Open science at APA

In support of rigorous, transparent research, a growing number of APA journals now include Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines in their manuscript submission instructions. In 2020, APA became one of more than 5,000 signatories of the TOP Guidelines developed by the Center for Open Science.

The TOP Guidelines cover eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting that can be followed by journals and authors at three levels of adherence. From lower to higher levels of adherence, they are: disclosure (Level 1), requirement (Level 2), and verification (Level 3).

Inclusion of the TOP Guidelines in APA journals is an exciting step for open science in psychology. The practices described by the guidelines offer many benefits not only to authors but to psychological science. Transparency encourages greater collaboration among researchers, facilitates replication of certain types of studies, and promotes more rigorous science.

Check out our TOP announcement to learn more about the guidelines and details on participating APA journals. You can also find detailed guidance on the open science tab of each journal’s webpage, as well as in the submission guidelines. As of fall 2023, authors are required to disclose TOP compliance only in the Methods section of their manuscript. Read our interview with APA journal editor Panayiota Kendeou, PhD to learn how the TOP Guidelines have been implemented at the Journal of Educational Psychology and understand how TOP can impact authors who wish to publish in a journal.

Preregistration of original research, clinical trials, and meta-analyses can help increase transparency. APA’s Publication Manual (7th edition) asks authors to provide registration details in the author note, and journals that have adopted the TOP guidelines will also ask for information to be reported in the study’s method section.

Preregistration of studies and analysis plans can be useful for distinguishing confirmatory and exploratory hypotheses and analyses. Many editors encourage preregistration of studies and analysis plans and ask for links in the author note and method section. Explore our website for more information about preregistration, including the Preregistration Standards for Quantitative Research in Psychology.

A growing number of journals publish Registered Reports, for which a preregistration, or protocol, is peer reviewed for its study design and methodology. If this partial manuscript is accepted, the full manuscript will be reviewed for adherence to the design and published, regardless of results obtained.

APA Journals™ recommend or require the following additional research transparency initiatives for articles:

• Author contributorship
• Funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures
• Sample demographics and generalizability
• Constraints on generality (COG) statements
• Data transparency statements
• Other research disclosures such as sample size, power, and precision

Detailed information about each of these standards is available online.

Authors who include author contribution statements in the author note of a manuscript promote accuracy, transparency, and visibility for the range of contributions to the published work. APA authors are encouraged to include author contribution statements in the author notes of their manuscripts.

APA journals follow a contributorship rather than an authorship model, meaning that authors are not only those who do the writing but also those who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study (see Standard 8.12a of the APA Ethics Code and the Publication Manual, 7th ed. for more information on what contributions constitute authorship).

Many APA journals have adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to automate author contributions statements in their published articles. CRediT is a high-level taxonomy comprised of 14 roles that describe each author’s specific contribution(s) to a given piece of scholarly output. Authors can select more than one contributor role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one person. 

This taxonomy allows for a broader and more representative acknowledgment of the work of researchers who may otherwise not be represented or credited.

The use of CRediT likewise presents the opportunity to mitigate author disputes because contributor roles are identified and clearly reported from the beginning stages of manuscript review.

CRediT roles are tagged with metadata, which means that author contributions are both visible and trackable.

For APA journals that have adopted CRediT, authors are required to identify each author’s contribution(s) to the manuscript as part of the manuscript submission data in Editorial Manager. When an article is accepted, the contributor roles are published as part of the author note.

All core APA Journals are required to publish author contribution statements using CRediT. The following journals currently publish author contribution statements using CRediT:

• American Psychologist
• Behavioral Neuroscience
• Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology
• Journal of Comparative Psychology
• Consulting Psychology Journal
• Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice
• Decision
• Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology
• Families, Systems, and Health
• Health Psychology
• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
• Journal of Psychotherapy Integration
• Neuropsychology
• Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal
• Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
• Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
• Psychological Assessment
• Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy
• Psychotherapy
• Rehabilitation Psychology

Replication studies build on previously published science. All APA core titles encourage the submission of replication studies, regardless of their results, including null findings (i.e., where study hypotheses were not supported or failed to reach conventional levels of statistical significance, yet can still contribute to advancing the literature).

As APA's Board of Scientific Affairs has emphasized, sharing research data promotes scientific progress, allowing replication, reanalysis, and generalizability testing. Sharing data publicly enables broader use by investigators all over the world.

APA has now made it easy to share your data publicly by offering our own repository, in partnership with the Center for Open Science.

Read about APA’s commitment to data sharing and guidance on informed consent and data availability statements.

Partnering with the Center for Open Science, many APA journals now offer open science badges to recognize open-science practices. Authors who share their data or materials publicly, or who preregister their studies or analysis plans, may apply for one or more badges.

Learn more about the different types of open science badges and participating journals.

Preprints are research papers that have not yet been peer-reviewed or published but are made freely available to allow for community feedback.

Using preprint servers, researchers may post documents like working papers, unpublished work, and articles under review, making them freely available to other researchers and to the public. Authors may also share postprints—their personal (unformatted) copies of their APA-published papers—in these repositories.

As part of its promotion of greater transparency and the assessment of rigor in psychological science, APA designated PsyArXiv as the preferred preprint server for APA journals; other preprint servers are also acceptable.

APA is committed to bringing research to the public. Along with article abstracts, many APA journals publish public significance statements summarizing the significance of a study's findings for all interested readers. Read more on the Guidance for Translational Abstracts and Public Significance Statements page.

These APA journals publish article abstracts in freely available formats, such as public significance statements, as well as translational statements for policy-makers, educators, practitioners, and other specific audiences.

• American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
• American Psychologist
• Asian American Journal of Psychology
• Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement
• Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale
• Canadian Psychology / Psychologie Canadienne
• Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology
• Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences
• Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology
• Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice
• International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation
• Journal of Counseling Psychology
• Journal of Latinx Psychology
• Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology
• Journal of Threat Assessment and Management
• Law and Human Behavior
• Neuropsychology
• Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology
• Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal
• Psychological Assessment
• Psychological Bulletin
• Psychological Methods
• Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy
• Psychology of Men & Masculinities
• Psychology of Popular Media
• Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity
• Rehabilitation Psychology
• Translational Issues in Psychological Science

APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (APA Style JARS) provide researchers in psychology with a structured guide to communicate fundamental components of their research. Created by psychologists, the standards aim to enhance the quality of published research by promoting transparency and facilitating the assessment of rigor. The standards include a complement, APA Style JARS for Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (JARS–REC), that outlines best practices related to the manner in which race and ethnicity are discussed within scientific research articles.

Read about APA Style JARS and explore our interactive author tools on the APA Style JARS website.

In addition to APA Style JARS, journals may direct authors to other reporting standards appropriate to their disciplines. Examples in use now include those from the EQUATOR Network (e.g., CONSORT for RCTs and pilot and feasibility studies, TREND guidelines for non-randomized trials, SQUIRE for quality improvement projects, CHEERS for economic evaluations, PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, STROBE for observational studies, STARD for diagnostic or prognostic studies, and SPIRIT for study protocols).

Recognizing the growing importance of and interest in open science in psychology, the APA Publications and Communications Board created an APA Open Science and Methodology (OSM) Expert Panel. Tasked with evaluating the latest open science initiatives and sharing their findings with APA editors and publishing staff, the OSM Expert Panel plays an important role in the advancement of psychological science.

The OSM Expert Panel is comprised of experts in psychological research:

• Lisa DeBruine, PhD, chair
• P. Priscilla Lui, PhD
• Evan Mayo-Wilson, MPA, DPhil
• Amanda Kay Montoya, PhD
• Julia Strand, PhD

Authors are encouraged to contact the OSM members with questions about or suggestions for improving open science practices at APA.