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 M. Paz Galupo, 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.

Submit Manuscriptopens in new window

M. Paz Galupo
Washington University at St. Louis
Missouri

Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity^® (PSOGD) accepts a variety of article types consistent with the journal’s mission, including:

Standard articles containing a maximum of 7,500 words of text (excluding tables and references). These will be the most typical articles.

Longer, monograph-style articles containing a maximum of 12,000 words of text. These longer contributions will not be typical and to be considered, must provide a particularly enhanced coverage of the topic addressed.

This can take the form of:

• especially extensive literature review with a methodological critique and/or public policy implications explicated
• description of an interlocked series of research projects
• synthesis of material on sexual orientation and gender diversity with material from other aspects of psychology and/or other disciplines
• similarly extensive contributions

Authors MUST OBTAIN APPROVAL OF THE EDITORopens in new window PRIOR TO SUBMITTING THIS ARTICLE TYPE.

Brief reports are research-oriented and contain a maximum of 4,000 words of text.

Letters to the editor should be limited to 500 words. In unusual circumstances, the editor may allow a longer limit with the author.

Commentaries may address developments in the behavioral sciences and related fields, the legal system, national or world events, as these pertain to the content areas of PSOGD. These should be a maximum of 1000 words, unless a longer length is allowed by the founding editor.

As a rule of thumb one double-spaced page of standard font and size text contains about 300 words. If submissions contain an unusually larger number of references for the article type and/or unusually large tables/charts/graphs, authors may be required to reduce these. "Words" refers to words and other symbols or characters.

PSOGD welcomes a variety of methodologies in its submissions, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed quantitative/qualitative methodologies.

All submissions are expected to maintain word limits specific to the type of manuscript (see manuscript types); offer replicable methodology; involve an N commensurate with the purpose of the research and which allows reasonable inference; and be written in a concise and focused manner.

In particular, extensive quotations from research participants are ill-advised, and should be limited to a few which are especially evocative of key themes. The theme descriptions should be the predominant vehicle for conveying participants' responses in qualitative research.

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

Since PSOGD first began publishing in 2014, a number of recurring questions and situations have arisen.

This material attempts to respond to these proactively, in the hope that potential authors have a clearer sense of PSOGD's expectations and procedures.

Please feel free to contact the editoropens in new window with any inquiries about these topics below or others.

Nothing in your manuscript should indicate authors' identities, institutional affiliation, or other identifying features. Common examples include: naming the institution that granted institutional review board approval; citing by name previous publications on which the current submission explicitly builds; naming specific organizations that cooperated in data collection, etc.

The words "MASKED FOR REVIEW" should be substituted.

When masking earlier work on which the current submission is based, remember to remove the identifying citation both from the text and the references. Insufficiently masked submissions will be returned to authors for masking before being sent for review, which slows the review process.

If the article is accepted for publication, the identifying information can be added subsequently.

Please ensure that the final version for production includes a byline and full author note for typesetting.

Authors should be cognizant that language and terminologies used to describe sexual orientation and gender diversity have been used in pejorative ways, have undergone transitions, may likely undergo more transitions, and should be used in ways that convey respect yet maintain precision.

When APA offers language guidelines or policy statements that address terminology, authors are generally expected to use these guidelines and statements. There are exceptions to this, such as accurately quoting or describing older literature which might use outdated or problematic terminology.

Revisions must be accompanied by a description of changes made, including previously rejected and rewritten papers incorporating feedback.

As the decision letters state, when submitting a revision, authors must include a letter or memo describing the changes made in response to reviewer and editor feedback. This letter should address all the points raised by the editor and reviewers. It is acceptable to disagree with feedback and reject or modify a requested change; this should be clearly stated, and a rationale provided for the disagreement.

Resubmission of a previously rejected manuscript is generally not recommended without consultation with the editor. If resubmission of a previously rejected manuscript is made, authors should note the manuscript number of the earlier rejected submission, and include the same full description of changes made as described in the above paragraph.

Revisions/resubmissions without a description of changes made will not be read and will be returned to authors with instructions to provide this description.

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.

PSOGD encourages submissions from all countries and aspires to disseminate knowledge about sexual orientation and gender diversity internationally.

To this end, authors should submit abstracts and keywords in English and, if they wish, in addition provide abstracts in any other language(s) relevant to the submission in question.

Specifically, authors may submit abstracts and keywords in languages in addition to English in the following circumstances:

• When the research subjects or content matter involve non-English speaking populations
• When the authors are based in a non-English speaking country or comprise a multi-national team with some members from non-English speaking countries.
• There may be other circumstances where authors wish abstracts in other languages to be included. These should be reviewed and approved by the editor.

Note that all submissions must include an abstract and keywords in English.

PSOGD is committed to encouraging and disseminating scholarship on sexual orientation and gender diversity world-wide as much as is feasible. To facilitate this goal, authors working in a non-English speaking country, or whose sample is from a non-English speaking country, should submit another abstract in their other language, or that of the sample. This will appear below the English abstract if the article is published.

If authors or samples are from multiple non-English speaking countries, abstracts in all the relevant languages should be included. These additional abstracts need not be provided until the final accepted revision.

PSOGD does not have the resources to provide a final copyediting of non-English abstracts, so authors should carefully check the non-English abstracts.

PSOGD can publish the main article text only in English.

Authors submitting manuscripts to PSOGD are required to provide a short statement of one to two sentences to summarize the article's findings and significance to the educated public (e.g., understanding human thought, feeling, and behavior and/or assisting with solutions to psychological or societal problems). This description should be included within the manuscript on the abstract/keywords page.

• View Guidance for Translational Abstracts and Public Significance Statements

Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 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.

To promote a more equitable research and publication process, Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 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
• Sexual orientation
• 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 disclose the year(s) of data collection in both the Abstract and in the Method section in order to appropriately contextualize the study.

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)opens in new window:

• Sample positionality statement: “Mindful that our identities can influence our approach to science (Roberts, et al. 2020)opens in new window, 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)opens in new window and Hamby (2018)opens in new window.

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, 2022opens in new window). 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., 2020opens in new window, 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)opens in new window’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 must state whether data and study materials are available and, if so, where 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.

In both the author note and at the end of the method section, specify whether and where the data and material will be available or note the legal or ethical reasons for not doing so. For submissions with quantitative or simulation analytic methods, state whether the study analysis code is available, and, if so, where to access it (or the legal or ethical reason why it is not available).

For example:

• All data have been made publicly available at the [repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].
• Materials and analysis code for this study are not available.
• The code behind this analysis/simulation has been made publicly available at the [repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].

PSOGD  includes a Clinicians' Digest section providing practitioners with clinically useful, yet scientifically robust ideas from articles published in the journal.

The Digest, consisting of one- or two-paragraph synopses of clinically relevant concepts from articles in that issue, presented together as one piece, is written by a rotating team coordinated by Kim Skerven, PhD.

Authors of the source articles from which the Digest synopses are drawn have the prerogative to decline their articles' participation in the Digest. They are, however, strongly encouraged to allow their articles to be included in order to facilitate their findings being maximally useful to practitioners.

Digest authors will work with source articles' authors to maintain fidelity with the source article.

The synopses in the Clinicians' Digest are intended to be used with the source article and its abstract, but offer original clinically relevant ideas based on the source article.

Double-space all copy. Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Manual. Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website.

Below are additional instructions regarding the preparation of display equations, computer code, and tables.

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.

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

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

Given the wide variety of manuscript types that PSOGD accepts, all of these recommendations may not be suitable for all submissions, but are most true for standard and longer research articles.

• Clear description/intro. Make certain readers are quickly oriented to the purpose and focus of your manuscript. Make sure that the words used to describe your purpose and focus are the same throughout the manuscript.
• Literature review to set context. The literature review should situate your work both in the literature on sexual orientation and gender diversity, and in the behavioral sciences more generally. It should include enough to make a compelling argument for why your study was needed, and should lead directly to your purpose and hypotheses/research questions. Too little, too much, or tangential literature review are common errors. Ensure that your sources present credible scientific findings.
• Clear methodology. Could others replicate it? Are the chosen methodologies adequately justified? Provide citations to support your rationale for selecting your given methodology and analytical strategy. Are your data appropriate for the study questions and analyses (e.g., adequate sample size)?
• Information about measures. Basic reliability/validity of measures should be summarized and, when possible, these data should be obtained from samples consistent with your study sample. Provide reasons for choosing the specific measures. In addition, report the number of items, scoring procedures, the directionality of scores (e.g., higher scores on this measure indicate higher...), and how scores are computed. If measures were modified in your study, describe the rationale for the modification, the specific modification, and whether this modification was guided by any theory or previous study's methods, and how the measure "behaved" in your study (e.g., reliabilities, factor scores).
• Sample. Describe clearly sampling and recruitment procedures. Describe demographics and other characteristics. Have you used up-to-date terminology?
• Statistics. Are your statistical results presented in a clear and accessible manner? Does your statistical plan map to your hypotheses? When programs other than SPSS or SAS are utilized to conduct the analyses, report the program (e.g., MPlus). Only identify quantitative results as significant when they meet the generally accepted minimum criterion of p < .05 (i.e., do not suggest that scores "trended toward significance" unless you did a trend analysis). Discuss missing data (i.e., amount and whether data were missing at random) and how missing data were addressed. Were the tables/charts/graphs etc. checked for accuracy?
• APA Style. Headings, references, citations, and tables/charts are frequently done incorrectly. Please check these carefully.
• Copyediting. Your submission should be free of spacing, formatting, grammatical, spelling, and other copyediting errors. Manuscripts judged to contain an unreasonable number of errors will be rejected without review.
• Conclusions. Are the conclusions that are drawn clearly supported by the data and congruent with the limitations of your methodology? It is a common mistake to reach beyond your data, especially when discussing implications for practice, advocacy, education, etc. However, not discussing the full implications of one's findings can be problematic as well. Strive for balance, but err on the side of caution. Attempt to relate the findings to conclusions reached in previous research but watch speculating beyond the data.
• Limitations. Do not minimize or avoid. Describe limitations directly, and when possible use your limitations as a springboard for recommendations for future research.

Note compliance with institutional review board and ethical requirements, without sacrificing masking of the manuscript.

Be concise and avoid expansive writing.

Journal space is at a premium. Please review your submissions to keep the writing as concise and focused as possible. The goal is to write just enough to fully communicate the integrity of your work.

Manuscripts with an unnecessarily verbose writing style will be returned to authors, unreviewed, for a more focused and shorter revision. This is also true of references, which should be sufficient to fully justify and contextualize the submission-but no more.

Tables, charts, figures etc. should similarly summarize and clarify, and contribute to the understanding of the research being presented beyond the information reported in the text. If they do not do so, they serve no useful function and authors will be asked to condense or delete them.

Be aware of the stylistic differences between student and institutional papers versus journal publications. Papers that are initially prepared as student assignments, reports of research grant activities, internal institution documents, etc., are typically in formats and styles inconsistent with journal publication.

For example, faculty often expect student papers to demonstrate wide-ranging literature reviews and elaborate justifications of methodology and instrumentation; grant and institution-focused papers often address goals and issues uniquely relevant to those entities.

Such papers usually require considerable revision before they are appropriate journal submissions. This is almost always in the direction of sharper focus, more concise writing style, and significant shortening.

Faculty and funding sources usually expect such student and institutional paper authors to demonstrate skill sets and goals that go beyond concise presentation of the material. Journal publications seek only concise presentation of the material.

Please edit your work accordingly before submitting it.

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.