Submission Guidelines

Please Read Carefully Before Submitting Any Manuscript

Perspectives on Psychological Science seeks to advance the field of psychological science, broadly construed, by publishing high-quality research that meets the following criteria:

(a) important: the article advances psychological science in important ways and is relevant to a wide range of readers;

(b) original: the contribution is novel; it is not just a rewriting of already-published research;

(c) readable: the article is engaging and accessible to psychologists across subdisciplines; and

(d) rigorous: the article is logical, sophisticated, and complete.

Perspectives accepts submissions from all areas of psychology, as well as from related behavioral and social sciences and neuroscience. It publishes unsolicited manuscripts, manuscripts responding to Calls for Papers on specific topics, and manuscripts invited by the Editorial Board.

Read the latest editorial policies from the APS Publications Committee.

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Types of Articles Published

Stand-alone articles:

    • Standard and meta-analytic reviews of the literature
    • Thought and opinion pieces
    • Proposals of important new ideas
    • Theoretical statements with supportive evidence
    • Broad overviews of distinguished research programs, offering important conclusions and including findings from other laboratories as needed
    • Adversarial collaborations


Grouped Articles:

  • Target articles accompanied by commentaries or articles with complementary findings
  • Sets of interrelated articles that focus on a common topic from different viewpoints or subdisciplines

Miscellaneous:

  • Biographies and autobiographies
  • Timely and brief book reviews
  • Humorous pieces of very high quality

The journal publishes an eclectic mix that is enjoyable to read and thought provoking, and at the same time presents the latest important advances in psychology.  Creative and insightful articles that currently do not meet the format of existing journals are often published as chapters in scattered books, and one function of Perspectives is to make the most important of these types of articles more readily available to a broad audience. Although lengthy articles will sometimes be published, authors are reminded that lean articles are often most frequently read. Perspectives on Psychological Science does not compete with other journals of the Association for Psychological Science, and therefore will not publish reports of single studies (these should be submitted to Psychological Science) or short overviews of a research area (these are appropriate for Current Directions in Psychological Science).

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Preparation and Submission of Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted to the Perspectives editorial website at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pps. Submissions must follow the style of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition, with respect to handling of the order of manuscript sections, headings and subheadings, references, abbreviations, and symbols. Please embed tables and figures within the main text.

SAGE is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. We strongly encourage all authors and co-authors to use ORCID iDs during the peer-review process. If you already have an ORCID iD, please login to your account on SAGE Track and edit the account information to link to your ORCID iD. If you do not already have an ORCID iD, please login to your SAGE Track account to create your unique identifier and automatically add it to your profile. PLEASE NOTE: ORCID iDs must be linked to author accounts prior to manuscript acceptance or they will not be displayed upon publication. ORCID iDs cannot be linked during the copyediting phase.

Proposals
Before submitting a manuscript, authors may wish to submit an article proposal for feedback to that website. This process will allow the author to obtain an initial idea of the suitability of the article for Perspectives. When a proposal or manuscript is submitted, it will be appraised by members of the Editorial Board for suitability for the journal and for whether it surpasses the extremely high threshold for publication. In many cases, an article or proposal will be judged to be unsuitable, and the author will be notified quickly. If a proposal is judged to be appropriate and of potentially high quality, the authors will be allowed to submit an article.  If that article is also judged appropriate and of high quality,  it will be sent to outside reviewers, including members of the Editorial Board and scholars suggested by the author. Authors of proposals that are rejected by the editorial team are not permitted to submit an unsolicited manuscript on the same topic to the journal; such submissions will be immediately rejected without review.

Manuscript Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted in the style of the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association; however, authors may improve readability for the reviewers (e.g., put figure captions on the pages with figures). All manuscripts must include an abstract containing a maximum of 200 words. When original data are included in the submission, the author should include in the cover letter a statement that the data were collected in accordance with ethical guidelines pertaining to the use of animal or human subjects. Permission from the copyright owner should be included for use of any material previously published elsewhere.

All authors listed on a manuscript must have agreed to be authors and approved the submitted manuscript.

Reviews
Reviewers are instructed to weigh heavily the degree to which an article advances science, rather than obsessing over small shortcomings of the article. Reviews most often will be short and will not analyze the article in detail, focusing instead on the large issues. Reviewers inform the Editor of the strengths and weaknesses of a submission, as well as of their view of the overall contribution of the article. It is the Editor’s responsibility to make ‘‘accept’’ and ‘‘reject’’ decisions. Such decisions are not based on a vote by reviewers, and at times the judgment of the Editor will diverge from the evaluations of a majority of reviewers.

Perspectives requires authors to name a minimum of five possible objective reviewers when submitting a proposal or manuscript. These recommendations should exclude former mentors and teachers, current colleagues, and collaborators. Please keep in mind that the editor will consider these recommendations but cannot guarantee that they will be honored.

Other Considerations
Manuscripts under review at another journal cannot be simultaneously submitted to Perspectives. The article cannot have been published elsewhere, and authors are obligated to inform the Editor of similar articles they have published. If a submission has a history at another journal, the author should submit the reviews and editorial letter when submitting the manuscript, as this information has the potential to accelerate the decision process.

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