Submission guidelines

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.

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.

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

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 Manuscriptopens in new window

Contact the peer review coordinator, Kelly Marquissopens in new window, 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.

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.

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

Suitable submissions include:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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., 2010opens in new window). 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., 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, Rehabilitation 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.

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., 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.

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).

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?
• 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, 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.”

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.

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 repositoryopens in new window on the Open Science Framework (OSF), or authors can access a full list of other recommended repositoriesopens in new window. 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].

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, 2017opens in new window). 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.

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.

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.

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 websiteopens in new window.

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.

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)opens in new window vocabulary or APA psychological index terms.

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 Styleopens in new window guidelines.

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 websiteopens in new window for more details and resources.

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. 

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. 2015opens in new window). 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 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., OSFopens in new window, 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.

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.

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.

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

Articles are eligible for open science badges recognizing publicly available data, materials, and/or preregistered plans and analyses. These badges are awarded on a self-disclosure basis.

At submission, authors must confirm that criteria have been fulfilled in a signed badge disclosure form (PDF, 33KB)opens in new window that must be submitted as supplemental material. If the editorial team confirms that all criteria have been met, 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.

For all badges, items must be made available on an open-access repository with a persistent identifier in a format that is time-stamped, immutable, and permanent. For the preregistered badge, this is an institutional registration system.

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.

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. Manuscripts with data deposited in ICPSR's database are eligible for this badge.

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.

Note that it may not be possible to preregister a study or to share data and materials. Applying for open science badges is optional.

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

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.

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.