Submission guidelines

Prior to submission, please carefully read and follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Manuscripts that do not conform to the submission guidelines may be returned without review.

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

To submit to the editorial office of Elizabeth Crouch, PhD, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission portal Microsoft Word (.docx) or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file. Manuscripts that exceed the 25-page limit will be sent back to authors without review.

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.

Please note that the author affiliation in the byline identifies where the author(s) worked (or studied) when the work was conducted. Include a dual affiliation only if two institutions contributed substantial support to the study. If the affiliation has changed since the work was completed, give the current affiliation in the author note (see section 2.6 of the Publication Manual). Affiliation and contact information are not updated postpublication.

Submit Manuscriptopens in new window

Elizabeth Crouch, PhD
University of South Carolina
Department of Health Services Policy and Management
Discovery Building Suite 345
Columbia, SC 29208
Emailopens in new window

Submissions are first evaluated by the editor-in-chief. A submitted manuscript may be rejected without detailed comments after this initial review if the manuscript is considered inappropriate or of insufficient scientific priority for publication in the Journal of Rural Mental Health^®.

After initial review by the editor, the manuscript may be assigned to an associate editor. It is either the editor or one of the associate editors who selects and sends the manuscript to three or more reviewers for critical evaluation.

The Journal of Rural Mental Health^® uses a double-blind peer review system. Manuscripts are blinded such that authors are unknown to the assigned reviewers and, in turn, all reviewers remain unknown to the authors. The title page should include all authors' names and institutional affiliations. The manuscript should omit this information but should include the title of the manuscript.

Make every effort to ensure that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors' identity. Every manuscript is treated by the Editors and reviewers as privileged information and they are instructed to exclude themselves from review of any manuscript that might involve a conflict of interest or the appearance thereof.

Comments from reviewers are examined by the editor or associate editor assigned, who then corresponds with the author and makes the final decision on acceptance or rejection of the manuscript. Rebuttals should be addressed to the editor-in-chief.

The Journal of Rural Mental Health^® publishes articles on rural mental health research, practice, and policy within the United States and internationally.

The journal accepts the following types of manuscripts:

• original research articles
• brief reports
• review articles
• program descriptions
• letters to the editor
• commentaries

Original research articles report on data-driven (quantitative or qualitative data), hypothesis-testing research. For original research articles, the abstract, text, references, and tables may total no more than 25 manuscript pages. Manuscripts should be submitted with 1-inch margins and a 12-point type size. Type font should be clear and readable; unusual typefaces are discouraged. For randomized clinical trials (RCTs), the CONSORT Checklist should be followed.

The journal accepts Brief Reports that report on rigorous studies of highly specific topics or whose findings are preliminary in nature. An author who submits a Brief Report must not submit the full report to a different journal. Brief Reports should not exceed 14 pages in length and should use 1" margins all around and a font size of 12 point. The abstract should be no more than 100 words. References should be limited to no more than 15 and there should be no more than one table or one figure.

The journal will consider a review article that summarizes the current state of understanding of a topic related to rural mental health. A review article surveys, summarizes, and synthesizes previously published studies; it does not report findings from new analyses. Among other things, review articles might discuss policy implications, evolving community-level issues, and how multidisciplinary approaches might best address rural mental health challenges. Explorations of integrated care, evidence-based practices, cultural factors, and ethical and regulatory considerations in rural areas are also welcomed.

Articles that describe a current program developed to prevent or treat conditions that create or perpetuate dilemmas related to rural mental health are welcomed by the journal. One goal of this article type is to facilitate the development of identical or similar programs for use in other geographic areas. Program descriptions should primarily describe the program of interest, such as how the need for the program was identified, how the program developed over time, ways in which the program interfaces with the community, staffing needs, etc. A manuscript that describes the efficacy or effectiveness of the program may be more suitable for an original research article. Program descriptions should be 10 to 20 pages in length, inclusive of all sections.

Letters to the editor can (i) comment on a recently published JRMH article, or (ii) serve as a platform in which a non-data-driven idea or concern can be articulated. Letters cannot be used to present preliminary results. An author who submits a letter to the editor should not duplicate material being published or submitted elsewhere. The editor may seek out and publish letters that respond to the original letter to the editor. Text is limited to 750 words and 10 references. A single table, figure, or image is permissible (but not required).

Commentaries are sought out by the editor and are intended to respond to (or complement) a concurrently published article. Commentaries will only be solicited for articles likely to have significant impacts on the field. In general, commentaries will not exceed 2,000 words, include no more than 2 tables or figures (combined), and include no more than 15 references.

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

Clinical relevance of the research should be specifically and thoughtfully addressed in submitted manuscripts. A special section on clinical implications can be included, but is not required; instead, authors should integrate implications for practice, as appropriate, into all relevant areas of manuscripts to be submitted.

Authors should review the updated APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research. These 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 new 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 N-of-1 designs, 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 registration (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.

For further resources, including flowcharts, see Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) website.

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.

All manuscripts should include discussion of diversity considerations and be written for a multidisciplinary audience that includes scholars, front-line practitioners, and policymakers.

Please note the references and tables should be double-spaced, in addition to the manuscript itself. Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Publication Manual. Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website.

The manuscript's title should be no more than 12 words and should not state an assertion or conclusion. If the paper reports a randomized clinical trial or a meta-analysis, this should be indicated in the title.

The title page should list the names of all authors and their institutional affiliations at the time the research was conducted. If an author's institution has changed since then, provide the current affiliation in an author note on the title page.

The author note should also include, when applicable:

• school- or department-level affiliations
• funding sources, financial disclosures, and disclaimers (please indicate if no outside funding was received)
• acknowledgments
• related presentations
• corresponding author's contact information

All manuscripts must include a structured abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page.

The abstract generally should include the following parts:

• Objective (brief statement of the purpose/rationale of the study)
• Methods (summary of the participants, design, measures, and procedure)
• Results (the primary findings of this work)
• Conclusions (statement of clinical implications of these data)

After the abstract, but on the same page, please supply:

• Up to five keywords or brief phrases that will help to identify your manuscript during relevant searches
• If applicable, provide trial or protocol registration information on the line following the keywords; for example:
  • TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT987654321

As part of article revisions, authors will be asked to submit a short statement of 1–3 sentences written in plain English for the educated public. This text should summarize the article's findings and why they are important to the intended audience and should appear after the abstract.

For a mental health care practice journal such as Journal of Rural Mental Health, a critical factor is ensuring that information reaches all psychologists, health care professionals, administrators, policy makers, and legislators who could use it.

The public significance statement packages research findings for easier distribution. It also allows authors greater control over how their work will be interpreted by and impact key audiences globally and locally who are interested in the physical health and psychological well-being of rural communities—practitioners, policy makers, news media, and members of the public.

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

Reports of research involving human participants must provide information about Institutional Review Board oversight, including the name(s) of the approving institution(s), or an explanation of why the study was exempt. Informed consent and assent procedures should also be described.

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

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

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

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

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

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

In online supplemental material

We request that runnable source code be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit supplementing your article with online material.

In the text of the article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

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

Authored book

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

Chapter in an edited book

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

Data set citation

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

Software/Code citation

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

APA’s current policies on generative AI include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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