Author Guidelines

This journal publishes articles that substantially engage with and advance the understanding of social or political problems, their reduction, and the promotion of social justice, from social or political psychological perspectives. To decide whether or not to submit a manuscript for consideration, please familiarize yourself with the journal's article-types and the peer-review process / desk-rejection criteria.

Manuscript Length

We have two general categories of word limits. Exceptions to these limits are possible only if very well justified and when discussed before submission and/or publication with the editors. The word limits include everything in the article (with the exception of the non-technical summary): Abstract, main text, figures, tables, references, appendices. To be able to meet the word limit, we encourage creating online supplementary materials for lengthier appendices and additional materials or descriptions you wish to include in your article. Despite the word limits, we expect transparent and detailed methodological reporting and a sufficient contextualization and elaboration of theoretical background of the research.

  • 8000 words: for quantitative papers reporting one study or two studies with a similar design, and commentaries (which, however, typically are much shorter).
  • 10,000 words: for qualitative papers, multi-study quantitative papers and quantitative papers with more complicated methods or analyses, review and theoretical papers.

a) First Submissions

For first submissions authors are requested to provide:

  1. Your manuscript in one of the following formats: doc/docx (recommended), rtf, pdf, odt. Maximum file size: 5 MB. Usage of the First-Submission Template is recommended. Note: You may embed low-resolution (< 100 ppi), screen-optimized versions of your figures within the text at the appropriate positions, or the end of the manuscript. For accepted articles a separate, high-resolution (300 ppi) image file for each figure is required – see (B-3) below.
  2. Any further digital content of relevance for the review process but not embedded in your manuscript (like charts, images, appendices). Submit these additional items as supplementary files at step 4 of the online submission process. Maximum file size: 8 MB each.

Please make sure that all personal information (including in the file properties) has been removed from the manuscript, and that the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been observed.

b) Accepted Manuscripts

If your manuscript has been accepted for publication, you are requested to provide:

  1. The final version of your manuscript, including all revisions, in Microsoft Word format (if you use another program, e.g. OpenOffice, please save your manuscript as a .doc or .docx file in Microsoft Word format). Maximum file size: 5MB. To avoid formatting errors we recommend using the Accepted-Manuscript Template. Note: Do not send manuscripts by email. Instead, please log into your author account to upload the final author version of your manuscript.
  2. Every figure as a separate, high-resolution (300 ppi), print-ready image file. Maximum file size: 8 MB each. File format: PNG. Note: Do not send image files by email. Instead, please log into your author account and upload each image file as a supplementary file.
  3. Media files, data files, or any other digital content that you want to make accessible along with your article. Maximum file size: 8 MB each. Note: Do not send supplementary files by email. Log into your author account and upload each file as a supplementary file.

All submitted materials have to comply with the PsychOpen Author Guidelines. Because this journal is not published for profit, it is important that authors follow these guidelines closely. Publication of manuscripts is contingent on thorough proofreading and adherence to the stylistic guidelines by the author(s).

Note that submissions are subject to plagiarism screening (read more). Please also see PsychOpen's Guidelines on Publication Ethics.

Electronic Supplementary Materials (EMS)

Authors may submit study data, analysis scripts, and other study materials for manuscripts that involve new data as Electronic Supplementary Materials (ESM). 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).