Psychological Services guidelines for reviewers

The Editorial Board of Psychological Services, the official journal of APA Division 18opens in new window (Psychologists in Public Service), is grateful for the important contributions of our reviewers. To support you in evaluating a manuscript, we share the following guidelines.

As part of the manuscript peer review process, you are asked to provide a detailed, educative narrative evaluation that the action editor will send to the authors.

We encourage you as a reviewer to see yourself as an anonymous consultant for every author, even (and especially) for manuscripts you believe should be rejected. Aspire to provide sufficiently helpful and positively crafted feedback so that the next manuscript submitted by the authors makes a substantial contribution to the literature and is of publishable quality.

It may be helpful to think in terms of the answers to three sequential questions:

1. Is the topic of the manuscript appropriate for Psychological Services?
2. Does the manuscript make a significant scientific contribution?
3. Can the flaws in this manuscript be remedied in a revision?

The manuscripts to be reviewed are considered confidential communication. Once an unpublished manuscript is set in a fixed, tangible form (e.g., typed on a page), it is entitled to copyright protection. The author of an unpublished manuscript owns the copyright and is entitled to the same rights as an author of a published work.

Your comments to authors will be read both by the authors and by the editors. They should provide a critical but constructive review, in a considerate and impartial tone. They should not reveal your confidential recommendation to reject, revise, or accept the paper, or your opinion as to whether it should be published.

The actual decision to reject, revise, or accept the paper will be made by the editors, not by the reviewers. Null results, by themselves, also provide an insufficient basis for rejection of a manuscript. If a study addresses an important question or tests an interesting hypothesis, and if it is well-designed and well-executed, it can be informative even if the results are null.

The comments to the editor section is a confidential space where reviewers can communicate their thoughts and recommendations to the editorial team. This section allows for more candid sharing of insights, concerns and recommendations. If you provide a recommendation for decision, please provide justification for your recommendation. Other things to discuss in this section include potential bias towards the manuscript, confidentiality concerns, conflicts of interest, and any other personal notes or context that you believe will assist the editor in making an informed decision about the manuscript.

The narrative should be phrased as a communication between you and the author about the manuscript. Please refer to the authors of the manuscript sparingly and, when doing so, use the third person. Critical feedback tends to be easier to accept when a review refers to some aspect of "the manuscript" and avoids phrasing in the second person.

For both the action editors and the authors, clear separation of major and minor points is crucial. Numbering your points facilitates the action editor's reference to your review in the editorial decision letter.

We suggest you divide your comments to authors into the following four sections:

• Overall assessment: Start with a brief summary of your overall impression of the manuscript. Is it a strong contribution to the field? Does it have significant flaws?
• Key strengths: Briefly describe the key strengths of the manuscript. Highlight points that make it interesting, informative, important, or novel. Many reviewers begin their narrative with a paragraph summarizing the study. This practice serves two useful functions: first, it provides a brief statement of your essential understanding of the study and its findings, thereby, authors are reassured that you have read the manuscript in detail. Second, this paragraph serves to remind you about the study when you receive copies of the editorial decision letter and other reviews.
• Major points: Identify the most important problems, challenges, errors, omissions, or limitations. This section should focus primarily on deficiencies in the science, not in the writing. Preferred format: numbered list with no more than about 5–10 items.
• Minor points: List any other problems, challenges, errors, omissions, or limitations that should be addressed; violations of APA Styleopens in new window; problems with grammar; quality of writing; etc. Preferred format: list with no more than about 10–20 items. Use the manuscript’s section and subsection headings to structure your comments, and indicate the location(s) of the problems by page, paragraph, and/or line number.

It is important that reviews provide enough information that the action editors and authors have enough to understand the evaluation. This is usually about a single-spaced page in length, but can be longer.

Please submit your reviews on time. Delays in the review process can hinder the dissemination of novel findings, innovations and critical insights, potentially stalling advancements in the field. Moreover, authors, particularly early-career, may depend on timely publications for academic advancement, grant applications, or further research endeavors. We appreciate that sometimes unexpected life circumstances may contribute to delays. If you run into issues or anticipate a delay, please inform the editorial office in advance.

Psychological Services is committed to ensuring the scholarship it publishes is inclusive and equitable. Reviewers play a key role in supporting us in this mission. Please ensure your review comments on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)-related items in alignment with the following areas of consideration:

• how well the manuscript contributes to the psychological well-being of multiple or underrepresented communities
• how to avoid reinforcement of stereotypes or contributions of bias in the methods
• ensuring the manner in which the manuscript is written could not be used or misused to cause harm, especially to vulnerable groups
• whether the participant sample been appropriately described in the abstract and methods—did the authors justify their sample and describe their sample inclusion efforts?
• how inclusive the references are—if you have recommendations for relevant works by authors from historically excluded groups, please share those in your comments to the authors

Please refrain from biased language, and refer to APA’s Bias-Free Language Guidelinesopens in new window and Inclusive Language Guidelines for support.

Reviewers have the option to include an early career colleague, postdoc, or student as a co-reviewer on a manuscript. The coreviewer’s name can be added when the review is submitted in Editorial Manageropens in new window. We encourage reviewers to consider engaging their early career colleagues or students in the peer review process.

Visit the journal homepage to read our full EDI statement.

As an APA-published journal, Psychological Services follows COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewersopens in new window.

If you discover you have a conflict of interest after agreeing to review, please disclose this to the action editor. If you must recuse yourself from review, please consider recommending alternate reviewers, especially experts from underrepresented groups.

Ensure the tone of your review is professional and respectful. When suggesting language changes, focus on edits that improve clarity rather than assumptions about an author’s first language.

If you suspect an ethical violation in a manuscript, please contact the action editor.

Psychological Services recognizes the many commitments of reviewers, and unique pressures on psychologists working in organized care settings. If you are unable to complete a review in the allotted timeframe, please let the editorial office know as soon as possible. We are happy to consider deadline extensions if reviewers need additional time to complete a thorough and constructive review.