Publication guidelines

Psicothema publishes empirical work in English which is done with methodological rigor and which contributes to the progress of any field of scientific psychology. As an exception, the Editorial Board may accept publication of work in Spanish if the content justifies such a decision. Theoretical work may also be accepted, if requested by the Editorial Board, with preference given to articles that engage with critical research issues or which discuss controversial approaches.

Submission articles

1. Articles should be submitted via the journal´s web page www.psicothema.com (Authors section-submission of articles): http://www.psicothema.es/submit

2. Submissions must comply with the rules for preparation and publication of articles, as well as the ethical standards specified below.

3. Studies must be unpublished. Articles which have been fully or partially published elsewhere will not be accepted, nor will articles that are in the process of publication or which have been submitted to other journals for review. It will be assumed that all those who appear as authors have agreed to do so, and all those cited for personal correspondence have consented.

4. The activities described in the published articles will comply with generally accepted ethical standards and criteria, both in terms of work with human beings and animal experimentation, as well as all aspects of professional and publishing ethics.

5. The original work may be submitted in Spanish initially and receipt will be acknowledged immediately. If so, and if it is accepted, the authors will be responsible for translating it into English for publication.

6. Authors may only submit one article for consideration by Psicothema per year.

7. Names and surnames should be entered on the platform in the form they will be cited (a single surname, two separate surnames, hyphenated surnames, etc.). The affiliation of all authors must be indicated. A maximum of two affiliations per author may be indicated. The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. Affiliations must follow the format “entity or university (country, in English)”. Do not include information about research groups or departments. Only one person may appear as corresponding author, who will be responsible for ensuring that the author names, order, and affiliations are correct.

8. Authors should suggest three people who they believe would be suitable reviewers for the article, clearly indicating their institutional affiliation and email address. Authors may also indicate people who, for whatever reason, they do not wish to be involved in the review process for their work. Pleas bear in mind the recommendations from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) when suggesting the three reviewers https://publicationethics.org/files/Ethical_guidelines_for_peer_reviewers_0.pdf

9. Manuscripts are screened by the Editorial Board to assess relevance and interest for the journal and whether it follows the rules. Articles must faithfully conform to the editorial rules and fall within the editorial scope of the journal. It is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition that articles must comply with the rules for publication. Articles which do not follow Psicothema’s rules will be rejected. In general, within around 10 days the Editorial Board will communicate a decision of interest to begin the review process.

10. Psicothema is only able to publish about 10% of the manuscripts it receives, which is why we apply a very rigorous screening and selection system. Many submissions are considered non-priorities by the Editorial Board without being sent for review.

11. If an article passes the Editorial Board screening, it will be sent to a minimum of two reviewers to evaluate its scientific quality. The journal has a policy of “double blind” reviews, meaning that both authors and reviewers are anonymous during the review process. To that end, manuscripts must not contain information that would allow the authors to be identified. Most reviewers report back within the agreed three week period. The review process, from receiving an article to the decision to modify it or reject it, usually takes around two months.

12. If, after receiving the reviewers’ reports, the Editorial Board decides that the article needs “modifications” to be published, the authors should send the modifications in the requested format together with a point-by-point response to all the comments made by the reviewers and the Editorial Board. Failure to respond in the required format within the set timescale will lead to the article being rejected and removed from the management platform, with no possibility of re-submission.

13. The Editorial Board is responsible for the final decision to accept the article for publication or not. The editors usually make their decisions as quickly as possible once they have received all the necessary reports.

14. After an article has been accepted, and before publication, the authors must sign a copyright agreement. Printing rights and rights of reproduction in any format or medium belong to Psicothema, who will not reject any reasonable request from authors for permission to reproduce their contributions.

15. It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain relevant permissions to reproduce copyright-protected material. They are also responsible for disclosing possible conflicts of interest, declaring sources of funding and their participation in the research, and providing access, where necessary, to databases, procedure manuals, scores, and other experimental material that may be relevant. These aspects must be declared in the articles, as described below.

For any questions or clarifications, the journal can be contacted via the email address psicothema@cop.es

Manuscript preparation

1. File format: Articles must be sent in DOC or DOCX format. Microsoft Word documents must not be locked or password-protected, they should not have comments in the margins or information that might reveal the authors’ identities. The file should be anonymised in “file properties” so that author information does not appear.

2. Length: The maximum length for articles is 6,000 words (including the title, abstracts, key words, in-text references, acknowledgements, figures, and tables). The 6,000 word limit does not include the list of references. If authors wish to provide supplementary material, the article should include a unique, persistent web link (see point 15 about supplementary material).

3. Format: The articles must be in Microsoft Word format, using 12-point Times New Roman, in a single column with 3 cm margins, paragraphs left-aligned and double spaced (except    for tables and figures which may use single spacing). Page numbers must be included in the lower right corner. Limit sections and subsections to three levels of headings and follow the recommendations in the APA 7^th edition about “Sentence case” in the list of references. Psicothema does not allow footnotes, annexes, or appendices. Any such content should be incorporated appropriately into the text (see point 15 about supplementary material).

4. Language: Although articles may be submitted and reviewed in Spanish, accepted articles are usually published in English. Once articles are accepted, the authors must provide an English translation of the reviewed article, within the indicated timeframe, for publication. Psicothema accepts American and British English, but not a mix of the two. Any text in English must be of appropriate professional quality, which will be reviewed by a professional native-speaking translator. Following that review, Psicothema may suggest changes, or if necessary, request a new translation or revision of the translation, the costs of which will be borne by the article’s authors.

5. Title page: The first page of the article contains the article title in English and in Spanish, the running title (in English), the total number of words in the article (not counting references) and a declaration of authorship, originality and the fact that the work is previously unpublished. This declaration is obligatory as one of the measures the journal takes to avoid plagiarism. The submitted text must be anonymized, avoiding use of the authors names or anonymizing other possible references that may identify them. Follow the APA 7^th edition rules for capitalization of titles and subtitles (i.e., “Title case”). Use upper case for the first letter of all nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and any word longer than three letters.

6. Title: The title should be short, descriptive, clear, accurate, and easy to read. It should engage the reader’s interest and name variables or topics addressed. Ensure that the main key phrase of the topic is in the article title and avoid superfluous words. Remember that searches normally use key phrases rather than individual words (for example, “mental health in people with disability” not just “health”). Try to include the topic at the start of the title. If the title is “creative”, add a more descriptive subtitle after a colon. A descriptive title will help the article to be found in databases. The Editorial Board reserves the right to change titles and abstracts of articles accepted for publication in order to follow the above rules and enhance the article’s impact and dissemination.

7. Abstracts and key words: the second page of the article contains the abstracts (in Spanish and English) and 3-5 key words or terms. Abstracts must be no more than 200 words and structured in four sections: Background, Method, Results, and Conclusions. The abstract should be a single paragraph with these titles in bold, followed by colons and upper case. The key words cover essential elements of the paper such as the research topic, population, method, or application of the results. Avoid general terms and empty words (pronouns, adverbs etc.), or redundant words such as analysis, description, research, etc. Nouns are preferred. Pay particular attention to selection of key words as they are used to index the article.

8. Article: The article introduction begins on the third page. The introductory section should not include the article title, or the subtitle “Introduction”, or subsections. Following that, the “Method” section should contain the following subsections “Participants”, “Instruments”, “Procedure”, and “Data Analysis”, and no others, in no other order, and with no other titles. Where appropriate, in the procedure section it is obligatory to provide information about ethical aspects of the study, the ethics committee that approved the study and the reference code (anonymized during the review process). For research with children, express mention must be made about obtaining informed consent. Pay particular attention to the APA rules about the presentation of statistical and mathematical results in the text, as well as tables and figures. At the end, there should be a single “Discussion” section which should include both discussion along with limitations and conclusions of the study. The discussion section should not have any subsections.

9. Declaration of author contributions: Where there is more than one author, there must be a declaration of responsibilities at the end of the article, before the references, specifying what contribution each of the authors made. If a group of authors made equal contributions, that should be specified as follows “Author X and Author Y contributed equally to this work”.

To specify each author’s contribution, use the criteria established by the CRediT taxonomy (Contributor Roles Taxonomy; https://credit.niso.org). An example is provided:

John White: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software. Nuria Garcia-Fernandez: Data curation, Writing - Original draft. Lucinda Jackson: Visualization, Investigation. Laura Gayo: Supervision, Software, Validation. Michael Gutierrez: Writing - Review and Editing

10. Corresponding author: Psicothema allows only one corresponding author, who will take primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, as well as for ensuring providing correct details of authorship (including the names of co-authors, addresses and affiliations), ethics, acknowledgements, sources of funding, conflict of interests, and declarations. The corresponding author is responsible for having ensured that all authors have agreed to be so listed, and have approved the manuscript submission to the journal. After publication, the corresponding author is the point of contact for queries about the published paper. It is their responsibility to inform all co-authors of any matters arising in relation to the published paper and to ensure such matters are dealt with promptly.

11. Acknowledgements: any acknowledgements should be included at the end of the text, before the references, in a separate section titled “Acknowledgements”.

12. Sources of funding: Priority will be given to work supported by competitive national and international projects. A section titled “Funding” must be included following the “Acknowledgements” section (if one is included) and before the list of references. The “Funding” section must clearly specify the funding body with the assigned code in brackets. It must also be clearly indicated whether the source of funding had any kind of participation in the study. If there was no participation, include the following sentence, “The source of funding did not participate in the design of the study, the data collection, analysis, or interpretation, the writing of the article, or in the decision to submit it for publication”. If no funding was received, add the following, “This study did not receive any specific assistance from the public sector, the commercial sector, or non-profit organizations”.

13. Conflict of interests: Authors must report any economic or personal relationship with other people or organizations that may inappropriately influence their work. If there are none, following the funding section, in a section titled “Conflict of Interest”, authors should state: “The author(s) declare(s) that there are no conflicts of interest”.

14. Declaration of availability of data: The authors should state, in a section titled “Data Availability Statement”, whether the research data associated with the article is available and where or under what conditions it may be accessed. They may also include links (where appropriate) to the dataset.

15. Reference style: Articles must be written following the guidelines in the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Articles that do not comply with these rules will be rejected. Some of the requirements are summarized below:

Bibliographical references in the text should include the author’s surname and year of publication (in brackets, separated by a comma). If the author’s name forms part of the narrative, it should be followed by the year in brackets. If there are more than two authors, only the first author’s surname is given, followed by “et al.” and the year; if there is confusion, add subsequent authors until the work is clearly identified. In every case, the references in the bibliography must be complete (up to 20 authors). When citing different articles in the same brackets, order them alphabetically. To cite more than one study from the same author or authors from the same year, add the letters a, b, c, as necessary, repeating the year (e.g., 2021a, 2021b).

The list of references at the end of the article must be alphabetical and comply with the following rules:

a)    Books: Author (surname, comma, initials of first name(s) and a full stop); if there are various authors, separate them with a comma; before the final author use a comma and “&”; year (in brackets) and full stop, The full title in italics and full stop; finally, the publisher. For example:

Lezak, M., Howieson, D. B., & Loring, D. W. (2004). Neuropsychological assessment (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

b)    Chaptersof books with various authors, reports from conferences or similar: Author(s); year; title of the work being cited, followed by “In”, the director(s), editor(s), or compiler(s) and in brackets Ed., adding an s if plural; the title of the book in italics and in brackets the page numbers of the cited chapter; the publisher. For example:

de Wit, H., & Mitchell, S. H. (2009). Drug effects on delay discounting. In G. J. Madden & W. K. Bickel (Eds.), Impulsivity: The behavioral and neurological science of discounting (pp. 213-241). American Psychological Association.

c)    Journal articles: Author(s); year; article title; full name of the journal in italics; volume number in italics; issue number in brackets with no space between it and the volume number; first and last page number. The doi should be included in URL format. For example:

Muñiz, J., & Fonseca-Pedrero, E. (2019). Diez pasos para la construcción de un test. Psicothema, 31(1), 7-16.https://doi.org/10.7334/psicothema2018.291

For documents that do not have a doi, it is no longer necessary to use “Retrieved from”, instead give the

URL directly. For example:

Walker, A. (2019, November 14). Germany avoids recession but growth remains weak. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50419127

d)    Pay particular attention to the rules in the 7th edition of the APA manual for citing work presented in conferences, doctoral theses, and software, as well as the rules for the use of acronyms in text and in the references section.

e)     When the original version of the cited work (book, chapter, or article) is not in English, cite the original title and give the English translation in square brackets (with no separation from the original, without using italics).

For further information and other cases, consult the 7th edition of the APA publication manual or the following page: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples

16. Figures and tables should be included at the end of the manuscript, one per page. They should also follow the APA 7th edition guidelines, be appropriately numbered and cited in the text, indicating approximately where they should be placed. They must have a short, descriptive title that helps understand the content, and follow the APA recommendations about title case, with no full stop. They should be 7 or 14 cm wide and have clear, legible lettering and symbols. Avoid wasted space and make best use of the space available. Figures must be submitted in editable formats, consistent with the format of the rest of the article. If that is not possible, they must have a minimum resolution of 300ppp.

17. Pre-registration of studies and plans of analysis: as a general rule, Psicothema recommends pre-registering submitted studies. If authors have pre-registered studies or plans of analysis, links to that pre-registration should be provided in the article.

18. Supplementary material. Psicothema recommends sharing the data that has been used in the research and supplementary material in institutional or thematic open-access repositories, federated in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Provide a web link if access is to be provided to databases or any other supplementary material, using unique, persistent identifiers.

19. We encourage authors to consult the following standard guidelines when preparing their manuscripts (although due to the multidisciplinary nature of the journal, this is not obligatory): Case reports - CARE ; Diagnostic accuracy - STARD ; Observational studies - STROBE (von Elm et al., 2008), MQCOM (Chacón et al., 2019) o GREOM (Portell et al., 2015) ; Randomized controlled trials - CONSORT and SPIRIT (Hopewell et al., 2022); Systematic reviews, meta-analyses – PRISMA (Page et al., 2021); Test adaptation - International Test Commission Guidelines (Hernández et al., 2020); Test development - Ten steps for test development (Muñiz & Fonseca, 2019).

Publication articles

1. Publication rates: Psicothema is an “open access” journal (gold OA). All of the articles will always be free to those who want to read or download them. In order to provide this open access, Psicothema charges a publication fee which the authors or their funders must pay. The price depends on the length of the manuscript. In general, the average price per article is between €180 and €210, based on a mean of 6-7 pages per article, at €30 per    laid-out page. Additionally, corrigendum will cost €50.

2. Print Proofs: Once an article has been accepted for publication, the contact person will receive an email with the print proofs in PDF format to check and correct spelling-typographical errors. Only minimal corrections can be made to the content of the article once it has been accepted. Substantial modifications and changes will not be accepted other that correcting printing or translation errors, possible errors detected during the review process, or incorporating suggestions made by the Editorial Board. No changes will be accepted in this phase to authorship, addition of new affiliations, or details such as including research groups or departments. Galley proofs should be checked carefully, following the instructions provided with them, to confirm that they match the accepted original. Corrected proofs should be returned within the requested timeframe (48-72 hours). Corrections must be made in the PDF file itself; no other means of correction will be accepted. It is vital to check that names, surnames, ORCID codes, affiliations and funding sources are all correct in this stage. The corresponding author is responsible for gaining approval from all co-authors for the corrected print proofs. If the proof article is not reviewed within the timeframe or manner specified, that version of the article will be published and subsequent changes or corrections will not be possible.

3. Published version: Once the edition of Psicothema containing the article is published, the author will receive a copy of their article in PDF format. The final version typeset by Psicothema will be available online via DOI. We strongly recommend sharing the postprint and the final version published by Psicothema on social networks, (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…), university and public repositories (Mendeley, Cosis…), scientific social networks (ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Kudos ...), personal and institutional websites, blogs, Google Scholar, ORCID, Web of Science ResarcherID, ScopusID...

Ethical standards

Psicothema is committed to the scientific community to ensure the ethical and quality standards of published articles. Its references are the “Core practices” defined by the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE) for journal editors, the American Psychological Association (APA) Code of Conduct and the Code of Ethics for Psychology from the Spanish General Council of Psychology.

San Francisco declaration on research assessment (DORA). As part of its commitment to open knowledge, Psicothema follows this initiative because it shares the need to address the quality assessment of scientific articles (not only the journals in which they are published), to consider the value and impact of all research outputs (including data and software), and to consider the societal impact of research from a broader perspective (including qualitative indicators, such as the influence on scientific policies and practices, together with a responsible use of quantitative indicators). To this end, it is committed to remove restrictions on the number of references that can be included in the bibliography, not counting them as part of the maximum number of words, to encourage responsible authorship practices and to provide information about the specific contributions of each author ((CRediT), to mandate the citation of primary literature in favor of reviews in order to give credit to the group(s) who first reported a finding, and to make available a variety of journal-based metrics and article-level metrics (PlumX).

Open science. To facilitate the reproducibility of research and reuse of data, code, types of software, models, algorithms, protocols, methods, and any other useful material related to the project should be shared. We recommend that authors publish the original study data in public open-access repositories online, such as FigShare (http://figshare.com), Mendeley Data (https://data.mendeley.com/), Zenodo (http://zenodo.org/), DataHub (http://datahub.io) and DANS (http://www.dans.knaw.nl/). Where data or supplementary material is shared, a corresponding reference should be included in the manuscript and the list of references, using unique, persistent identifiers.

Use of inclusive, non-sexist language. At Psicothema, we are firmly committed to equality and respect for all, recognizing and appreciating diversity. For this reason, authors should ensure that they use bias-free language, avoid stereotypes, and engage with inclusive, non-sexist language, albeit prioritizing grammatical correctness, economy of language, and accuracy, given the limitations of space. Pay particular attention to the presentation of data, so that participants’ characteristics are described and analysed properly, without presenting information that is irrelevant to testing hypotheses, achieving objectives, or presenting results of the study. Avoid condescending, obsolete, or inappropriate language, as well as the use of labels related to stereotypes. We recommend reporting where potential gender differences are found in the results.

Good publishing practice in gender equality. Psicothema is committed to gender policies that lead to real equality between men and women in society through various actions: (1) pursuing equal proportions of women and men in the editorial team, as well as in those who review the articles; (2) recommending the use of inclusive language in scientific articles; (3) recommending that articles report whether the original study data considered sex or gender in order to identify possible differences; and (4) including the full names of the authors of published articles. To that end, authors must include their full names (not just first initials) in the metadata, which will appear in the published articles.

Responsible authorship. Psicothema promotes transparency via the declaration of authors’ contributions. All signatories must have made substantial contributions in each of the following aspects: (1) conception and design of the study, or data acquisition, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or critical review of the intellectual content and (3) final approval of the submitted version. The list and order of authors should be carefully reviewed before the initial submission of the article. Any addition, removal, or re-ordering must be done before the article is accepted, with the approval of the Psicothema Editorial Board and the consent of all named authors. A form for this is available on request.

Funding sources. In the acknowledgements section, authors should include data on the organizations that provided economic funding for the study or preparation of the article, and briefly describe the role any funding body played in designing the study, data collection, analysis, and interpretation, writing the article, or the decision to submit it for publication. If there was no participation from the funding body, this should be indicated as suggested in the “Preparation of Articles” section. The author responsible for submitting the article should include this metadata at the time of submission in the corresponding section.

Authors’ rights

Acknowledgement of receipt. Receipt of the article will be immediately communicated to the authors by email.

Screening. Articles will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief, Executive Editor, Managing Editor, and the Associate Editors. The editorial team may directly reject studies if, in their opinion, they do not follow the journal’s publication rules, do not meet the minimum requirements, or do not fit the journal’s objectives or priorities.

Review. Once past the Editorial Board screening, the articles will be reviewed by external reviewers and by the Associate Editor responsible for managing the article. The Associate Editor and the Managing Editor will consider the external reviewers’ reports and will make the final decision on publication.

Reasoned reply. Except in cases of articles considered to be “non-priority” in the initial screening phase, authors will be given a reasoned response about the Editorial Board’s final decision when that involves rejection (i.e., articles rejected after the peer review phase).

Confidentiality. Authorship of articles received will be kept anonymous and the evaluation process will be confidential, we commit to not disseminating the article more than necessary for the evaluation process and until the article is accepted for publication.

Use of data. The members of the Editorial Board will not use the results of unpublished work without the express consent of the authors.

Declaration of privacy. The names and email addresses provided to Psicothema will only be used for purposes established in the journal, they will not be given to third parties or used for commercial purposes.

Complaints and claims. Efforts will be made to respond to and resolve complaints and claims quickly and constructively. Complaints or claims should be sent by email to psicothema@cop.es, clearly and accurately specifying the nature of the complaint, the contact details of the person making it, and sufficient data to demonstrate any possible violation of the journal’s declaration of ethics.

Complaints about published content must be made as soon as possible after publication, and after having first contacted the corresponding authors to try and find a direct resolution. Psicothema may be contacted where it is not appropriate to contact the authors, if the authors do not respond, or if they do not resolve the issue. If possible, documentation must be included as evidence of the situation. Psicothema will acknowledge receipt of the complaint by email, and may request additional information or documentation for clarification. Depending on the nature or complexity of the issue, if the content is reviewed and sufficiently documented, the Editorial Board will study the case and make any decision in accordance with the directives of the Committee of Publishing Ethics (COPE). The Editor-in-chief will make the final decision and a response will be sent by email. Other people and institutions will be consulted as necessary, including university authorities or subject-matter experts, and legal advice may be sought if the complaint has legal implications. Complainants will have to expressly request that a complaint be treated confidentially and the Editorial Board will do so as far as appropriate and in line with our management processes. It is possible that complainants will not receive any information about the state of any investigation until a final decision is reached, and it is important to bear in mind that investigations may take some time.

Complaints that are outside Psicothema scope or that are presented in an offensive, threatening, or defamatory manner will be dismissed. Personal criticism or comments are not acceptable. Communication will be terminated if it is not cordial and respectful, or if there is persistent vague or unfounded complaint. Psicothema reserves the right to take appropriate legal measures if a complainant insists on a complaint that is unfounded, false or malicious.

Authors’ responsibilities

Editorial rules. Authors should read and accept the editorial rules and journal’s instructions before sending a manuscript. While the article is undergoing the evaluation process at Psicothema, it must not be in any evaluation process at other journals.

Ethical rules. Authors must comply with the ethical standards specified in the Psicothema rules for authors.

License for public communication. The authors cede to Psicothema the public communication rights of their article for free dissemination through the internet, portals and electronic devices, through its free provision to users for online consultation, printing, download and archive, guaranteeing free, open access to the publication.

Publication licence. The authors accept the Psicothema copyright policy and cede it the right of publication.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

Editorial rules. Reviewers must read and accept the journal’s editorial rules and instructions before reviewing an article. They must also follow the COPE ethical directives for reviewers.

Professional responsibility. Reviewers must only accept articles for review for which they have sufficient knowledge to perform a proper review.

Conflict of interests. Reviewers will constructively and impartially review articles for which they consider themselves qualified, abstaining from reviewing articles in which there might be a conflict of interest.

Confidentiality. Reviewers will respect the confidentiality of the review process and will not use information obtained during the peer review process for personal gain or to others’ advantage, or to discredit or disadvantage others. They will not involve other people in the review process without the authorization of Psicothema.

Suspicion of a breach of ethics. Reviewers will inform the Editorial Board if they detect poor practice, fraud, plagiarism, or self-plagiarism, as well as any other irregularity related to research or publication ethics.

Deadline for reviews. Reviewers will commit to meeting the review timeframes set by Psicothema, informing the Editorial Board if they need additional time or are unable to send a report after having accepted a review request.

Preparation of the report. The format of Psicothema’s review report is open, but reviewers must use a short scoring rubric. Reviewers must be objective and constructive in their reviews, offering feedback that will help authors improve their articles. Reviewers must make fair, impartial, constructive assessments of the article’s strengths and weaknesses, and avoid disparaging personal comments or baseless accusations. They must not suggest that authors add references to the reviewer’s own work (or that of colleagues) just to increase the number of citations or raise the visibility of their work or the work of associated; suggestions must only be based on valid academic reasons.

The journal’s responsibilities

The Editorial Board is not responsible for the ideas or opinions expressed by the authors in the journal articles or the reviewers in their reports. The opinions and facts expressed in the articles are solely and exclusively the authors’ responsibility and do not represent the journal’s opinions or scientific policies. The editorial organization is not responsible in any case for the credibility or authenticity of the articles.

Psicothema will strive to avoid scientific fraud, which includes fabrication, falsification, or omission of data; plagiarism; duplicate publications; and authorial conflicts. Particular attention in plagiarism is paid to avoiding passing others’ work off as one’s own, co-opting others’ ideas without recognition, giving incorrect information about the source of a reference, and paraphrasing a source without mentioning it. Detection of fraud or plagiarism will lead to the rejection of the submitted or published article.

The Psicothema Editorial Board undertakes to ensure that everyone involved (authors, reviewers, editors, and journal management) comply with the expected ethical standards in every phase of the publishing process, from reception to publication of an article, basing this on the recommendations from The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to resolve possible conflicts.

The readers’ rights

Readers have the right to read all articles published in Psicothema for free immediately after their publication.

Updating published articles

Psicothema is committed to correcting important scientific errors or ethical issues in published articles. In order to be transparent about any change, the following criteria and procedures have been established for updating our published articles.

Minor errors. Minor errors that do not affect the readability or meaning, such as spelling, grammar, or layout mistakes are not sufficient for and do not justify an update, regardless of the source of the error.

Metadata errors. Requests to correct errors in an article’s metadata (for example, title, author name, abstract) must be made during the galley correction process. Once an article has been published, corrections can only be made if the Editorial Board believes the request to be reasonable and important. Once approved, the article will be updated and republished on the Psicothema website, with notification to relevant databases.

Author name and affiliation. Authors must make any desired changes to author names, surnames and affiliations during the galley correction process. Once the article has been published, no changes will be made without valid, convincing reasons, especially if the ORCID code has been supplied correctly. Changes to names after publication will only be in exceptional cases where the authors adopt a new name (such as for marriage or after gender transition) and want it updated. In such cases the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) recommendations will be followed.

Corrections. Requests may be submitted to correct errors that affect scientific interpretation. Once a request is approved, the article will be updated and re-published on the Psicothema website, together with a notice of correction. This notice will be a separate publication with a link to the updated article in the most recent edition of the journal, in order to notify readers that there has been a significant chance to the article and that the revised version is available on the website. Relevant databases will then be notified about the update.

Retractions. If an article needs to be retracted from the research literature due to inadvertent errors during the review process, serious ethical violations, fabrication of data, plagiarism, or other reasons that threaten the integrity of the publication, Psicothema will follow the recommendations from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for retractions. In this case, the original publication will be amended with a “RETRACTED” mark but will remain available on the Psicothema website for future reference. Retractions will be published with the same authorship and affiliation as the retracted article, so that the notice and the original retracted article may be properly found in indexing databases. The retraction notice will be published in the most current edition of the journal. Partial retractions may be published in cases where results are partly incorrect. An article will only be removed completely from the Psicothema website and indexing databases in very exceptional circumstances, where leaving it online would constitute an illegal act or could cause significant harm.

Expression of concern. Psicothema may publish such a concern if the investigation about supposed bad conduct in research is inconclusive, complex, or very prolonged. In this case, a Psicothema editor may choose this option, detailing their concerns point by point, and any actions ongoing.

Comments and responses. Psicothema will only exceptionally publish comments on or responses to articles published in the journal, when the comments (i.e., short letters to the editors from readers who wish to publicly question a specific article) affect the editorial content of an article published in the journal, contain evidence of a claim, and the result of an investigation by the editorial team does not lead to rejecting the criticism, or correction or retraction of the article.

In these exceptional cases, once the comment has been approved for peer review, the editorial team will contact the authors of the article in question and invite them to reply to the comment. The reply will allow the authors to publicly respond to the concerns raised. If the authors do not provide a reply within the set timescale or decide not to reply, the comment will be published along with a note explaining the absence of a response. Both comments and replies will be reviewed to ensure that the comment addresses significant aspects of the original article without becoming essentially a new article, the response directly addresses the concerns without evasion, and the tone of both is appropriate for a scientific journal. Only one round of comments and responses will be facilitated about any single article. Nonetheless, Psicothema recommends that readers direct their comments directly to the authors involved and use alternative forums for additional public discussion.

Archive and Digital Preservation Policies

Conditions for self-archiving preprints. Preprint versions of articles (the version initially submitted to the journal) may be shared at any time anywhere. Sharing an article (without review) on a preprint server, for example, is not considered prior publication. Because of that, before final publication, we recommend that authors self-archive the preprint version on personal or institutional websites, scientific social networks, repositories, reference managers… Once published, if the preprint remains available in a repository, it must be specified that, “This is an electronic version of an article published on Psicothema (year). The final version is available on the official web page”, also highlighting the full reference to the published article, including its DOI.

Psicothema’s preservation policy. Psicothema publications are available on the journal website and in international open-access repositories online such as SciELO and Dialnet. Psicothema focuses on disseminating content and making it accessible through indexing services. Online access is free, while the printed version is subscription access. In addition, Psicothema allows self-archiving of preprint, post-print, and editorial version (immediately after publication). Exploitation rights and Psicothema’s self-archiving permissions may be found at https://dulcinea.opensciencespain.org/ficha1034.

Conditions for self-archiving postprint articles. Authors are encouraged to share the final version of their accepted articles (the authors’ version including changes suggested by reviewers and editors) on social networks and repositories until the editorial version is published in an edition of the journal. It must be expressly indicated that this is an article “in press” in the Psicothema journal. Once the editorial version is published, if the postprint is still available in a repository, it must be specified that, “This is an electronic version of an article published on Psicothema (year). The final version is available on the official web page”, also highlighting the full reference to the published article, including its DOI.

Archive. The journal undertakes to provide XML metadata or in other specific formats, immediately after its publication and within three months in order to promote its dissemination in databases. Psicothema uses various national and international repositories: Clarivate Analytics, Scopus, Google Scholar, SciELO, Dialnet, EBSCO Essentials Academic Search Premier, PubMed, PsycINFO, IBECS, Redinet, Psicodoc, Pubpsych, Fuente Académica Plus, IBZ Online, Periodicals Index Online, MEDLINE, EMBASE, ERIH PLUS, Latindex, MIAR, CARHUS Plus+ 2018, Rebiun, DOAJ, & Crossref.

Digital preservation. In order to preserve permanent access to digital objects hosted on its own servers, Psicothema makes backups, monitors the technological environment to foresee possible migrations of obsolete formats or software, preserves digital metadata, uses DOI Digital Object Identifier) and ORCID. All articles published in Psicothema are also hosted and available in the institutional repository of the Universidad de Oviedo (REUNIDO). The articles published on Psicothema’s website are available in easily reproducible format (PDF).

Anti-Plagiarism Policy

In compliance with our code of ethics and in order to guarantee the originality of the manuscripts submitted for evaluation, Psicothema applies anti-plagiarism software to all manuscripts that meet the minimum criteria of the preliminary review and are to be subjected to the review process.

The submission will be rejected in case of detecting practices of plagiarism or scientific fraud, either during the preliminary review by the editorial committee or once the peer review has started.