Author Guidelines

Peer Review Process

Initially, contributions will be assessed by the editors for suitability of inclusion in the journal. Papers deemed suitable are typically reviewed by two or more independent reviewers - however, the minimum is one independent reviewer. The journal conducts a double blind review process. Thus, anonymization of manuscripts is required. See our Peer Review page for further information.

Submission Components

First-time submissions include:

1. the main article text, including figures and tables (PDF),
2. separate title page
3. supplementary materials (if available).

If a manuscript is accepted for publication you are requested to provide:

1. The main article text, de-anonymized and including all revisions in an editable file format. Accepted file document formats are .doc or .docx.
2. Please upload each image or figure separately. Accepted bitmap formats are PNG or TIFF. For line drawings we prefer a vector format, e.g., SVG or editable office charts or drawings. Image widths (A4-page): full page width: 2480 pixels; half page: 1240 pixels; quarter page: 620 pixels. No embedded bitmaps in vector files please! For further details please see https://psychopen.eu/support/#au-images-figures.

Article texts must conform to the 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual. The most basic formatting requirements, including some publisher specific rules, are detailed in the general PsychOpen GOLD Style Guide. Adherence to this style guide is required of all journals published at the PsychOpen GOLD platform (including EJOP), i.e., publication of accepted articles is conditional on compliance with this style guide.

Title Page

The title page contains:

• The name(s) of the author(s)
• A concise and informative title
• The affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s)
• The e-mail address, and telephone number(s) of the corresponding author
• If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)
• Declaration Section

Declaration Section:

• Conflict of Interest: The authors should declare all conflicts (financial or otherwise) of interest or indicate no interest.
• Ethics Statement: The authors should indicate the body which granted ethical approval to the study and the authorization number.
• Informed Consent: The authors should indicate how and if informed consent was obtained.
• Author Contributions: The authors should list the individual contributions based on the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) .
• Data Availability Statement: The authors should indicate if and where their data and analytical script are available.
• Acknowledgments: Please indicate any acknowledgments.
• Funding: Please indicate any funder that supported this study.

Main Article Text (Anonymized)

The main text includes:

1. Running head: short title (one line), no more than 50 characters including spaces
2. Title
3. The Structured Abstract and 4-7 Keywords: The structured abstract of up to 250 words with four labeled sections should contain the following, with sub-section headers in bold: Objectives: Problem being addressed in the study. Methods: The participants, essential features of the study method. Results: The basic findings, including effect sizes and confidence intervals and/or statistical significance levels. Conclusions: What the authors conclude from study results
4. Main article body: Articles should not exceed 6,500 words at the time of submission, including references, appendices, tables, and figures, with a maximum of six figures. The final version after review must not exceed 7,000 words. (Exceptions will only be granted in case of extraordinary manuscripts, e. g. featuring multiple studies. Please state in the cover letter why your article requires a higher word count.)
5. Tables are inserted in-text in their normal position and not at the end of the document (unless they are considered as appendices).
6. Figures: Embed screen-optimized, low-resolution versions of your figures into the main body of your article. (Note: For accepted articles all figures have to be supplied as separate, high-resolution, print-ready files.)
7. References: APA style (7th Edition). Particular care should be taken to ensure that references are accurate and complete. Authors bear responsibility for the accuracy of all references and quotations. References should be listed in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the References. Basic formats are as follows:
• Johnson-Laird, P. N., Girotto, V., & Legrenzi, P. (2004). Reasoning from inconsistency to consistency. Psychological Review, 111(3), 640–661. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.111.3.640
• Thagard, P. (2000). Coherence in thought and action. MIT Press.
• Kenny, D. A., & Zautra, A. (2001). Trait-state models for longitudinal data. In L. M. Collins & A. G. Sayer (Eds.), New methods for the analysis of change (pp. 243-263). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10409-008
8. Appendices (if any): Appendix A, Appendix B, etc

Electronic Supplementary Materials (EMS)

The Electronic Supplementary Material (ESM) is not included in the word count. In general, ESM contains additional items that are not essential for inclusion in the full text but would nevertheless benefit the reader (e.g., raw data sets).

ESM will be published at the PsychArchives repository. PsychArchives is a disciplinary repository for psychology, provided by Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID). All ESM will be published under a CC-BY license, meaning that authors grant others permission to use the ESM in whole or in part provided that the original work is properly cited. (Please check that no copyrighted material is included unless that material has also been made available under a CC-BY license. For more details see Supplementary Material Guidelines.)

ESM will be published online as received from the author(s) without any conversion, testing, or reformatting. They will not be checked for typographical errors or functionality. The responsibility for the content and functionality remains entirely with the author(s). 

Ready to Submit?

Start a new submission