1. Call for papers: scope
The journal is preparing a substantive breakthrough and exploring a way of running with international standards. Beginning from the first issue of 2011, in addition to sincerely accepting reviews and comments dealing with all aspects of psychology and related inter-disciplines, the journal plans to occasionally publish exploratory sections including “Editor-In-Chief Invited”, “Conceptual Framework”, “Doctor Forum”, “Research Bulletin”, “Meta-Analysis”, “Development Strategy Forum”, “Domestic and International Hotspots”, “Research Methods”, “Commentary or Contentions”, etc. Submitted manuscripts can be written in Chinese or English.
The “Editor-In-Chief Invited” section will include project summary reports of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and other major research projects which are already finished and contain a series of important discoveries.
“Conceptual Framework” manuscript requirements:
The manuscript should be rewritten on the base of research plans applying for the National Natural Science Foundation of China or other major research projects, which are funded in the current or previous year.
“Doctor Forum” manuscript requirements:
The manuscript should be an abridgment of the core content of national and provincial excellent doctoral dissertations; the research work doing by a postgraduate candidate must be recommended by supervisor or departments.
“Research Reports” manuscript requirements:
Research Reports section invites authors from China and overseas to submit short reports of original and cutting-edge research. Preference is given to articles that are deemed to be of broad interest across all of psychological science and related fields, and that are written to be intelligible to a wide range of readers.
Submission Guidelines:
(1) Present new research findings and innovations in theoretical approach or applications;
(2) Stimulate broad interest in psychology and related disciplines;
(3) Make the writing easy for readers to understand；
(4) Write in Chinese or English;
(5) Keep the length of the text within 3500 words and include an abstract of no more than 150 words and a maximum of 30 items in the reference list
The “Development Strategy Forum” refers to the introduction of important development strategy both in domestic and overseas, or the introduction of high-level meetings, including strategic planning of all psychology departments.
2. Manuscript submission
The Journal accepts manuscripts submitted by authors themselves or invited by the editor-in-chief and editorial board in advance.
Editor-in-chief or editorial board would invite authors who do excellent jobs in related areas to supply papers, including the summary of their research findings, future research plans or comments on the trends of research works. As the original data is not required, the authors can still publish their research reports in the same topic in other journals.
Authors who meet the requirements are also encouraged to contact the editor-in-chief or editorial board to make an arrangement in advance.
3. Requirements for submission
Please submit the papers for publication through the website of this journal (http://journal.psych.ac.cn). The authors do not need to post printed manuscripts.
Please fill out the self-examination report (download from the “download center”) before submission and paste it to the first page on the manuscript.
Once the online submission is done, authors will receive a code of the paper assigned by the editorial department. Please sign the “submitting confirmation form” and the “copyright transfer form” and post them to the editorial board office, with the code and title of the manuscript filled in. Fees for the paper reviewing (￥100) should be remitted and the code of the manuscript should be notified in the postscript of the remittance.
Since the reviewing is double-blind, information related to the authors should be omitted from the uploaded files, such as the authors’ names and affiliations, and the grant numbers.
The authors take sole responsibility for the paper and should not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently.
4. Requirements for manuscript
4.1 Title
The title must be no more than 20 words and is recommended not to include words like “research review” and “progress”. The English title is also recommended not to use words such as “review”, “advance” or “progress”.
4.2 Abstract
The abstract must be no more than 200 words and is recommended not to include first-person phrases such as “this article” and “we”. The abstract should define center concepts and provide substantial information, since it will be separately included in database. Please avoid hollow words. When writing an English abstract, the authors can refer to English articles of the same type and ask for help from professionals with good English skills.
4.3 Keywords
Please list 3-5 keywords at the end of the abstract. Keywords should be in specialized vocabulary.
4.4 Classification codes
Use Chinese Library Classification (CLC) indexing. (Please visit http://clc.nlc.gov.cn/ for more information. The journal can also help to fill it in.)
4.5 Hierarchical headings
The manuscript should be divided into clearly defined and numbered sections. Use a period (“.”) after each number except for the last one. Thus, Headings of the first-level sections should be numbered 1, 2, 3, etc. Headings of the second-level and the third-level sections should be numbered 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc., or 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, etc. respectively. There can only be up to three levels of headings.
4.6 Tables
Tables should be submitted as three-line tables, that is, there are three horizontal lines: one under the legend, one under the column heads, and one below the body. Vertical lines are generally not used.
4.7 Figures
All the words within the figures should be in standard 6-point Times New Roman fonts. Figure quality should be sharp, noise-free, and of good contrast.
4.8 References
Please use author(s)-year of publication format by American Psychological Association (APA). For detailed guidelines, please find them in “download center” on our website and APA 2019 handbook for publication. Reference management softwares, such as EndNote and NoteExpress, are highly recommended.
Citations in the text should be labeled as author(s) (family name for foreign authors, first and family names for Chinese authors) and year of publication, placed within the sentence or within parentheses at the end of the sentence, depending on specific situations.
The reference list should be first arranged alphabetically, and then sorted chronologically. More than one reference from the same authors in the same year must be arranged alphabetically for the first letter in the title and identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication.
4.9 Manuscript structure
Please follow this order when typing the final accepted manuscripts: (1) Chinese title; (2) authors; (3) affiliations, cities and zip codes; (4) Chinese abstract; (5) Chinese keywords; (6) classification codes; (7) the main text; (8) references; (9) English title; (10) authors’ names in Chinese Pinyin; (11) English names of affiliations; (12) English abstract; (13) English keywords. Authors’ names and affiliations in Chinese and English should not be included in the initial and the revised manuscripts.
Manuscripts submitted by authors themselves will be reviewed anonymously.
The editorial department will review the initial manuscript to examine whether it is written in correct format and whether it meets the requirement of the journal.
The external review will be carried out by 1-2 experts in the same field invited by the editorial department. Based on this review, the manuscript may be subsequently reviewed by more experts. The reviewers are required to reply in 20 days. However, there may be some delay because some of the reviewers are busy at work and need to be reminded by system or the editorial department.
The final review is carried out by the editorial board. All the manuscripts that have passed the review by experts will be reviewed by the editorial board anonymously. Generally, the editorial board meeting is held every two months.
Manuscripts failed to pass the review will be rejected. The editorial department will sum up the opinions of the external reviewers or the editorial board to give the reasons of rejection. Complaints after rejection will not be accepted.
6. Manuscript processing procedures
A manuscript code will be given to the authors after the manuscript is registered by the editorial department. The authors can then use this code to follow the processing procedures and see detailed advice in the “check the manuscript for the authors” section. The general processing procedure is as below:
Initial review -> External review -> Return for revising -> Editorial board -> In-press -> Typesetting
Since some manuscripts need to be reviewed after revision, the “External review” and “Return for revising” stage will be repeated in some cases.
The editorial department will send a notice to the authors after the acceptance so that the authors can send an electronic version of the final manuscript to the editorial department.
The “In-press” stage will begin after the final manuscript is received by the editorial department.
The editorial department will directly use the word document provided by the authors for typesetting. Thus the press proof will not be sent to the authors.
7. Requirements for revision
Revision may be required after external review by experts or final review by the editorial board. A description of revision should be attached to the revised manuscript submitted by the authors. The description of revision should be detailed and respond to each point in the review comments, so that the reviewers or the editorial board can easily check it. The authors should give an explanation for unrevised points.
For repeatedly revised manuscripts, the authors should keep the description of each revision.
The revised manuscript should be labeled with the assigned code.
All the revised manuscripts should not include any information about the authors. The authors should keep the self-examination report which is filled during submission.
Only online version of the revised manuscript is needed before the final review of the editorial board, and the authors do not need to send the printed manuscript. For the revised manuscript submitted to the editorial board for final review, in addition to the electronic document submitted online, the author should also send a printed manuscript for the editorial board to discuss.
The final accepted manuscript should include the authors’ names, affiliations, funds’ project numbers, information for contacting the corresponding author, acknowledgements, etc. For the authors’ names in English, each letter of the last name and the initials of the first name should be capitalized, e.g. ZHANG Houcan, LI Shu.
8. Page charges and authors’ remuneration
After the paper is published, page charges (￥150/Page) will be collected. Remuneration (￥300/Paper) will be paid, which includes the remuneration for both the CD version and the internet version of the paper. Two sample issues and several offprints will be given as presents.
