Psychological Communications

Guide for Authors

Psychological Communications is a comprehensive academic journal in psychology sponsored by the Shanghai Mental Health Center. The Journal was founded in 2018 and is currently a quarterly publication. It mainly publishes new advances, achievements, and technologies in clinical psychology and interdisciplinary research, aiming to promote academic exchange and development in psychological counseling and therapy, clinical psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The target readers are professionals engaged in clinical psychology-related fields, including psychological counseling, treatment, research and education.

The Editorial Office of Psychological Communications welcomes submission of original research articles, case studies, reviews, and meta-analyses from psychology related disciplines, as well as other articles with novel and unique perspectives, hot topic comments, introductions of scholars and schools, viewpoints, discussions, and essays.

The guidelines for authors are as follows. If authors have any question not covered in these guidelines, they can contact the editorial office via psychcomm@smhc.org.cn.

1. Publishing Scope

Original research articles and applied research articles in the field of psychology, including basic psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, abnormal psychology, social psychology, psychological measurement, etc.

Main columns include: Review and Meta-Analysis, Research Articles, Case Reports, Communications, etc.

2. Submission Instruction

This journal adopts an online submission system. Authors can access it at China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI, http://www.cnki.net/). You may find the system entrance on the page of Psychological Communications. Authors can also directly log into the submission system via http://lxtx.cbpt.cnki.net/, where authors should complete and submit relevant information, and upload their manuscripts. They can check the process status at any time. If authors have any questions about the submission system, or any suggestions, they are welcomed to contact the editorial office via psychcomm@smhc.org.cn.

Figures and tables should be placed after references, not inserted in main body text, but included in the same file.

Authors should take full responsibility for their own writing. Plagiarism, forgery and multiple submission are prohibited. This journal will conduct plagiarism checks on all manuscripts using the Academic Misconduct Detection System developed by CNKI. Manuscripts that do not pass the detection will be rejected.

If unpublished scales or questionnaires are used in the study, written permission from the original authors must be provided.

For articles involving clinical trial research, please provide ethics approval letter and universal trial number (UTN).

Psychological treatment case reports should adhere to academic ethics, with informed consent from patients obtained, and identity information concealed.

3 Writing Requirement

The manuscript should be written in a standardized manner, have practical significance, and be of interest to readers. It should reflect the latest progress in the research field, with clear argument, sufficient evidence, reliable data, clear structure, suitable title and concise writing.

Research articles should be original and innovative. The "Introduction" section should include three parts: research background, research purpose and theoretical basis. The "Discussion" section should elaborate on the innovation points and indicate the shortcomings of the research. Please refer to the "Writing Standards for Psychology Papers" published by Science Press and edited by the Chinese Psychological Society.

Please refer to relevant guidelines for other types of manuscripts. For inquires, authors are encouraged to contact the editorial office at psychcomm@smhc.org.cn.

It is recommended that the wordcount of the main body text (excluding figures/tables, abstracts, and references) should be no more than 10000 Chinese characters. There should be no more than 30 references for each article (no more than 50 references for review articles). 

3.1 Format

Please submit manuscripts in WORD format, 1.5 times spacing, with blank lines inserted between each two chapters or sections. Arabic numerals shall be used to mark three-level headings.。

3.2 Title

Article title should be within 26 Chinese characters, well reflecting the main content of the article. Uncommon acronyms should be avoided.

3.3 Abstract

Each abstract of research article should include objectives, methods, results, and conclusions (results and conclusions should not be confused). The Chinese abstract is limited to 350~400 characters, written in the third person perspective. Chinese and English abstracts should be consistent in meaning. English abstract shall be no more than 400 words.

Abstracts of other article types shall not exceed 250 Chinese characters.

3.4 Keywords

3~5 keywords must be provided and placed after the abstract. Keywords should be selected from professional terminology, and then translated into English.

3.5 Figures

Acronyms in figures should be explained in annotations. Titles of figures should be numbered and placed below the figures. In manuscripts, figures should be placed after references but in the same Word file. Do not upload figures separately in other formats. Before publication, authors may be required to provide editable high-definition images.

3.6 Tables

Three-line style should be adopted for tables. Table titles and annotations should not be separated from the tables. The table titles are numbered and placed above the tables, and the annotations placed below. Acronyms in tables should be explained in annotations. In manuscripts, tables should be placed after references but in the same Word file. Do not upload tables separately in other formats.

3.7 Statistics

Please standardize symbols and usage of units of measurements. Statistical symbols should be in italics. When reporting P-value, it should be accurate to 3 decimal places and the corresponding statistical capacity should be stated, accurate to 1 decimal place. If necessary, free degree should be provided.

3.8 References

Detailed guidelines can be found in the American Psychological Association publication manual (2010) http://www.apastyle.org/manual/index.aspx. It is recommended to use EndNote or NoteExpress to manage references and APA format should be adopted.

References should be based on the latest literature as much as possible, and the ratio of references in the past 5 years should not be less than 75%. There should be no more than 30 references in research articles and no more than 50 references in review articles.

Please refer to the Chinese website for detailed requirement of references format and examples.

3.9 Arrangement

The content items should be arranged in the following order:

(1) Chinese title; (2) Authors' names; (3) Authors' affiliations, cities and postal codes, E-mail of the corresponding author; (4) Chinese abstract; (5) Chinese keywords; (6) English title; (7) Authors' names in Pinyin; (8) Authors' affiliations, cities and postal codes in English, E-mail of the corresponding author in English; (9) English abstract; (10) English keywords; (11) Main body text; (12) References; (13) Figures; (14) Tables; (15) Acknowledgement; (16) Funding title and number; (17) Ethics approval letter and universal trial number (UTN) for clinical trial research; (18) Conflict of interest; (19) 2-inch color photo and introduction of the first author.

4 Manuscript Review

4.1 Review System

There are three rounds of manuscript review.

(1) The initial review of the manuscript is conducted by the editorial office, mainly to check whether the writing of the submitted manuscript is standardized and whether it meets the basic requirements of this journal.

(2) During the external review, the editorial office invites peer experts to review the manuscript, and each manuscript should be double-anonymously reviewed by at least two peer experts.

(3) The Editor-in-Chief will conduct the final review and make the final decision whether a manuscript should be accepted.

4.2 Workflow

After receiving a manuscript, the editorial office will register and assign a number to it. The authors will be notified of the manuscript number.

The general workflow is: initial review by editors → (supply materials, return for revision) → external peer review → (return for revision, secondary review) →final review by Editor-in-Chief→ final draft. Since some manuscripts are to be reviewed after revision, the three stages of " external peer review", " return for revision" and " secondary review" may be repeated.

After a manuscript is accepted, the editorial office will inform the authors via E-mail. After the manuscript is finalized, the authors will receive a PDF file for proof reading. Authors should confirm and sign on the final proof.

This journal does not publish special issues, nor does it adopt guest editors-in-chief or guest editors.

4.3 Revision Requirement

Authors may be required to revise the manuscript during the process of external peer review, secondary review by editor, or final review by the Editor-in-Chief. Authors should provide a statement when submitting revised manuscript. The statement should reply each point of the reviewers’ comments, specifying how the problems were made and addressed. A reasonable explanation should be provided for problems that could not be revised. Please return the revised manuscript within the specified time.

The revision mode of WORD should be adopted. Remarks could be added if necessary.

4.4 Submission from Editors/ Editorial Board Members

The editors / editorial board members should not be involved in publishing decisions on papers which they have written themselves or have been written by their family members or colleagues. Any such submission should be strictly subject to the journal’s usual review and editorial process. Peer review should be handled independently from the relevant author/editor and their research groups.

4.5 Correction and Retraction

After publishing, if there appears to be an unintended scientific mistake in the article which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusion, the editorial office will publish corrections in the journal as soon as possible, and detailing the changes made to the original article. If severe scientific errors are found in published articles, or the article is suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the editorial office will issue a statement to inform readers of the risks, initiate an investigation and announce the final result, or even retract article with a retraction statement if necessary.

5 Publishing Fee and Remuneration

The journal does not charge publishing fee for now. Once published, a renumeration will be paid to authors.