field, the distinction of expanding the contributors to, or the focus of, our science, or its discussion of an important future direction for science.

The editor will inform the associate editors when developing the table of contents for each issue. The editor and associate editors will be invited to nominate an article to be selected. The group will consider the nominations and select one article for the Editor’s Choice designation. If possible, selection will be by consensus. If the group cannot reach consensus, the article with the most support will be selected. In the event of a tie, the editor will select the article for that issue.

A standard serif font (e.g., Times New Roman) of 12 points (no smaller) should be used and margins should be set to at least 1 inch on all sides. The entire paper (text, references, table and figure notes, block quotes, etc.) must be double spaced and written in the style described in the APA Publication Manual. For exceptions to double spacing (e.g., table body, equations, some footnotes, etc.) please refer to the Manual. Manuscripts should not exceed 30 pages (including cover page, abstract, text, references, tables, and figures). However, if your material requires additional pages, please consult Professional Psychology: Research and Practice's editor, Susan J. Simonianopens in new window. If this is a revision, please submit the manuscript number with all correspondence.

For general guidelines to style, authors should study articles previously published in the journal. They should note that the readership of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice consists of psychologists from a broad range of subspecialties engaged mainly in practice, and some in training careers.

The introduction of the manuscript should be written to anchor the topic in the experiential world of these readers. The final section should be an implications and applications section, which provides concrete and usable information that can be used in everyday clinical practice or in training programs. View additional writing guidelines. Those needing assistance with English language or academic writing may find information about several available editing services. These services may provide discounts for those submitting manuscripts to APA journals.

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice accepts brief reports that may not meet requirements for full-length manuscripts because of limited focus or applicability; innovative work with preliminary findings in need of replication or stronger empirical evidence; or replications studies of existing work applied to new populations, problems, or settings. Replication submissions should include “A Replication of XX Study” in the subtitle of the manuscript as well as in the abstract. Brief reports should not exceed 16 manuscript pages, including abstract, references, tables, and figures. Brief reports cannot focus on material previously published, and authors must agree not to submit a full report of the study to another journal while the brief report is under review or after it is published in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice .

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice uses a masked reviewing system.

In order to permit anonymous review, all authors' names, affiliations, and contact information should be removed from the manuscript itself and included instead in the submittal letter. Every effort should be made by the authors to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to their identities, including grant numbers, names of institutions providing IRB approval, self-citations, and links to online repositories for data, materials, code, or preregistrations (e.g., Create a View-only Link for a Projectopens in new window).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Professional Psychology is committed to improving equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in scientific research, in line with the  APA Publishing EDI frameworkopens in new window 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, Professional 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.

The method section of each empirical report must contain a detailed description of the study participants, which should include (but is 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 should discuss the diversity of their study samples and the generalizability of their findings (see also the constraints on generality section below).

Authors should also 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.

In the Discussion, preferably in a subsection titled “Constraints on generality,” authors should include a detailed discussion of the limits on generality of their research (see Simons, Shoda, & Lindsay, 2017opens in new window for discussion and examples). In this section, authors should identify and justify the target populations for their findings, and address limits on generality not only for participants but for materials, procedures, and context. They should also specify which methods they believe could be varied without affecting the result and which should remain constant for the purposes of replication.

Authors are encouraged to add a positionality statement from each individual author or collectively, from the group of authors. 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)opens in new window:

• Sample positionality statement: “Mindful that our identities can influence our approach to science (Roberts, et al. 2020)opens in new window, 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)opens in new window and Hamby (2018)opens in new window.

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 for professional practice?
• 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?

Research has shown that there is often a racial/ethnic and gender imbalance in article reference lists, and that Black women’s work is disproportionately not credited or cited as often as White authors’ work (Kwon, 2022opens in new window). Authors are strongly encouraged to ensure their citations are fully representative by both gender and racial identity before submitting and during the manuscript revision process. Authors are encouraged to evaluate the race and gender of the authors in their reference lists (see this open-source code by Zhou, et al., 2020opens in new window, that authors can use to predict the gender and race of the authors in their reference lists) and to report the results in a citation diversity statement in the author note or Discussion section of the manuscript.

See Dworkin, et al. (2020)opens in new window’s sample citation diversity statement:

“Citation Diversity Statement. Recent work in neuroscience and other fields has identified a bias in citation practices such that papers from women and other minorities are under-cited relative to the number of such papers in the field (Caplar et al., 2017, Chakravartty et al., 2018, Dion et al., 2018, Dworkin et al., 2020, Maliniak et al., 2013, Thiem et al., 2018). Here, we sought to proactively consider choosing references that reflect the diversity of the field in thought, gender, race, geography, seniority, and other factors. We used automatic classification of gender based on the first names of the first and last authors (Dworkin et al., 2020, Zhou et al., 2020), with possible combinations including man/man, man/woman, woman/man, and woman/woman. Code for this classification is open source and available online (Zhou et al., 2020). We regret that our current methodology is limited to consideration of gender as a binary variable. Excluding self-citations to the first and last authors of our current paper, the references contain 12.5% man/man, 25% man/woman, 25% woman/man, 37.5% woman/woman, and 0% unknown categorization. We look forward to future work that could help us to better understand how to support equitable practices in science.”

APA endorses the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines by a community working group in conjunction with the Center for Open Science (Nosek et al. 2015opens in new window). Effective July 1, 2021, empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to Professional Psychology: Research and Practice must at least meet the “disclosure” level for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting. 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:

• This article follows the JARS reporting standards (Kazak, 2018). Analysis code and research materials are available at [stable link to repository]. Data are available to qualified investigators who follow the procedures for data access specified by [repository such as ICPSR]. We used MAXQDA 2020 (VERBI Software, 2019) for data analysis. This study’s design and its analysis were not preregistered.
• This article follows the JARS reporting standard (Kazak, 2018). Analysis code and research materials are available at [stable link to repository]. Data are the property of the institution where they were gathered and are not available for release. Data were analyzed using R, version 4.0.0 (R Core Team, 2020). This study’s design was pre-registered at clinicaltrials.gov (identifier NCT00287391). Its analysis plan was not pre-registered.

Links to preregistrations and data, code, and materials should also be included in the author note.

Authors must state whether data and study materials are available and, if so, where to access them. Recommended repositories include APA’s repositoryopens in new window on the Open Science Framework (OSF), or authors can access a full list of other recommended repositoriesopens in new window.

In both the author note and 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 available, and, if so, where to access it.

For example:

• Data are available from [the author; XX Hospital].
• Data may be requested from [XX clinical/educational institution].
• To protect participant privacy given the nature of the information gathered for this study, data are not available for release.
• 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 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 [repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].

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 the research (e.g., ClinicalTrials.govopens in new window, the Preregistration for Quantitative Research in Psychologyopens in new window template, or the Qualitative Preregistration templateopens in new window) via a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSFopens in new window, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network).

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 and the author note.

For example:

• This study’s design was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study’s design and hypotheses were preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study’s analysis plan was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study was not preregistered.

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

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

Double-space all copy. Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Manual. Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website.

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

Please submit a Public Significance Statement: a short statement of 1-2 sentences written in plain English for the educated public. This text should summarize the article’s findings and why they are important (e.g., understanding human thought, feeling, and behavior and/or to assisting with solutions to psychological or societal problems). This article feature allows authors greater control over how their work will be interpreted by key audiences – practitioners, policy makers, news media, members of the public, etc. Please refer to Guidance for Translational Abstracts and Public Significance Statements to help you write this text.

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

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

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

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

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

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

In online supplemental material

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

In the text of the article

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

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

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

Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service. Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.

APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the APA PsycArticles^® database.

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

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

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review, 126(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126opens in new window

Authored book

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

Chapter in an edited book

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

Data set citation

Alegria, M., Jackson, J. S., Kessler, R. C., & Takeuchi, D. (2016). Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001–2003 [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8opens in new window

Software/Code citation

Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package.  Journal of Statistical Software, 36(3), 1–48. https://www.jstatsoft.org/v36/i03/opens in new window

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

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

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice occasionally publishes commentaries and responses to commentaries when these manuscripts provide educational value to journal readers. Editors are under no obligation to publish these materials.

In general, commentaries are not encouraged unless they contain educational value. Commentaries should be based on data, theory, or existing literature. Commentaries should be respectful in tone, and must not be personal or harsh. They should be approximately half the length of the manuscript on which the commentary is based, including title page, references, and tables, and figures. Commentaries are sent out for peer review. If accepted for publication, the authors of the original article will be invited to respond to the commentary, and both the commentary and response will be published simultaneously. Except in very unusual circumstances, that will end the discussion in this journal. Commentaries should be titled as “Commentary on [insert author last name(s) of article being commented on]’s + [insert title of article being commented on].”

If a comment is accepted for publication, efforts will be made to contact the author of the original article on which the commentary was based, and to invite the original author to respond. A time limit for responding will be set, typically 4–6 weeks after the author is invited to respond. Replies to commentaries should be no longer than the commentary itself, including title page, references, tables, and figures. Replies must be respectful in tone, and must not be personal or harsh. Replies are sent out for peer review. If accepted for publication, the commentary and reply will be published simultaneously. Except in very unusual circumstances, that will end the discussion in this journal. Replies should be titled as “Reply to [insert last name(s) of commentary author(s)]’s + [insert title of commentary being replied to].”

Tables should adhere to APA Styleopens in new window. Use Word’s Insert Table function to create tables, and do not insert tabs or extra spaces to align columns as this will create problems when the table is typeset.

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

Resolution 

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

Line weights 

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

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

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

Color figure fees

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

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

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

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

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

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

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

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

In online supplemental material

Runnable source code should be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit supplementing your article with online material.

In the text of the article

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

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

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

• Download Permissions Alert Form (PDF, 13KB)opens in new window

APA holds policies that apply to all journals published. These include policies on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors; author name changes after publication; the use of generative artificial intelligence; funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures; duplicate publication; data publication and reuse; and preprints. Please also refer to individual journal submission guidance for specific practices and requirements for manuscript submission.

A key convention in the publication of research is the peer review process, in which the quality and potential contribution of each manuscript is evaluated by one's peers in the scientific community. Like other scientific journals, APA journals utilize a peer review process to guide manuscript selection and publication decisions.

In light of changing patterns of scientific knowledge dissemination, APA requires authors to provide information on prior dissemination of the data and narrative interpretations of the data/research appearing in the manuscript (e.g., if some or all were presented at a conference or meeting, posted on a listserv, shared on a website, including academic social networks like ResearchGate, etc.). This information (2–4 sentences) must be provided as part of the author note.

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

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

APA Journals aims to address systemic inequities and bias, promote equitable opportunities for researchers, and foster an inclusive environment within the psychological research and scholarly publishing communities, representative of the wide array of people that psychology consists of and serves. Please refer to individual journal submission guidance for specific EDI practices and requirements for manuscript submission.

The APA Journals™ Program is committed to publishing transparent, rigorous research; improving reproducibility in science; and aiding research discovery. Open science practices vary across subfields and per editor discretion, and APA Publishing supports all efforts to improve openness and transparency, especially as they improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. Please refer to individual journal submission guidance for specific OS practices and requirements for manuscript submission.

The APA Journals Office supports authors’ choices on how to publish their work. We are committed to offering options that we believe comply with most funder and institutional requirements and support both self-archiving (“green”) and APC (paid for via an article processing charge and also known as “gold”) Open Access options. Submitting a manuscript for peer review is free of charge.

APA’s current policies on generative AI include:

• When a generative AI model is used in the drafting of a manuscript for an APA publication, the use of AI must be disclosed in the methods section and cited.
• AI cannot be named as an author on an APA scholarly publication.

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

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

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

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

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

APA expects authors to make their data available if asked during the editorial process and for at least five years after the date of publication.

If the manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author is required to sign and submit a Certification of Compliance with APA Ethical Principles (PDF, 26KB).opens in new window

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

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