Manuscript Structure, Style, and Content Guidelines

Updated 2/3/22

Manuscripts must be submitted in the style of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition, with the exception that figures and tables should be embedded within the main text near to where they are discussed rather than at the end of the manuscript. Other considerations regarding elements of Psychological Science submissions can be found below. Authors for whom English is not their first language or who have limited experience with APA style are advised to seek input from a skilled and knowledgeable English reader familiar with APA style.

The structure described here applies to all articles other than Commentaries.

Manuscript Main Text

Abstract

The abstract should be on a separate page and be no longer than 150 words. Five to seven relevant keywords should be listed directly under the abstract on the same page.

Statement of Relevance

The Statement of Relevance should explain why the research reported in the submission is of interest and significance beyond the specific sub-area in which it is situated and, ideally, to the public at large. The aim of the Statement of Relevance is to broaden the impact of the science reported in the journal and make it easier for interested readers to appreciate and understand our efforts. It should make clear why the questions that motivated the study and the findings that bear on them matter beyond psychology laboratories and college and university campuses. The Statement of Relevance should be on a separate page and no longer than 150 words.

Introduction

The introduction should explain the rationale behind the current study, placing the research topic and study within the context of the current research landscape. Authors should summarize and cite previous research relevant to the current study and highlight the gap in knowledge being filled by the present research. The introduction should clearly pose the research question, describe the experimental design, and outline the authors’ hypothesis.

Method

This section (or sections: e.g., Participants, Materials, Procedure) should contain a clear and concise description and, when needed, justification of the conditions and procedures of the study, as well as the analytical tools or methodology used. All excluded observations, independent variables/manipulations, and dependent variables/measures must be reported, and authors should be sure to explain how the sample size was determined.

Results

This section should present the collected data and analysis. Results for all measures should be reported in a concise, straightforward manner, using tables or figures when appropriate. Duplication of information that is presented in tables or figures should be minimal in the text, and all results should be reported in the text, rather than figure captions. We encourage authors to include effect sizes accompanied by 95% confidence intervals rather than standard deviations or standard errors. Authors should be particularly attentive to APA style when typing statistical details (e.g., Ns for chi-square tests, formatting of dfs) and mindful to exclude interpretation and discussion of the findings or any details related to methodology from this section.

Discussion

This section should discuss the findings in the context of the research question initially posed and the authors’ hypothesis. The Discussion should also explore the broader implications and significance of the findings, as well as specific recommendations for the direction of future research on the topic.

A Note on Manuscripts Presenting Multiple Studies: For some Research Articles that include multiple studies, an alternate structure might be appropriate, e.g., general introduction – Study 1 introduction – Method – Results – Discussion – Study 2 introduction – Method – Results – Discussion – etc. – General Discussion. Authors who choose to structure their manuscript in this manner should note that Results and Discussion sections for each study should not be combined; a combined Results and Discussion section will be treated simply as a Discussion section and will be counted toward the word limit.

References

Every citation in the text should be listed in the reference list, and vice versa.  Note that online sources should be cited in the same manner as print sources (i.e., author and date in parentheses).  Be sure to cite sources for all software and include full reference information. References should be formatted in accordance with APA style. Relevant examples:

Journal article:

Russano, M. B., Meissner, C. A., Narchet, F. M., & Kassin, S. M. (2005). Investigating true and false confessions within a novel experimental paradigm. Psychological Science, 16(6), 481–486. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01560.x

Authored book:

Krumhansl, C. L. (1990). Cognitive foundations of musical pitch. Oxford University Press.

Chapter in edited book:

Mazziotta, J. C., Toga, A. W., & Friston, K. J. (2000). Experimental design and statistical issues. In J. C. Mazziotta & A. W. Toga (Eds.), Brain mapping: The disorders (pp. 33–58). Academic Press.

Source with 21 or more authors:

Kalnay, E., Kanamitsu, M., Kistler, R., Collins, W, Deaven, D., Gandin, L., Iredell, M., Saha, S., White, G., Woollen, J., Zhu, Y., Chelliah, M., Ebisuzaki, W, Higgins, W, Janowiak, J., Mo, K. c., Ropelewski, c., Wang, J., Leetmaa, A., . . . Joseph, D. (1996). The NCEP/NCAR 40-year reanalysis project. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 77(3), 437–471. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(1996)077<0437:TNYRP>2.0.CO;2

Online source:

Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., & Schreiber, T. A. (1998). The University of South Florida word association, rhyme, and word fragment norms. http://w3.usf.edu/FreeAssociation/

Software:

R Core Team. (2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing (Version 4.1.0) [Computer software]. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org

Author Contributions

Author Contributions must be uploaded as a separate file (“Additional File”) and not included in the manuscript document itself. Authorship implies significant participation in the research reported or in writing the manuscript, including participation in the design and/or interpretation of reported experiments or results, participation in the acquisition and/or analysis of data, and participation in the drafting and/or revising of the manuscript. All authors must agree to the order in which the authors are listed and must have read the final manuscript and approved its submission. They must also agree to take responsibility for the work in the event that its integrity or veracity is questioned.

Furthermore, as part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent, and fair peer review and publication process, APS journals have adopted the use of CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). CRediT is a high-level taxonomy, including 14 roles that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scientific scholarly output.

These roles describe the possible contributions to the published work:

Conceptualization: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims

Methodology; Development or design of methodology; creation of models

Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components

Validation Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs

Formal Analysis Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal

techniques to analyze or synthesize study data

Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection

Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools

Data Curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse

Writing – Original Draft: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation)

Writing – Review & Editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision–including pre- or postpublication stages

Visualization: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation

Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team

Project Administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution

Funding Acquisition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.

The submitting author is responsible for listing the contributions of all authors at submission. All authors should agree to their individual contributions prior to submission.

In order to adhere to SAGE’s authorship criteria authors must have been responsible for at least one of the following CRediT roles:

• Conceptualization
• Methodology
• Formal Analysis
• Investigation

AND at least one of the following:

• Writing – Original Draft Preparation
• Writing – Review & Editing

Authors should indicate their contributions by role. For example:

“Conceptualization: D. Wu, A. Brown, and M. Augilera; Methodology: T. Sossou; Formal Analysis: D. Wu and H. Andreas; Investigation: M. Augilera, T. Sossou, and D. Wu; Writing – Original Draft Preparation: D. Wu and A. Brown; Writing – Review & Editing: D. Wu, A. Brown, M. Augilera, and T. Sossou; Supervision: D. Wu; Project Administration: M. Augilera and A. Brown.

Contributions will be published with the final article, and they should accurately reflect all contributions to the work. Any contributors with roles that do not constitute authorship (e.g., Supervision was the sole contribution) should be listed in the Acknowledgements.

Tables

Tables should be editable and created using the tables function in Word rather than using tabs to separate columns. There should be no empty rows or columns. Column heads cannot change partway down a table; in such cases, the new heads and the data under them must be placed in a separate table, with its own title. Tables should be embedded near to where they are discussed in the text. Example:

Table 1.

Title of Table 1

Note: [Explanatory notes that apply to the entire table or large sections of the table go here. Explanations of all abbreviations and symbols used (except symbols indicating statistical significance) also go in this note.]

^a[Specific notes that apply to a particular column, row, or cell entry are called out by letters a, b, etc.]

*p < .05. **p < .01. [If asterisks (or daggers) are used to indicate results of tests of significance, the symbols are explained here.]

Other considerations:

• Tables must be numbered in the order in which they are referred to in the text.
• All tables must be referred to in the text, and the text needs to give a full indication of the information that is included in every table. For example, if a table presents results of multiple statistical tests, the text must refer to them all, whether in a general way or individually. The full scope of a table can be indicated all at once or cumulatively by multiple references to the table.

Figures

For original submissions, figures should be embedded near to where they are discussed in the text. For revisions, authors should also submit separate production-quality figures. For a graph or other line art, we ask that authors submit a computer file in the native file format, which is the format of the program in which the figure was originally created. For example, if you created a graph in Excel, supply the original Excel file rather than an Excel file embedded in a Word document. Photographic images such as brain scans or photos of the experimental setup should be submitted in standard image formats, like JPEG. To avoid images appearing blurry or pixelated in print, use a minimum resolution of 300 pixels per inch (PPI; more information about pixel density can be found here). Do not submit images in TIFF format.

Please adhere to the following format when naming figure files: AuthorLastNameFigX.fileformat (e.g., SmithFig1.xls, SmithFig2.jpg, etc.). More details can be found in the APS Figure Format and Style Guidelines.

Figure Captions

Figure captions should be provided in the main text document; they should not be included in the figure files.  Each caption should begin with “Fig.” and then the appropriate number, following by a period (e.g., “Fig. 1.”). The text of the caption begins on a separate line.

A caption should be concise and describe only what is shown in the figure itself. Results should not be summarized. Each caption should begin with a sentence fragment that serves as a title and covers the entire content of the figure (not just selected panels), at least in a general way. All the text following this fragment should be in complete sentences.

Other considerations:

•  A caption should be clear by itself. That is, a reader should be able to understand the figure without referring elsewhere. However, if providing a complete explanation would be too cumbersome, the caption can instead refer readers to the text or another figure or table.
• References to panel letters in a caption should be in parentheses and, if possible, precede the relevant text: for example, “Reaction times in (a) Experiment 1 and (b) Experiment 2 as a function of experimental condition.” Do not begin a caption or a sentence in a caption with a panel letter. 
• If a figure includes error bars, the caption must explain what they represent (e.g., 95% confidence intervals).
• Treat each caption as a separate entity: Spell out all abbreviations on first use and cite all references as initial citations (in regard to using “et al.”). An abbreviation used in a figure must be explained in the caption.
•  The caption should not repeat information that is included in a key within the figure (e.g., that dashed lines are used for a particular experimental condition).
•  There is no requirement for a figure that contains multiple panels to have panel letters. If panel letters are used, they are always lowercase letters, and they must be referred to in the caption.
•  Figures must be numbered in the order in which they are referred to in the text.
• All figures must be referred to in the text, and the text needs to give a full indication of the information that is included in every figure. For example, if a figure has two panels, the text cannot refer to only one of them (but the text does not have to call out each panel separately—e.g., if Fig. 1. has panels (a) and (b), the text can refer to Fig. 1 as a whole). The full scope of a figure can be indicated all at once or cumulatively by multiple references to the figure.
• If a figure has asterisks to indicate significance, the caption should explain them (i.e., what was tested and what p value is indicated by a single asterisk, two asterisks, etc.). Unlike in a table, this explanation should be incorporated into a complete sentence.

Checklist for Submission Components

In Manuscript/Main Text File

__Abstract (150 words or less)

__Text organized according to above guidelines

__Tables formatted according to guidelines (using the tables function in Word)

__Tables and figures embedded near to where they are discussed in main text

__Captions in main document rather than in figure files

__References formatted in APA style

Other Submission Files

__Separate figure files (revisions)

__Supplemental Material, including reviewed supplemental online material (SOM), and supplemental materials meant only to aid in the review process

      __Additional Files, including author contributions paragraph.

SAGEtrack Submission

__E-mail and affiliation information for all coauthors, as well as CRediT roles

__Answers to all required questions

__Author Contributions section

__Disclosure Statements