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.

Qualitative Psychology is now using a software system to screen submitted content for similarity with other published content. The system compares each submitted manuscript against a database of 25+ million scholarly publications, 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). A similarity report will be generated by the system and provided to the Qualitative Psychology Editorial office for review immediately upon submission.

To submit to the editorial office of Heidi Levitt, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word or Open Office format.

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7^th edition and in compliance with the Journal Article Reporting Standards – Qualitative (PDF, 163KB)opens in new window. Manuscripts should 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, and please see the Journal Article Reporting Standards for Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (PDF, 232KB)opens in new window.

You can read the editor's guidance for submitting to Qualitative Psychology in their editorial on PsycNetopens in new window. Authors interested in learning more about our journal can also see a special section focused on the first decade of Qualitative Psychology in Volume 10, Issue 3opens in new window.

Submit Manuscriptopens in new window

Qualitative inquiry is relatively unbounded and affords a great deal of opportunity for creativity and originality. Thus, the editorship of the journal is going to specify general rather than rigid criteria for evaluation of submissions and will endeavor to stay open to novel approaches.

Nevertheless, there are some criteria that we'd like to outline in order to ensure that the articles published in Qualitative Psychology are meritorious and of the highest quality. Articles will be evaluated according to the below criteria.

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

• Does the article advance our understanding of qualitative inquiry in terms of conceptualization or approach?
• Does the article position itself within approaches to the philosophy of science, interpretation theory, or epistemology?
• Does the article lay out postulates or hypotheses that lend themselves to further investigation through qualitative inquiry and/or additional theoretical analysis?
• Does the article adequately engage with existing literature?

• Is the topic meaningful? Is the presentation persuasive and illuminating? Will readers be enlightened on the topic by this article? Does the work advance psychological understanding?
• Is there adequate conceptualization (as opposed to simple description or reporting of themes)? Are there larger psychological questions addressed beyond reporting thematic description of a particular group of people?
• Has relevant other literature been joined? Is the relationship between this study and previous studies explicit?
• Has the mode of inquiry been explicated in detail so the reader can judge whether it was adequate and appropriate for the issues in question? This includes some discussion of the procedures of the work, and the processes of analysis and interpretation, and of how ethical challenges were met.
• Has the researcher taken into reflexive account his or her own role in the inquiry? Are assumptions and biases recognized?
• Does this work engage with methodological questions or debates? For some studies, the researcher might explicitly argue for the value of using a methodology that is different from the methods typically used to study this topic. In other cases, the researcher might explain how his or her study's design or findings further develop (or even challenge) some aspect of the qualitative approach it employs.
• Are interpretations well-grounded in presentation of data?
• Is there evidence that the researcher was tolerant of ambiguity, searched for alternative explanations, and considered negative instances? Is broader relevance considered?
• Is the contribution substantial in offering a sophisticated understanding of some aspect of human experience? Is this understanding deeply grounded in some stated perspective?
• Is the article well-written, thoughtfully shaped, sufficiently complex and engaging? Does the presentation invite further discussion?

As Qualitative Psychology will be published online as well as in print format, we strongly encourage the use of voice and video files (used with appropriate disguise and permission) to document your study.

Authors should review the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standardsopens in new window (JARS) for quantitativeopens in new window, qualitativeopens in new window, and mixed methodsopens in new window. 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.

JARS-Quantopens in new window offers guidance to researchers using quantitative methods that may be used in research designs such as descriptive analyses, correlational analyses, quasi-experimental analyses, and experimental analyses. These 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-Qualopens in new window offers guidance to researchers using qualitative methods that may be used in research designs such as narrative data, grounded theory, phenomenological, critical, discursive, performative, ethnographic, consensual qualitative, case study, psychobiography, and thematic analysis approaches. These JARS:

• guide researchers to include a description of the researchers’ backgrounds and perspectives in approaching the study and how their prior understandings of the phenomenon were managed;
• provide guidance to support a description of all recruitment and data selection processes as well as data collection and data-analytic strategies used; and
• encourage a discussion of the ways that procedures used enhanced or compromised the methodological integrity of the findings.

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

JARS-Mixedopens in new window offers guidance to researchers using both quantitative and qualitative methods within a study. These JARS:

• guide authors to follow the set of JARS that is appropriate for each component of the study; and
• guide authors to explicitly discuss the value of using a mixed method approach through the reporting of study aims, methods, findings, and discussion.

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 misused to cause harm to members of historically excluded groups.
• For more, see the Guidance for Authors sections of the table (PDF, 184KB)opens in new window.

Qualitative Psychology supports equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in its practices. Since its inception, our journal has had a history of valuing critical, feminist, anti-racist, critical disability, anti-colonial, multicultural, queer, epistemically diverse, and participatory forms of qualitative research. These forms of research center the voices and experiences of under-represented and minoritized communities and individuals and further a socially just psychology. We welcome submissions to our journal from these perspectives, especially those that attend to the unique challenges and issues in conducting qualitative research from these stances and with disenfranchised people.

Please see the special section and issue proposal guidelines for detailed information on proposing special sections.

Double-space all copy. If specific participants are discussed in the article, please refer to them with names rather than initials.

Use pseudonyms unless there is some reason to use actual names and you have written permission to do so.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

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

Authored book

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

Chapter in an edited book

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

Data set citation

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

Software/Code citation

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

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

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

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

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

Resolution 

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

Line weights 

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

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

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

Color figure fees

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

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

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

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

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

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

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

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

In online supplemental material

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

In the text of the article

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

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

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

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

For full details on publication policies, including use of Artificial Intelligence tools, please see APA Publishing Policies. Also refer to guidance from the Qualitative Psychology editorial board on usage of AI in qualitative research.

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)opens in new window

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). This said, the sharing of qualitative data may violate other ethical standards held dear by psychologists, such as protecting confidentiality or our responsibility to protecting the decisions of participants in deciding with whom they would like to share their data. For instance, participants may decide deliberately to share data with an investigator who is anti-racist or LGBTQ+ affirming and this should not be taken to imply that they wish to share their data with any researchers who they have not vetted.

Also, sharing data may not advance either scientific or verification purposes with qualitative data. The act of de-identifying data can remove contextual factors that are critical for the interpretation of findings and lead them not to be interpretable. Many qualitative methods use epistemological approaches that recognize that the methodological expertise, engagement with participants, and content knowledge of the investigator is critical for interpretation. For these reasons, it may not be reasonable to expect a researcher to undergo the extensive process of de-identifying data in order to share them with another competent researcher outside of the study team.

In contrast, qualitative methods have other processes that can be used to verify findings. Manuscripts typically include many quotations from text or other data sources and illustrate the process of analysis for each of the main findings. In this way, the evaluation of rigor can be conducted directly from the manuscript being submitted by a competent qualitative researcher.

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 participants, human or animal, or to describe the details of treatment. Authors must also state that they have permission to use any interview material, voice or video samples obtained from their participants and have sufficiently disguised material to assure anonymity (unless they have written permission not to do so).

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

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 emailingopens in new window or calling the APA Ethics Office (202-336-5930). You may also read "Ethical Principles," December 1992, American Psychologist, Vol. 47, pp. 1597–1611.

In the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, authors can find statements of cautions that indicate times when sharing data from qualitative projects may be both unethical and not useful in advancing science. Authors are encouraged to review these cautions to support them to make ethical decisions to share qualitative data.

Prior to the submission of a manuscript that is co-authored, all co-authors are expected to have agreed to have the manuscript submitted and to agree with the authorship order listed on the paper. It is the ethical responsibility of the first author to ensure this before submission.

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.