Author Guidelines

Author Guidelines

1. SUBMISSION
2. MANUSCRIPT TYPES AND WORD LENGTH
3. STYLE
4. MANUSCRIPT REQUIREMENTS
5. EDITORIAL CONSIDERATIONS AND POLICIES
6. AUTHOR LICENSING
7. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE
8. POST PUBLICATION
9. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

1. SUBMISSION

PLEASE NOTE SUBMISSIONS TO AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTED THROUGH WILEY. Please refer to the Editorial Office contact below.

The submission system will prompt you to use an ORCiD (a unique author identifier) to help distinguish your work from that of other researchers. Click here to find out more.

2. MANUSCRIPT TYPES AND WORD LENGTH

Australian Psychologist accepts new and continuing empirical reports (quantitative/qualitative/case study). Reports must be completed to a high standard and relevant to psychological practice, health policy, and journal readership. Australian Psychologist publishes commentaries and response to commentaries of articles appearing in the journal.

Submission word limits include all materials i.e. title page, manuscript, references, tables, and figures. i.e.
Quantitative reviews (8000 words)
Narrative reviews (5000 words)
Commentaries (6000 words)
Case Studies (4000 words)

3. STYLE

Manuscripts must follow the American Psychological Association’s publication style guidelines (6th ed.), except regarding spelling. Australian Psychologist uses Australian spelling - please follow the latest edition of The Macquarie Dictionary (3rd ed. Rev.). All articles published by the journal are in English.

4. MANUSCRIPT REQUIREMENTS

The following relates to quantitative and/or qualitative research, and Case Studies. Hypothesis in this context relates to research questions and hypotheses.

Empirical Reports

Empirical Reports submitted to Australian Psychologist must adhere to
(i) Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) guidelines for reporting psychological research reports and
(ii) Meta-Analysis Reporting Standards (MARS) guidelines for reporting meta-analyses (i.e., Appendix of APA Publication Manual, http://www.apastyle.org/manual/related/JARS-MARS.pdf).
Consistent with the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) publication guidelines, JARS and MARS guidelines provide a data reporting standard to ensure readers have appropriate information to evaluate findings’ importance. Authors describing other review methodologies should also comply with JARS and MARS guidelines wherever possible.

Manuscripts should be presented as:
separate title page
abstract and key words, text, key points, acknowledgments, references, appendices, endnotes, tables with title and footnotes, and figures.

Text footnotes are not allowed – please use endnotes.

Note for qualitative research, the method, results and discussion sections may differ from directions d), e), and f) below as specified in the section entitled Qualitative Research.

a) Title page: Submissions are subject to anonymous peer review. Author details must not appear in your manuscript, but should appear in a separate Title Page containing (i) manuscript title (ii) running head ( 40 characters), and (iii) manuscript date. The title should be short, informative, contain the major key words and variables under investigation. Please do not use abbreviations in the title.

b) Abstract: Australian Psychologist manuscripts must include a 200 – 250 word abstract, structured to these headings: Objective, Method, Results, and Conclusions. Six key words for indexing should be placed after the abstract, in alphabetical order.

c) Introduction: Australian Psychologist will only accept manuscripts with data/research supporting the conceptual and theoretical positions. Please:

• outline the problem’s importance, and theoretical and practical implications;
• provide a comprehensive, up-to-date literature review and critique using the best forms of evidence;
• state how present research differs from previous research;
• specify research aims, hypotheses or research questions;
• describe how theory was used to derive hypotheses or research questions; and how the research design and hypotheses relate.

d) Method: The method section of quantitative and qualitative reports must contain a detailed account of measures/procedures to ensure reader understanding/replication. The method should describe:

• the participant characteristics and any inclusion/exclusion criteria; demographic variables and any topic-specific characteristics;
• sampling procedures used for selecting participants, including information regarding the sampling method, percentage of sample approached that participated;
• where the data were collected (e.g., within the workplace, clinic, private practice, off-site setting e.g. independent office, via post, etc.);
• any conditional requirements for participation such as payment of participants, agreement to provide study results, entry into a prize raffle; informed consent;
• ethical approval statement; intended and actual sample size and power analyses used to determine sample size;
• all study instruments used, including those that are not being reported within the present study; interview transcripts, where relevant;
• whether parts of the database have been previously published or are being published separately; psychometric or biometric information on measures, where relevant; assignment method; and statistical analyses procedures.

Australian Psychologist retains the right to reject any manuscript on the basis of unethical conduct in research.

e) Results: For quantitative studies, Australian Psychologist requires adequate reporting of statistical significance of results. Please report means, standard deviations, and confidence intervals for all continuous study variables and the effect sizes for the primary study findings. If effect sizes are not available, please include this in your submission cover letter. Please report confidence intervals for any effect sizes involving principal outcomes.

This section should include participant flow (i.e., total number of participants, flow of participants through each stage of the study); recruitment, dates of the recruitment period and any repeated measures of follow-up assessments; all information regarding statistical analyses, including problems with assumptions or distributions that could affect findings validity, any missing data (including percentages or frequencies, theories regarding the cause of missing data and whether it is missing at random, and methods used to address missing data); information regarding cases deleted from any primary or secondary analysis, subgroup or cell sample sizes, means, standard deviations, and other descriptive statistics, and effect sizes and confidence intervals; information regarding the error rate adopted for inferential statistics and the direction, magnitude, degrees of freedom, and exact p level; variance-covariance matrix or matrices associated with multivariate analytic systems; estimation problems; the statistical software program used, information surrounding other analyses (e.g., exploratory analyses); and a discussion of implication of ancillary analyses for statistical error rates.

f) Discussion: For quantitative reports, this section requires a support or non-support statement for all hypotheses and how these were assessed (i.e., primary or secondary analyses, or post hoc explanations); similarities or differences between results and those in previous research; an interpretation of results accounting for any sources of bias and threats to validity, the imprecision of measures, the overall number of tests and the overlap among tests, and limitations or weaknesses of the study; generalisability of findings accounting for the target population and any contextual issues; and a discussion surrounding the implications for future research, programs, or policies. Please discuss study sample diversity and the generalisability of findings.

g) Key Points: Please include 6 key points: 3 Key Points for “what is already known about this topic” and 3 Key Points for “what this topic adds” in your manuscript. Please place the Key Points after the key words in the manuscript, and write your Key Points with a practitioner audience in mind.

i) Acknowledgements: The source of financial grants and other funding must be acknowledged, including a declaration of authors’ industrial links and affiliations. Colleague or institutions contributions should also be acknowledged. Personal thanks are not appropriate.

j) References: All referencing, footnotes, tables and figures must be prepared according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association requirements (currently 6th ed.). This includes Digital Object Identifiers (DOI’s) wherever available.

APA – American Psychological Association 

References should be prepared according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition). This means in text citations should follow the author-date method whereby the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, for example, (Jones, 1998). The complete reference list should appear alphabetically by name at the end of the paper.

A sample of the most common entries in reference lists appears below. Please note that a DOI should be provided for all references where available. For more information about APA referencing style, please refer to the APA FAQ. Please note that for journal articles, issue numbers are not included unless each issue in the volume begins with page one.

Journal article

Example of reference with 2 to 7 authors

Beers, S. R. , & De Bellis, M. D. (2002). Neuropsychological function in children with maltreatment-related posttraumatic stress disorder. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 483–486.https://doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.159.3.483

Ramus, F., Rosen, S., Dakin, S. C., Day, B. L., Castellote, J. M., White, S., & Frith, U. (2003). Theories of developmental dyslexia: Insights from a multiple case study of dyslexic adults. Brain, 126(4), 841–865. https://doi: 10.1093/brain/awg076  

Example of reference with more than 7 authors

 

Rutter, M., Caspi, A., Fergusson, D., Horwood, L. J., Goodman, R., Maughan, B., … Carroll, J. (2004). Sex differences in developmental reading disability: New findings from 4 epidemiological studies. Journal of the American Medical Association, 291(16), 2007–2012. https://doi: 10.1001/jama.291.16.2007

k) Endnotes must appear as a numbered list at the end of the manuscript, not the foot of each page. Endnotes should be referred to with consecutive, superscript Arabic numerals in the text. They should be brief, containing short comments tangential to the paper’s main argument, and not include references.

l) Please place Appendices at the end of the manuscript, numbered in Roman numerals and referred to in the text.

m) Tables should be self-contained and complement not duplicate, text information. Number tables consecutively in the text using Arabic numerals. Include tables on a separate page with concise but comprehensive legend information above. The table, legend and footnotes should be understandable without reference to the text. Please do not use vertical lines to separate columns. Use brief column headings, with units of measurement in parentheses; define all abbreviations in table footnotes. Use Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, (in that order). Reserve *, ** and *** for p values. Identify statistical measures e.g. M, SD, SEM in the headings using appropriate statistical notation outlined in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.).

n) Figure Legends. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the figure and legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Define any symbols used as well as abbreviations and units of measurement.

Preparing Figures: Although we encourage authors to publish the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes we can accept a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions.

Click here for basic figure requirements for initial peer review, and high resolution publication figure requirements.

Colour Figures: Figures submitted in colour may be reproduced in colour online free of charge. Please note it is preferable to supply line figures (e.g. graphs and charts) in black and white so they remain legible if printed by a reader in black and white. If you wish to have figures printed in colour in hard copies of the journal, a fee will be charged by the Publisher.

Qualitative Reports

Qualitative research encompasses various paradigms for reporting primarily textual data. Although visual and graphical data are increasingly included in qualitative research. Australian Psychologist requires high standards of research and reporting to ensure research quality and social relevance of findings and interpretations. Although there are differences in the conduct of research between qualitative and quantitative research, there are similarities in reporting. Respect for participants is paramount.

Important publication factors include:

a) Research quality achieved through open-ended, meaningful questions to achieve rich responses. In the case of deductive logic, seeking disconfirmation, rather than confirmation, of theory/hypotheses;
b) The depth and length of interview/focus group data, describing data collection method/s (i.e., open-ended, flexible format; structured interview with pre-determined set of questions);
c) The variety of evidence, sampled from multiple and different participants and use of other data forms where relevant (i.e., field notes, site documents, participant observation;
d) The use of data sources quotes/excerpts; and
e) Attention to rigour via credibility checks, attending to findings trustworthiness/dependability, authors perspective/reflexivity, and a description of context to allow transferability of findings assessments. Refer to Empirical Reports sections (a) title page, (b) abstract, and (g) to (n) for further specifications on manuscripts.

Case Studies

Australian Psychologist values Case Studies as an important aspect of psychological practice development, adding depth to practitioners knowledge and skill. Case Studies develop theory and practice, and extend upon empirical work in psychological practice, including individual clients, groups, or organisations. Please provide an objective account of the case, related variables, diagnostic features, interventions observed and measured effects, and any possible alternative explanations for observed variables. Give careful attention to ethical and legal considerations of reporting Case Studies, and abide by the Australian Psychological Society’s Code of Ethics. Case Studies must include a statement that written informed consent was obtained from the subject/s. All efforts must be taken to anonymise/exclude demographic/identifying information less relevant to case presentation (e.g., employment type, location, gender, age, ethnicity, cultural identification). Where subject/s are under 18, the statement must show consent from legal guardians for Case Study procedure and publication.

Case Studies presentation should contain:

a) Case Context and Method: including case selection rationale , methodological strategies used to enhance study rigour, Case Study setting information, and confidentiality.

b) Practitioner Description: including demographic information, theoretical orientation, educational attainment, and relevant experience.

c) Client/s Description: including demographic/diagnostic information; case conceptualisation, including client’s problems, goals, strengths, and history. Note: ‘client’ refers to individual clients, groups, communities, or organisations.

d) Formulation: a link between guiding conceptions of the client and previous research publications and the psychologist's previous practical experience.

e) Course of psychological service, including information on the alliance and relationship built between client and psychologist, assessment, intervention, and description of any strains encountered in the professional relationship with the consulting psychologist. Other useful information includes interactions between client and psychologist, interventions and strategies the psychologist used and client reaction (the best method being transcripts of important interactions).

f) Monitoring of psychological service and use of feedback information: if feedback was used, the report should consist of; i) psychologist completed and self-report questionnaires, ii) peer feedback, iii) psychologist self-reflection, and iv) feedback from professionals who have previously or concurrently worked with the client (consistent with the Australian Psychological Society’s Code of Ethics). Case studies without appropriate evaluation of psychological services (i.e., using psychometrically based assessments) cannot be published.

g) Concluding evaluation of the outcome of service and its process: including information on reaching client goals and alleviating presenting problems at conclusion of service/follow-up, strengths and weaknesses of the approach, and funding issues. Discussion of the case in relation to previously reported cases, research and theory, and possible hypotheses or recommendations for practice should also be included.

Case Studies must follow Australian Psychologist’s standard publication submission format (ie title page, abstract, reference list, tables, figures). Refer to Empirical Reports sections (a) title page, (b) abstract, and (g) to (n) for further specifications on manuscripts.

Reviews (Quantitative and Narrative)

Review Articles provide research summation on specific issues/questions relevant to Australian Psychologist readers: general clinical practice, specialty practice, or public health. Review Articles should provide subject matter scope, background, and practice relevance, while describing recent empirical research, and conceptual and theoretical papers. Systematic reviews are preferred to narrative reviews, which may be published circumstantially. Please include the best-quality evidence (e.g., randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses). Novel findings may be included when especially relevant and justified. Include an impartial discussion surrounding the evidence and any controversies within the research. If using unpublished data, a source must be provided (e.g., registered trial, unpublished doctoral dissertation, etc.).

Review Article length may vary substantially according to size of research domain and issue. Narrative reviews must not exceed 5000 words, including references, tables, and figures. Quantitative reviews must not exceed 8000 words, including references, tables, and figures. Review Abstracts must include information on the context and relevance of the research, how review evidence was obtained (i.e., databases/years searched, search terms), exclusion criteria, findings/conclusions drawn, and implications for psychological practice.

Refer to Empirical Reports sections (a) title page, (b) abstract, and (g) to (n) for further specifications on manuscripts.

Commentaries (and Response to Commentaries)

Australian Psychologist publishes Commentaries on previously published journal articles. Commentaries have a 6000 word limit, including all materials. A Commentary’s purpose is to provide meaningful insight, alternative interpretation, clarification, or critical analysis. Commentary publication provides comprehensive issue understanding that significantly adds to the literature. Commentaries that focus on issues such as small sample size or statistical power alone rather than provide substantial critique will not be considered for publication. Commentaries must maintain a constructive and respectful tone.

All Commentaries (and responses) require an unstructured abstract stating major points and principal conclusions (200-250 words).

The Commentary title includes a subtitle reflecting the title and publication year of the article that engendered the comment, e.g. “Comment on A Model for Increasing Youth Engagement in Education (Smith & Jones, 2014).”

The original article author/s may be invited to respond to Commentary accepted for publication. The Commentary and Response/s may be published together, subject to the timely delivery of comments and journal space. Invited Responses should be no longer than half the Commentary’s length.

Supporting Information

Supporting Information is non-essential article information that provides depth and background. Supporting information only appears online, without editing or typesetting. It may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc. Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Note, if data, scripts or artefacts used to generate article analyses are publicly available, authors must include a location reference within the paper.

Wiley Author Resources

Wiley author resources for manuscript submission preparation are here. Wiley’s best practice tips on Writing for Search Engine Optimization.

Article Preparation Support: Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence. Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.      

5. EDITORIAL CONSIDERATIONS AND POLICIES

Peer Review

Acceptance criteria for all papers are research quality and originality, and significance to our readership. Manuscripts are double-blind peer reviewed by two anonymous reviewers and the Editor. Final acceptance or rejection rests with the Editorial Board, who reserves the right to refuse any material for publication.

Manuscripts should have a clear, concise, direct writing style. Where contributions are judged as acceptable for publication on the basis of content, the Editor and the Publisher reserve the right to modify typescripts to eliminate ambiguity and repetition and improve communication between author and reader.

Human Studies and Subjects

For medical studies manuscripts involving human participants, we require a statement identifying the approving ethics committee, and that the study conforms to recognized standards, for example: Declaration of Helsinki; US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects; or European Medicines Agency Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice. Individual participant images and information will only be published where authors have the individual's free prior informed consent. Non-essential identifying details should be omitted.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The journal requires authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that can be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly or indirectly related to work authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to, patent or stock ownership, committee/advisory/company board of directors membership, company consultancy, or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. Please note the existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Data policy

The APS encourages data sharing wherever possible, and subscribes to the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. The code states “Research data should be made available for use by the other researchers unless this is prevented by ethical, privacy or confidentiality matters.” Authors publishing in the journal are encouraged to make data/scripts/other artefacts used to generate their analyses available via a publicly available data repository, however this is not mandatory. If the study includes original data, at least one author must confirm they had full access to all study data, and takes responsibility for data integrity and analysis accuracy.

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices.wiley.com/statements/data-protection-policy.html

Authorship and Acknowledgements

The submitting author ensures all listed authors are eligible for authorship. Each author takes responsibility for: substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; the data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the work, drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content AND final approval of the version to be published AND agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section, with their permissions. The Acknowledgments section For example, to recognize contributions from people who provided technical help, collation of data, writing assistance, acquisition of funding, or a department chairperson who provided general support).

Publication Ethics

Australian Psychologist is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read our Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found at https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics-guidelines/index.html

6. AUTHOR LICENCING

If your paper is accepted, the formal corresponding author will receive an email directing them to Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) to complete a copyright license agreement on behalf of all authors.

Authors may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or under the terms of a Creative Commons License (OnlineOpen).

General information regarding licensing and copyright is available here. To review the Creative Commons License options offered under OnlineOpen, please click here. (Note that certain funders mandate that a particular type of CC license has to be used; to check this please click here.)

Self-Archiving definitions and policies. Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions. Please click here for information about self-archiving definitions and policies.

Open Access fees: If you publish using OnlineOpen you will be charged a fee. A list of Article Publication Charges for Wiley journals is available here.

Funder Open Access: Please click here for more information on Wiley’s compliance with specific Funder Open Access Policies.

UK authors: Note that all papers published in the journal are eligible for Panel A: Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience in the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

7. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Accepted article received in production

When your accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author receives an email alert to sign a publication license.

Proofs

Once your paper is typeset you receive a PDF typeset page proof and full instructions on how to correct and return the file. Please note that you are responsible for all statements made in your work, including changes made during the editorial process. Proofs have a 48 hours turnaround time.

Early View

The journal offers rapid speed publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View (Online Version of Record) articles are published on Wiley Online Library before inclusion in an issue. Your Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI for citations.

8. POST PUBLICATION

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Access and sharing

When your article is published online:

• You receive an email alert (if requested)
• You can share your published article through social media
• As the author, you retain free access (after accepting the Terms & Conditions of use, you can view your article)
• The corresponding author and co-authors can nominate up to ten colleagues to receive a publication alert and free online access to your article.
• You can order print copies of your article
• You can promote your article (more information here.)

Measuring the impact of your work

Wiley also helps you measure the impact of your research through our specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

9. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

For queries about submission, please contact [email protected]