Rehabilitation Psychology

Please follow the submission guidelines detailed below. 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.

Note that authors are also required to adhere to the appropriate reporting guidelines and the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, described below.

Submission

To submit to the editorial office of Anna Kratz, PhD, and Paul B. Perrin, PhD, 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. Review APA’s Journal Manuscript Preparation Guidelines before submitting your article.

Submit Manuscript

Contact the peer review coordinator, Zora Nazarei, if you have questions about submitting a manuscript or do not receive confirmation of your submission within three business days.

Some institutional spam filters may block emails from APA Journals or our editorial office. To prevent this, add “apa.org” to your list of safe addresses and ask your IT department to add it to their whitelist.

Rehabilitation Psychology^® uses 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 Rehabilitation Psychology editorial office for review immediately upon submission. An editor will contact you if there are questions about content overlap.

Editor’s Choice

Each issue of Rehabilitation Psychology will highlight one article with the designation as an “Editor’s Choice” paper. Selection is based on the recommendations of the associate editors, who consider the following criteria: diversity of authors or participants; innovation; scientific rigor; and likely clinical or public significance or impact. Selected papers will appear in the APA Editor’s Choice newsletter.

Types of submissions

The Editorial Manager system will ask you to indicate the article type during the submission process.

Suitable submissions include:

Empirical articles

This format reports original empirical research which can include experimental, observational, survey, mechanistic, epidemiological, qualitative, and psychometric studies, as well as clinical trials (e.g., randomized controlled trials, pragmatic trials), early phase research (e.g., intervention development, proof-of-concept studies, and feasibility studies of novel interventions), and dissemination and implementation research.

For clinical trials, the primary findings of the trial should be published or in press before secondary or exploratory analyses from the trial dataset are submitted. Manuscripts that use baseline data from trials but do not include outcome data may be submitted before the primary findings have been published.

Brief Reports

This format may be appropriate for empirically sound studies that are limited in scope, contain novel or provocative findings that need further replication, or represent replications and extensions of prior published work. Replications should include “A Replication of XX Study” in the subtitle of the manuscript as well as in the abstract.

Review articles

The journal publishes systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and meta-analyses, but not non-systematic or unstructured reviews. Systematic and meta-analytic reviews must provide a compelling rationale for the study if other reviews have previously been published. Critical reviews of significant issues in rehabilitation psychology and reviews of methodological advances will also be considered, as will reviews of professional, theoretical, or public policy issues. Authors may discuss the suitability of their submission with the editor before submitting a review that does not adhere to systematic review, scoping review, or meta-analytic methodological standards.

Commentaries

This format supports manuscripts that focus on important issues in rehabilitation psychology theory, research, practice, policy, and education. Authors considering submission of a commentary must contact the editor in advance to determine the appropriateness of the proposed topic for the journal.

Special issues or sections: Special issues or sections require permission or an invitation from the editorial team.

Manuscript length

Empirical articles, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses are limited to 35 pages (double-spaced), and brief reports to 12 pages. These limits include all sections of the manuscript, including the title page, abstract, text, references, tables, and figures. Use a san serif font such as 11-point Calibri or 11-point Arial, or a serif font such as 12-point Times New Roman, and double-space the text. Authors may request permission to exceed the page limit in advance, but the journal operates under a contractual page budget, so overages are allowed only when necessary. Please write succinctly and place nonessential materials in a supplement. Revised manuscript submissions also must adhere to the 35-page limit, all-inclusive.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Rehabilitation Psychology

Rehabilitation Psychology is committed to improving equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in scientific research, in line with the APA Publishing EDI framework and APA’s trio of 2021 resolutions to address systemic racism in psychology.

The journal encourages submissions which extend beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) samples (Henrich, et al., 2010). The journal welcomes submissions which feature Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and other historically marginalized sample populations, including people who identify as disabled. The journal particularly welcomes submissions which feature collaborative research models (e.g., community-based participatory research [CBPR]; see Collins, et al., 2018) 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, Rehabilitation Psychology has adopted the following standards for inclusive research reporting.

Author contribution 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, Rehabilitation Psychology 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 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.

Participant description, sample justification, and informed consent

Authors are encouraged to include a detailed description of the study participants in the Method section of each empirical report, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Age
• Sex
• Gender
• Racial identity
• Ethnicity
• Nativity or immigration history
• Socioeconomic status
• Clinical diagnoses and comorbidities (as appropriate)
• Any other relevant demographics (e.g., disability status; sexual orientation)

In both the abstract and in the discussion section of the manuscript, authors are encouraged to discuss the diversity of their study samples and the generalizability of their findings (see also the constraints on generality section below).

Authors are also encouraged to 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., 2020 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.

Positionality statements

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

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

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

Reflexivity

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), authors are encouraged to include reflexive statements in the Discussion section, addressing the following questions.

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

Inclusive reference lists

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, 2022). Authors are 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., 2020, 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)’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.”

Reporting year(s) of data collection

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

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].

Constraints on generality

In a subsection of the discussion titled "Constraints on generality," authors should include a detailed discussion of the limits on generality (see Simons, Shoda, & Lindsay, 2017). In this section, authors should detail grounds for concluding why the results are may or may not be specific to the characteristics of the participants. They should address limits on generality not only for participants but for materials, procedures, and context. Authors should also specify which methods they think could be varied without affecting the result and which should remain constant.

Impact and implications statement

At the start of each paper, the authors should provide 2–3 bullet points, with the header “Impact,” that states what the current paper adds to the literature and one to two practice or policy implications of the findings. This is not a statement of the conclusions, but rather a thoughtful series of statements highlighting the novel contribution of the work and translation of the findings for practice or policy. This section should be no more than 200 words.

Please refer to the Guidance for Translational Abstracts and Public Significance Statements page to help you write this text.

Submission process

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

Article type: Indicate whether the manuscript is an empirical article, a brief report, a review, or a commentary.

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

• Cover letter: The cover letter accompanying the manuscript submission should briefly describe the manuscript and explain how it fits within the journal’s scope.
  
  When the manuscript contains data or observations from a larger study, the cover letter should clarify the relationship between this submission and other papers from the study, specifically addressing potential overlap. Authors must be prepared to provide copies of related manuscripts or papers as part of the editorial review process.
  
  The cover letter should also identify the type of submission category and include statements: (a) of compliance with APA ethical standards in the conduct of the work reported in the manuscript; (b) that the manuscript or data have not been previously published and that they are not presently under consideration for publication elsewhere; (c) that all listed authors have contributed significantly to the work submitted for consideration; and (d) that the paper has been seen and approved by all authors. If applicable, authors should also note their eligibility for open science badge(s) in the cover letter.

• Manuscript: See the manuscript section (below) for instructions.
• Tables and figures: Place tables and figures at the end of the manuscript, after the references, with one table or figure per page. Include page numbers on the table and figure pages.
• Supplemental materials: APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the PsycArticles ^® database. The materials may include: (1) methodological details, tables, and figures that are not essential for inclusion in the manuscript itself but that enhance the report; 2) computer code needed to reproduce the major analyses; 3) nonproprietary questionnaires, survey forms, other data collection instruments, scripts, or experimental stimuli; and 4) qualitative response material. There is no specific limit on the length of the supplemental document, and it does not count against the manuscript’s page limit. Refer readers to the supplement at appropriate points in the text of the manuscript. Please see "Supplementing your article with online material" for more details.
• Reporting checklists: If you completed a reporting checklist (e.g., CONSORT, PRIMSA, STROBE), submit it as a reporting checklist file.
• Suggested reviews: Enter the name, institution, email address, and qualifications of at least three potential reviewers. Reviewer suggestions are considered advisory only.

Manuscripts

Double-space all copy. Include line numbers and page numbers in the manuscript. 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.

Title page

The title should be accurate, descriptive, and no longer than 12 words; it should include the study design such as “a randomized controlled trial,” “a systematic review,” or “a longitudinal observational study” as appropriate. The title page should adhere to APA Style and include an APA-Style author note.

The APA-Style author notes include the following information:

• Paragraph 1: Authors’ ORCID iDs, if available. Authors will be asked to identify the contributions of all authors at submission using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT). All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before submission. Authors may claim credit for more than one role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one author.
• Paragraph 2: Changes, if any, in author affiliations that occurred after the study ended.
• Paragraph 3: Disclosures and acknowledgments, if any, including: a) financial support including funding agencies and grant numbers; b) disclosure of any real or potentially perceived conflicts of interest including financial interests or affiliations that might be seen as influencing the research—if there are no conflicts of interest, this should be clearly stated; and c) acknowledgments of nonfinancial assistance such as staff or student contributions to the research.
• Paragraph 4: Corresponding author’s contact information, including an email address.

Abstract and keywords

All manuscripts must include a structured abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page (page 2 of the manuscript). Abstracts must contain each of the following subheadings:

• Purpose/Objective
• Research method/Design—including the number and type of participants
• Results
• Conclusions/Implications

Manuscripts such as commentaries for which a structured abstract would be inappropriate should include an unstructured manuscript with a maximum of 250 words.

After the abstract, please supply up to five keywords, using the National Library of Medicine medical subject heading (MeSH) vocabulary or APA psychological index terms.

Body of the manuscript

In addition to adhering to APA Style and the appropriate reporting standards (details, below), empirical manuscripts should include:

• a clear statement of the specific aims, study hypotheses, research question(s), or purpose of the study in the introduction
• essential information about the methods, even if a separate methods or protocol article is published and cited
• a statement indicating the name of the institutional review board (with appropriate masking) that provided oversight for the research in the methods; if exempt, an explanation of why should be provided
• the source of the study’s data
  • If the paper is based on secondary data analyses of data collected for another purpose, please indicate that in the methods.
  • If the data used in the current manuscript was also used in previous publications, please include these citations when describing the methods in this submission.
• a participant flow diagram (e.g., a CONSORT-style diagram), if appropriate
• disclosure of the study’s limitations in the discussion section
• discussion of how the study’s findings are relevant to rehabilitation psychology

Statistical methods should adhere to the APA Task Force on Statistical Inference guidelines. Statistical results, tables, and figures should adhere to APA Style guidelines.

Reporting standards

CONSORT for randomized clinical trials

Rehabilitation Psychology requires the use of the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) reporting standards (i.e., a checklist and flow diagram) for randomized clinical trials. The checklist may be placed in an appendix of the manuscript for review purposes. Randomized trials should also adhere to APA’s Journal Article Reporting Standards.

Visit the CONSORT Statement website for more details and resources.

Journal Article Reporting Standards

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 researchers’ own perspectives affected the study, as well as the contexts in which the research and analysis took place.

Transparency and openness

APA endorses the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines developed by a community working group in conjunction with the Center for Open Science (Nosek et al. 2015). Effective September 1, 2021, empirical research submitted to Rehabilitation Psychology must meet the “required” level for design and analysis transparency and the “disclosure” level for all other aspects of research planning and reporting:

• Citation: Level 1, Disclosure—All data, program code, and other methods developed by others should be appropriately 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 available and, if so, where 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 available and, if so, where to access it.
• Research Materials Transparency: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether materials described in the method section are available and, if so, where to access them.
• Design and Analysis Transparency (Reporting Standards): Level 2, Required—The journal requires the use of APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS-Quant, JARS-Qual, and/or MARS). For clinical trials, the journal requires the use of the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) reporting standards (i.e., a checklist and flow diagram).
• 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, where 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, where 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.

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 (Kazak, 2018). All data, analysis code, and research materials are available at [stable link to 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.

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. We encourage investigators 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; 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.

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.

Peer-review process

All manuscripts submitted to Rehabilitation Psychology undergo an initial editorial review, which may result in rejection without external review. Papers will be evaluated for their importance to the field, scientific rigor, novelty, suitability for the journal, and clarity of writing. Manuscripts that do not conform to the submission guidelines may be returned without review.

A double-masked review process is used. To facilitate masked review, authors' names, affiliations, and contact information should be included only in the cover letter. 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).

Rehabilitation Psychology encourages translation of information and strives to review submitted articles in a timely manner.

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.

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

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

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

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)

Open science badges

All authors publishing in Rehabilitation Psychology may apply for open science badges. Introduced in 2013 by the Center for Open Science's Open Science Framework, these badges may be awarded to authors for making data or materials public or for preregistering their studies. Meant to encourage the sharing of data and materials, as well as pre-registration of studies and analysis plans, these badges are digital objects associated with journal articles and are available in four types:

Open Data:
All data necessary to reproduce the reported results that are digitally shareable are made publicly available. Information necessary for replication (e.g., codebooks or metadata) must be included.

Open Data; Protected Access:
A Protected Access (PA) notation may be added to open data badges if sensitive, personal data are available only from an approved third-party repository that manages access to data to qualified researchers through a documented process. To be eligible for an open data badge with such a notation, the repository must publicly describe the steps necessary to obtain the data and detailed data documentation (e.g. variable names and allowed values) must be made available publicly. View a list of approved repositories .

Open Materials:
All materials necessary to reproduce the reported results that are digitally shareable, along with descriptions of non-digital materials necessary for replication, are made publicly available.

Preregistered:
At least one study's design has been preregistered with descriptions of (a) the research design and study materials, including the planned sample size; (b) the motivating research question or hypothesis; (c) the outcome variable(s); and (d) the predictor variables, including controls, covariates, and independent variables. Results must be fully disclosed. As long as they are distinguished from other results in the article, results from analyses that were not preregistered may be reported in the article.

Preregistered+Analysis Plan:
At least one study's design has been preregistered along with an analysis plan for the research — and results are recorded according to that plan.

In addition, notations may be added to badges or open practices notes to indicate, for example, that an analysis plan was registered before the observation of outcomes (DE, Data Exist) or that there were strongly justified changes to an analysis plan (TC, Transparent Changes).

For all badges, items must be made available on an open-access repository with a persistent identifier — and in a format that is time-stamped, immutable, and permanent. For the preregistered badge, this is an institutional registration system (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov, Open Science Framework, and so on).

Data and materials must be made available under an open license allowing others to copy, share, and use the data, with attribution and copyright as applicable. At submission, authors must confirm that criteria have been fulfilled in a signed badge disclosure form (PDF, 33KB) that must be submitted as supplemental material.

If all criteria are met as confirmed by the editor, the form will then be published with the article as supplemental material.

Authors should also note their eligibility for the badge(s) in the cover letter.

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.

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.

Technical specifications

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.

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.

Editors

Anna Kratz, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Paul B. Perrin, PhD
University of Virginia, United States

Associate editors

Kathleen R. Bogart, PhD
School of Psychological Science, Oregon State University, United States

Daniel W. Klyce, PhD, ABPP
Richmond VA Medical Center, Virginia Commonwealth University and Sheltering Arms Institute United States

Editorial fellows

Allyson S. Hughes, PhD
Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, United States

Beatrice Lee, PhD
The University of Texas at El Paso, United States

Consulting editors

Rachel V. Aaron, PhD
Johns Hopkins University, United States

Leah M. Adams, PhD
George Mason University, United States

Derek R. Anderson, PhD
Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, United States

Erin E. Andrews, PsyD, ABPP
Veterans Affairs Texas Valley Coastal Bend Health Care System, United States

Anne Arewasikporn, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Kara B. Ayers, PhD
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati, United States

Jack W. Berry, PhD
Samford University, United States

Lisa M. Betthauser, PhD
Veterans Affairs Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center, United States

Melissa Day, PhD
University of Queensland, Australia

Jacobus Donders, PhD
Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital, United States

Diana Santa Dorstyn, PhD
University of Adelaide, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, School of Psychology, Australia

Dana S. Dunn, PhD
Moravian University, United States

Dawn M. Ehde, PhD
University of Washington, United States

Fernando Gonzalez, PhD
Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, United States

Allen W. Heinemann, PhD
Northwestern University, United States

Megan M. Hosey, PhD
Johns Hopkins University, United States

Shannon B. Juengst, PhD
TIRR Memorial Hermann, United States

Jacqueline N. Kaufman, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Jason Kisser, PhD, ABPP
Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute, part of Allina Health, United States

Eun-Jeong Lee, PhD
Illinois Institute of Technology, United States

Emily M. Lund, PhD, CRC
University of Alabama, United States

Sarah L. Martindale, PhD
W. G. (Bill) Hefner VA Healthcare System, United States

Scott D. McDonald, PhD
Central Virginia Veterans Affairs Health Care System, United States

Jed N. McGiffin, PhD
University of Washington School of Medicine, United States

Kimberley R. Monden, PhD
University of Minnesota, United States

Janet P. Niemeier, PhD, ABPP
University of Alabama, Birmingham, United States

Rhoda Olkin, PhD
California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University, United States

Jaclyn L. Papadakis, PhD
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, United States

Carrie R. Pilarski, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Joseph F. Rath, PhD
Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, United States

Stephanie A. Reid-Arndt, PhD
University of Missouri, United States

Diego Rivera, PhD
Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa, Spain

Edward Rohn, PhD
Oakland University, United States

David J. Rothman, PhD
Virginia Commonwealth University, United States

Jiabin Shen, PhD
Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, United States

Brocha Z. Stern, PhD, OTR
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States

John (Drew) Sturgeon, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Alicia Swan, PhD
South Texas Veterans Health Care System, United States

Alexandra Lisa Terrill, PhD
University of Utah, United States

Sarah Tlustos-Carter, PhD, ABPP
Children’s Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado School of Medicine, United States

Aaron P. Turner, PhD
Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System and University of Washington, United States

Emre Umucu, PhD
University of Texas at El Paso, United States

Gitendra Uswatte, PhD
University of Alabama, Birmingham, United States

Daniel Whibley, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Rhonda M. Williams, PhD
Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System and University of Washington, United States

Jia Rung Wu, PhD
Northeastern Illinois University, United States

Peer review coordinator

Kelly Marquiss
American Psychological Association

Abstracting and indexing services providing coverage of Rehabilitation Psychology^®

• Academic Search Alumni Edition
• Academic Search Complete
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• Academic Search Index
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• Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Psychology
• Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Academic Journal Guide
• Current Abstracts
• Current Contents: Social & Behavioral Sciences
• Embase (Excerpta Medica)
• ERIH (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences)
• Journal Citations Report: Social Sciences Edition
• MEDLINE
• Mosby's Nursing Consult
• NSA Collection
• OCLC
• OmniFile Full Text Mega
• PsycInfo
• PsycLine
• RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
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• Social Sciences Abstracts
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• Social Sciences Full Text
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• TOC Premier

• Caregivers of Service Members/Veterans and Civilians with Traumatic Brain Injury:

  Special issue of the APA journal Rehabilitation Psychology, Vol. 65, No. 4, November 2020. The articles coalesce around caregivers of service members/veterans and civilians with traumatic brain injury.

• Diversity and Social Justice in Rehabilitation Research:

  Special issue of the APA journal Rehabilitation Psychology, Vol. 64, No. 2, May 2019. The articles coalesce around the 3 themes of critical disability identity theory, discrimination and prejudice, and health disparities in the context of disability.

• Research and Methodological Advances and Issues in Rehabilitation Psychology:

  Special issue of the APA journal Rehabilitation Psychology, Vol. 53, No. 3, August 2008. Includes articles about theory in rehabilitation psychology research; use of randomized clinical trials; research and evidence-based practice; role of external validity; psychological intervention research with pediatric patients; online tools for evaluating patient change; multiple regression and correlation techniques; structural equation models; regression methods for single-case designs; analyzing longitudinal data with multilevel models; and analyzing trauma narratives.

• Outcome Measurement in Rehabilitation:

  Special issue of the APA journal Rehabilitation Psychology, Vol. 50, No. 1, February 2005. The articles discuss issues of outcome measurement in rehabilitation, including developing a taxonomy; statistical process control; implications of the learned nonuse formulation; evaluating outcomes for severe mental illness; assessment of chronic pain; longitudinal outcomes measurement; item response theory and computerized adaptive testing; ethical dimensions; and performance measurement and health care policy.

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.

At a minimum, empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to Rehabilitation Psychology must, at a minimum, meet Level 1 (Disclosure) for seven and Level 2 (Required) for one of the eight aspects of research planning and reporting. 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 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 (Dawn M. Ehde, 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). Although data sharing and preregistering of observational and clinical trials studies are currently recommended, they will likely be required in the future. As such, we are encouraging authors to begin these practices now. In particular, failing to preregister your upcoming studies could limit your publishing options in the future.

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

• Citation: Level 1, Disclosure—All data, program code, and other methods developed by others should 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 available 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, Required—Article must comply with APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS-Quant, JARS-Qual, and/or MARS). For clinical trials, Rehabilitation Psychology requires the use of the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) reporting standards (i.e., a checklist and flow diagram). The checklist may be placed in an appendix of the manuscript for review purposes.
• 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.

Inclusive study designs

• Collaborative research models
• Diverse samples

Definitions and further details on inclusive study designs are available on the Journals EDI homepage.

Inclusive reporting standards

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

Bias-free language

Authors should use disability bias-free language, per the APA Style Guide and recommendations by Andrews et al. (2019).

Announcements

• Call for editorial fellowship nominations

Editor Spotlight

• Read an interview with Editors Anna Kratz, PhD and Paul B. Perrin, PhD

From APA Journals Article Spotlight^®

• Barriers to mental health service use among people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Rehabilitation Psychology  special issue showcases diversity and social justice in disability
• Effective coping of chronic pain varies with psychosocial resource profiles
• Telepsychology: Improving access while maintaining alliance