Information for Contributors
General Policies
The requirements stated below are in accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, of which The American Journal of Psychiatry is a member. See “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (icmje.org).
PRIOR PUBLICATION
Manuscripts are accepted for consideration by The American Journal of Psychiatry with the understanding that they represent original material, have not been published previously, are not being considered for publication elsewhere, and have been approved by each author. Any form of publication other than an abstract of no more than 400 words constitutes prior publication. This includes components of symposia, proceedings, transactions, books (or chapters), invited articles, or reports of any kind, regardless of differences in readership. (Clinical trial registration does not constitute prior publication and will not preclude consideration for publication in the Journal.)
Authors submitting manuscripts containing data or clinical observations already used in published papers or used in papers that are in press, submitted for publication, or to be submitted shortly should provide this information and copies of those papers to the Editor. An explanation of the differences between the papers should be included.
Public dissemination of manuscripts before submission to the Journal, such as posting the manuscript on preprint servers or other repositories, will be considered in the evaluation of whether to enter a paper into formal peer review. The evaluation will involve determining whether ultimate publication will add meaningful new information to the medical literature or will be redundant with information already disseminated with the posting of the preprint. Authors should provide information about any preprint postings, including copies of the posted manuscript and a link to it, at the time of submission of the manuscript to the Journal. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that preprints are amended to point readers to subsequent versions, including the final published article.
CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION
The American Journal of Psychiatry requires, as a condition of consideration for publication, registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry. Trials must be registered at or before the onset of patient enrollment. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (for example, phase I trials), would be exempt. The Journal does not advocate one particular registry, but requires authors to register their trial in a registry that meets several criteria. The registry must be accessible to the public at no charge. It must be open to all prospective registrants and managed by a not-for-profit organization. There must be a mechanism to ensure the validity of the registration data, and the registry should be electronically searchable.
An acceptable registry must include at minimum the following information: a unique identifying number, a statement of the intervention (or interventions) and comparison (or comparisons) studied, a statement of the study hypothesis, definitions of the primary and secondary outcome measures, eligibility criteria, key trial dates (registration date, anticipated or actual start date, anticipated or actual date of last follow-up, planned or actual date of closure to data entry, and date trial data considered complete), target number of subjects, funding source, and contact information for the principal investigator. To our knowledge, at present, only www.clinicaltrials.gov, sponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine, meets these requirements; there may be other registries, now or in the future, that meet all these requirements. Registration information must be provided in the cover letter at submission.
The clinical trials registration should be included at the end of the abstract. The requirement is that all clinical trials, essentially all phase 2 or later trials in which subjects are assigned to one or more treatment arms, either pharmacological or nonpharmacological, have clinical trials registration. Authors are responsible for having obtained registration before enrolling subjects that specifies the interventions, subject numbers and type, the primary and secondary outcomes, including assessment instruments and intervals, and statistical analysis of results. If the methods and results as described in the article are not fully consistent with the clinical trials registration, then the methods should describe what differed and why, how, and when the decision was made that resulted in the difference. We recognize that other regulatory bodies, such as sponsors, institutional review boards (IRBs), and data and safety monitoring boards (DSMBs), may change trials, and this fact should be noted. If registration was not obtained prior to the start of the trial, then other evidence, such as IRB or grant documents, should be presented to the Editorial Office to document when parameters of the trial were specified. A description of this evidence should be placed in the Methods section.
AUTHORSHIP
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. The corresponding author affirms that he or she had access to all data from the study, both what is reported and what is unreported, and also that he or she had complete freedom to direct its analysis and its reporting, without influence from the sponsors. The corresponding author also affirms that there was no editorial direction or censorship from the sponsors. Preparation of drafts of manuscripts by employees of the sponsor who are not listed as authors is expressly prohibited.
Authorship credit should be based on
1) Substantial contributions to conception and design or analysis and interpretation of data.
2) Substantial contributions to drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
3) Final approval of the version to be published.
Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must ALL be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is also not sufficient. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author.
Only those with key responsibility for the material in the article should be listed as authors; others contributing to the work should be recognized in an Acknowledgment.
DISCLOSURE OF COMPETING INTERESTS AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT
Disclosure of financial relationships is required at the time of submission and provisional acceptance of all manuscripts. The authors are responsible for informing the Journal of any additional financial relationships that may arise prior to the date of publication of their paper. Financial support for the study must be disclosed, whether from nonprofit or commercial sources. Nonfinancial forms of support, such as drugs, analytic support, or other assistance with preparation of the manuscript, must also be acknowledged. All authors must individually disclose all financial relationships, whether or not directly related to the subject of their paper. Such reporting must include all equity ownership, profit-sharing agreements, royalties, patents, and research or other grants from private industry or closely affiliated nonprofit funds. For income from pharmaceutical companies, the purpose must be specified, e.g., speakers bureau honoraria or other CME activity, travel funds, advisory panel payments, or research grants. Reporting should encompass the previous 36 months. If an author has no interests to disclose, this must be explicitly stated and will be acknowledged in print as “Dr. X reports no financial relationships with commercial interests.”
The Editors will review all author statements of financial support to determine if there is evidence of bias from these sources. If it appears that there may be, then further review and possible rejection of the manuscript may occur. Authors are encouraged to contact the Editor at any stage in the manuscript review process if they believe that they have relationships that require review.
COPYRIGHT TRANSFER AND SUBMISSION APPROVAL
The Journal requires approval of manuscript submission by all authors in addition to transfer of copyright to the American Psychiatric Association so that the author(s) and the Association are protected from misuse of copyrighted material. Accepted manuscripts will not be scheduled for publication until a completed form has been received in the editorial office. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain the approval of individuals before acknowledging their assistance in the paper.
In addition, authors must obtain letters of permission from publishers and pay any fees for use of extensive quotations (more than 500 words) or figures that have been previously published or submitted elsewhere.
PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY
Broad access to the research literature and the rights of our authors are important to American Psychiatric Publishing, the publisher of The American Journal of Psychiatry. Read our public access policy for guidelines on deposit mandates for research funded by NIH and others and institutional repositories.
PATIENT ANONYMITY
Ethical and legal considerations require careful attention to the protection of a patient’s anonymity in case reports and elsewhere. Identifying information such as names, initials, hospital numbers, and dates must be avoided. Also, authors should disguise identifying information when discussing patients’ characteristics and personal history.
INFORMED CONSENT
Manuscripts and letters to the Editor that report the results of experimental investigation and interviews with human subjects must include a statement that written informed consent was obtained after the procedure(s) had been fully explained. In the case of children, authors are asked to include information about whether the child’s assent was obtained. If your submission does not contain written informed consent or Institutional Review Board approval, it will not be reviewed.
REVIEW PROCESS
All manuscripts receive an initial review by the Journal Editor and/or Deputy Editors to determine the originality, validity, and importance of content and conclusions. Manuscripts with insufficient priority for publication will be rejected promptly. Other manuscripts are sent for peer review. Authors will be sent reviewer comments that are judged to be useful to them. All reviewers remain anonymous.
Manuscript Submission
The American Journal of Psychiatry has implemented a web-based manuscript submission and tracking system to accelerate the peer review process and shorten the time from manuscript submission to publication decision. The Journal will no longer accept manuscripts and letters by mail.
To submit your paper, please visit the manuscript submission site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/appi-ajp and either create an account or use your existing account. Then follow the instructions to upload your manuscript. All submissions must include a title page and be accompanied by a cover letter and list of suggested reviewers.
Types of Articles
REVIEWS
Review articles are intended to bring together important information on a topic of general interest to psychiatry. This section is not intended to be a forum for the presentation of new data or meta-analyses. Review articles are usually solicited by the Editors, but we will consider unsolicited material. We rarely proceed with Review papers for which the first author is a student and has not contributed to substantive work in the field on his or her own accord. Please contact the editorial office before writing a review article for the Journal. The text is usually within 5,000 words with an abstract of no more than 250 words, a maximum of 5 tables and figures (total), and up to 50 references. Word count includes only the main body of text (i.e., not tables, figures, abstracts or references). Additional tables or figures can be submitted in a separate file as supplemental data for posting online. (See Supplemental Data for what types of data and formats are acceptable for posting online.)
ARTICLES
Articles are reports of original work that embodies scientific excellence in psychiatric medicine and advances in clinical research. Typically, articles will contain new data derived from a sizable series of patients or subjects. The text is usually within 3,500 words, which does not include an abstract of no more than 250 words, a maximum of 5 tables and figures (total), and up to 40 references. Word count includes only the main body of text (i.e., not tables, figures, abstracts or references). Additional tables can be submitted in a separate file as supplemental data for posting online. (See Supplemental Data for what types of data and formats are acceptable for posting online.)
OTHER SECTIONS
Editorials. Editorials are primarily solicited by the Editor, but brief commentaries (500-750 words) can be submitted for consideration.
Clinical Case Conferences. Clinical case conferences are disguised accounts of the diagnosis and treatment of actual patients who present interesting problems. A critical element is that the case should have been discussed in a departmental forum. Interesting cases seen only by individuals are more suitable for letters to the Editor. Please contact the editorial office before writing a clinical case conference for the Journal. The text of clinical case conferences is usually within 2,000 words; the submission should lead with the case (i.e., no abstract or introduction) and can have up to 20 references.
Letters to the Editor. Brief letters (maximum of 500 words, including references) will be considered if they include a cover letter indicating that the correspondence is “for publication.” Novel case reports and other uncontrolled observations should be submitted as Letters to the Editor. Case reports will be peer reviewed; authors must provide a list of 4 suggested reviewers and their e-mail addresses. Letters critical of an article published in the Journal must be received within 6 weeks of the article’s publication. Letters received after the deadline will not be considered for publication; those considered will be sent to the article’s corresponding author to reply on behalf of the group, which will represent the final say on the matter. No additional letters discussing an exchange published in the Journal's Letters to the Editor will be considered. Such letters must include the title and author of the article and the month and year of publication. Letters that do not meet these specifications will be returned unreviewed. Letters will be published on a space-available basis.
Priority Data Letters. To provide a home for exciting findings while they await additional investigation, the Journal offers Priority Data Letters. These appear in the Letters section of the Journal to present the findings in the appropriate context. Priority Data Letters are given more space than typical letters to accomplish this: 1,300–1,500 words (no abstract) with up to two tables or figures. Authors should select letter to the editor as submission type and indicate in their cover letter that they wish the work to be considered as a Priority Data Letter so that independent full peer review is undertaken.
Book Forum. Books for review should be sent to the Book Forum Editor, American Journal of Psychiatry, 800 Maine Avenue, S.W., Suite 900, Washington, D.C. 20024. Not all books received can be reviewed. Books are received with the understanding that reviewers selected by the Editor write their independent critical appraisals of the book’s content and presentation. Reprints of reviews are not available.
Manuscript Organization and Format
All parts of the manuscript or letter to the Editor, including case reports, quotations, references, and tables, must be double-spaced throughout. The manuscript should be arranged in the following order, with each item beginning a new page: 1) cover letter, 2) title page, 3) abstract, 4) text, 5) references, and 6) tables and/or figures. All pages must be numbered.
COVER LETTER
The cover letters should include statements regarding Authorship, Disclosure, and Copyright Transfer. Also, it must include a list of 4 suggested reviewers and their e-mail addresses.
TITLE PAGE
Word count. The number of words in the manuscript (including abstract, text, and references) and the number of tables and figures should be noted in the upper right-hand corner of the title page. Tables and figures are no longer included in the word count.
Title. The title should be informative and as brief as possible. Journal style for titles is not to use declarative sentences.
Byline. See instructions for Authorship. Authors’ first names are preferred over initials. Degrees should be included after each author’s name.
Previous presentation. If the paper has been presented at a meeting, give the name of the meeting, the location, and the inclusive dates.
Location of work and address for reprints. Provide the department, institution, city, and state where the work was done. Include a full address for the author who is to receive correspondence and reprint requests.
Disclosures. As outlined in Disclosure of Competing Interests and Financial Support, all financial relationships with commercial interests for all authors must be disclosed, whether or not directly related to the subject of their paper. Such reporting must include all equity ownership, profit-sharing agreements, royalties, patents, and research or other grants from private industry or closely affiliated nonprofit funds. For income from pharmaceutical companies, the purpose must be specified, e.g., speakers bureau honoraria or other CME activity, travel funds, advisory panel payments, research grants. If an author has no interests to disclose, this must be explicitly stated and will be acknowledged in print as “Dr. X reports no financial relationships with commercial interests.”
Acknowledgments. Grant support should include the full name of the granting agency and grant number.
ABSTRACT
Abstracts are sent to various archiving and indexing services and aid in your article’s discoverability by providing more detail than would a simple listing of just citation information. The abstract is a single paragraph no longer than 250 words in the active voice and third person. All Review Articles and New Research submissions should include structured abstracts with the following information, under the headings indicated: Objective—the primary purpose of the article; Methods—data sources, subjects, design, measurements, data analysis; Results—key findings; and Conclusions—implications, future directions.
TEXT
The contents of the text should include four major sections: introduction, methods, results, and discussion. The methods section should provide a comprehensive description of the nature of the study group, methods for recruitment, measurement and evaluation techniques (including information about reliability as appropriate), and data analysis. At the end of the section describing the study subjects, it should be clearly stated that subjects provided written informed consent after receiving a complete description of the study. Strengths and weaknesses of the study should be presented in the discussion.
Data analysis. Adequate description of statistical analysis should be provided, including the names of the statistical tests and whether tests were one- or two-tailed. Standard deviations, rather than standard errors of the mean, are required. Statistical tests that are not well-known should be referenced. All significant and important nonsignificant results must include the test value, degree(s) of freedom, and probability. For manuscripts that report on randomized clinical trials, authors should provide a flow diagram in CONSORT format and all of the information required by the CONSORT checklist. When word limits prevent the inclusion of some of this information in the manuscript, it should be provided in a separate document submitted with the manuscript for posting online. The CONSORT statement, checklist, and flow diagram can be found at http://www.consort-statement.org. (See Supplemental Data for what types of data and formats are acceptable for posting online.)
Abbreviations. The Journal is distributed to a broad psychiatric readership, therefore only a very small number of abbreviations are considered “standard” and thus acceptable for use. Spell out all abbreviations (other than those for units of measure) the first time they are used; idiosyncratic abbreviations should never be used.
Drugs. Generic rather than trade names of drugs should be used.
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