The requirements stated below are in accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. See “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (icmje.org).
Manuscripts are accepted for consideration by Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice (PRCP) 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 PRCP.)
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 this 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 this journal. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that preprints are amended to point readers to subsequent versions, including the final published article.
PRCP 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. PRCP 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 participants 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 participants 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 Method section.
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
Conditions 1, 2, 3, and 4 must ALL be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not left 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.
The American Psychiatric Association has adopted the following policies regarding the use of generative artificial/augmented intelligence (AI) in any manuscript or book submitted for potential publication:
Disclosure of financial relationships is required at the time of submission and provisional acceptance of all manuscripts. The authors are responsible for informing PRCP 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 from the previous 36 months, 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. 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.
On acceptance of a manuscript, the corresponding author and all coauthors will receive an e-mail with a link to the Certification of Authorship and Financial Disclosure forms and instructions for online submission of the forms. Accepted manuscripts will not be scheduled for publication until completed forms have been received.
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.
PRCP articles are published in accordance with open-access principles under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. This license allows users to copy the article; to create extracts, abstracts, and new works from the article; to alter and revise the article; and to make commercial use of the article (including reuse and/or resale of the article by commercial entities), provided the user:
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 must disguise identifying information when discussing patients’ characteristics and personal history.
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.
While recognizing the educational value of case reports, APA Publishing seeks to ensure what it publishes respects an individual’s privacy and protects personal health information. For all submissions wherein an individual is described, we ask at submission for confirmation that the individual has seen the version of the report, that the individual understands it is being submitted for publication consideration, and that the individual has been informed that if published, the report will be freely accessible to anyone 1 year after publication and thus confidentiality cannot be guaranteed despite all efforts to disguise personal details. For disguising, identifying information such as names, initials, hospital numbers, and dates must be avoided. In addition, authors should disguise information about the characteristics and personal history of patients and indicate in the text or in the article notes that they have done so, e.g.: “The authors have confirmed that details of the cases presented have been disguised to protect patient privacy.” When possible, APA Publishing prefers fictionalized composite accounts. Submissions employing this tactic should specify in the text “The case presented is a fictionalized account bringing together disguised characteristics of [number] individuals.
All manuscripts receive an initial review by the PRCP Editor 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.
In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, we will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change.
Please consult our FAQs page here.
Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice uses a web-based manuscript submission and tracking system from manuscript submission to publication decision. There are no submission fees involved. To submit your paper, review the guidelines below. When you are satisfied that your manuscript meets the editorial and production requirements, please visit the manuscript submission site 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.
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. 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 PRCP. 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 Files for types of data and formats acceptable for posting online.)
Articles are reports of original work that embody scientific excellence in psychiatric medicine and advances in clinical research. Typically, articles will contain new data derived from a sizable series of patients or participants. 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 as a supplemental file for posting online. (See Supplemental Files for types of data and formats acceptable for posting online.)
The editorial team at PRCP welcomes your submissions of methods and research processes. Authors considering submitting a manuscript under this category are advised to consult and follow the SPIRIT statement for clinical trial protocols and the PRISMA-P guidelines for systematic review protocols. For qualitative studies, authors are advised to check SRQR, which is a synthesis of recommendations for reporting qualitative research, and to follow the COREQ checklist for interviews and focus groups. Protocols of randomized controlled trials should follow the CONSORT guidelines, and all Clinical Trials should be registered (as noted above). The registration number should be provided in your manuscript. We cannot consider manuscripts reporting trials that were registered retrospectively. The month and year of obtaining ethical approval should be mentioned in the abstract and main manuscript. Protocols should be written with a view to carrying out the study (i.e., “data collection will involve; data will be analyzed…’) and not as if the study has been completed. Typical lengths for manuscripts of this type are about 5,000 words (excluding references which generally number 40 or fewer) with an abstract of 250 words or less. The Journal will consider longer initial submissions provided that the accompanying cover letter outlines the reasons for doing so and with the understanding that accepted manuscripts may be edited to a length more typical of this manuscript type. Additional flexibility will be considered by the Editor-in-Chief on a case-by-case basis.
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 noncontrolled 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 PRCP 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 PRCP’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.
Clinical case conferences are disguised accounts of the diagnosis and treatment of individuals who present interesting problems of the nature that typically involve a departmental forum discussion. Following the presentation of the case there should be a brief review of the literature to place the case in hand in context. The text of clinical case conferences is usually within 2,000 words and can have up to 20 references; the submission should lead with the case (i.e., no abstract or introduction).
Viewpoints may address virtually any important topic in psychiatry and generally are not linked to a specific article. They should be well focused, scholarly, and clearly presented but should not include the findings of new research or data that have not been previously published. Viewpoints may have no more than 3 authors., and the corresponding author should have sufficient expertise and experience with the topic to provide an authoritative opinion. Submissions can be up to 1200 words of text—or 1000 words of text with 1 small table or figure—with 7-10 references that are as current as possible.
All parts of the manuscript, including vignettes, quotations, references, and tables, must be double-spaced. The manuscript should be arranged in the following order, with each item beginning a new page: 1) title page, 2) abstract, 3) text, 4) references, and 5) tables and/or figures. All pages must be numbered.
The cover letter may be uploaded as a separate document or entered in the spaces provided in Details and Comments.
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 not included in the word count.
Title. The title should be informative and as brief as possible. PRCP style for titles is not to use declarative sentences, or headline-style titles.
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 correspondence. Provide the department, institution, city, and state where the work was done. Include an e-mail address for the author who is to receive correspondence.
Disclosures and acknowledgments. In a separate paragraph, all relationships with commercial interests and financial support for all authors must be disclosed, whether or not directly related to the subject of their paper. Such reporting must include, for self and spouse/partner, 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. It is the author’s responsibility to disclose anything in addition to the above that might be construed as potentially affecting the reporting of the study. If an author has no interests to disclose, this must be explicitly stated and will be acknowledged in print as “Dr. X reports no competing interests.” Drug company support of any kind must be acknowledged.
Grant support should be acknowledged in a separate paragraph and should include the full name of the granting agency and grant number.
Abstracts are sent to various archiving and indexing services and aid in your article’s discoverability. The abstract is a single paragraph no longer than 250 words in the active voice and third person. All article submissions (Articles, Reviews) should include structured abstracts with the following information, under the headings indicated: Objective—the primary purpose of the article; Method—data sources, subjects, design, measurements, data analysis; Results—key findings; and Conclusions—implications, future directions. Use complete sentences for all sections.
The contents of the text should include four major sections: introduction, method, results, and discussion. The method 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. The end of the section describing the study participants should clearly state that participants 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, submitted as a supplemental file. The CONSORT statement, checklist, and flow diagram can be found at http://www.consort-statement.org. (See Supplemental Files for what types of data and formats are acceptable for posting online.)
Abbreviations. PRCP 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. The following abbreviations are not used: SMI, SUD.
Drugs. Generic rather than trade names of drugs should be used.
References are numbered and listed by their order of appearance in text; the text citation is followed by the appropriate reference number in parentheses. Do not arrange the list alphabetically. References in tables and figures are numbered as though the tables and figures were part of the text. References should be restricted to closely pertinent material. Accuracy of the citation is the author’s responsibility. References should conform exactly to the original spelling, accents, punctuation, etc. Authors should be sure that all references listed have been cited in text. Personal communications, unpublished manuscripts, manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted, and similar unpublished items should not appear in the reference list. Such citations may be noted in text (e.g., unpublished data, Jones W, Pogachar M, Stearman K, et al., 2016). It is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission to refer to another individual’s unpublished observations. Manuscripts that are actually in press may be cited as such in the reference list; the name of the journal or publisher and location must be included. References to the editions of DSM should not be included in the reference list.
Type references in the Vancouver style shown below. Abbreviations of journal names should conform to the style used in “NLM Catalog: Journals referenced in the NCBI Databases” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals); journals not indexed there should not be abbreviated.
For articles and reviews, include no more than 5 tables, figures, or combination of tables and figures. Include displayed material only when it presents relevant data or concepts more clearly than could be done in text. Data in short tables often can be incorporated more concisely in text. Data in simple graphs may be more appropriately presented in a table or text. Authors will be asked to delete extraneous material or will have the option of moving the material to a supplemental file accompanying the article. Checklists and forms generally are included only as a supplemental file.
Tables. PRCP does not publish tables that have been submitted elsewhere or previously published. Tables that duplicate material contained elsewhere in the manuscript (in text, figures, or other tables) will not be used. Authors should delete tables containing data that could be given succinctly in text. In terms of data presentation, values expressed in the same unit of measurement should read down, not across; when percentages are presented, the appropriate numbers must also be given. In preparing the tables, each cell should contain only one item of data. In rows, subcategories should be in separate cells; in columns, Ns and %s or Means and SDs should be in separate cells. For optimum readability and presentation, tables should not exceed 120 characters in width.
Figures. PRCP encourages the submission of high-quality figures (300 dpi being the minimum resolution and 4 inches as minimum width). Multiple figures for the same article should be prepared as a set, consistent in color and size across all figures. If figures have been previously published or adapted from an earlier publication, please secure written permission from the holder of copyright for use in PRCP. This permission release should extend in perpetuity for this online journal and include the attribution line that should accompany the figure to give appropriate credit to the original source. Any fees for re-use are the responsibility of the author.
PRCP requires specific file formats for different types of figure images. For photos or brain scans, .jpg or .tiff files are preferred. For charts and graphs, we require editable .eps or .pdf files. To generate the latter, please do not create .eps or .pdf files from .tiff files but rather go to the original software that was used to create the charts. Then save the files as .eps or .pdf (some software might let you “export” the files to those formats rather than “save as”).
A copy of each figure must accompany the manuscript.
Figure titles and footnotes should be provided within the text of the manuscript.
If figures have been previously adapted from an earlier publication, the author must secure written permission from the holder of copyright for use in PRCP. Note that obtaining permission may take several weeks. The author should submit a copy of the permission release and credit lines if the manuscript is accepted for publication.
To facilitate peer review, upload the figure at the end of the Main Body file if possible. If more than one figure must be uploaded separately, use a single file if possible. If invited to revise the manuscript for further review, submit with the revision an editable .tiff (text image file format) or .eps (encapsulated Postscript) file or the original Excel or PowerPoint file for each figure, separate from the file containing the text and tables; if the manuscript is accepted, separate figure files will be essential for production.
| Figure placement, by stage of manuscript | |
|---|---|
| Stage | Placement |
| Submission | Within main body file, at end |
| Revision and resubmission | Separate .tiff, .eps, Excel, or PowerPoint files |
| Acceptance | Separate .tiff, .eps, Excel, or PowerPoint files |
Format
Content
PRCP allows authors to submit supplemental files to be posted online in support of their articles. To be accepted for posting, supplemental material must be essential to the scientific integrity and excellence of the manuscript. The material is subject to the same editorial standards as the online journal and will be submitted for peer review. If the paper is accepted, supplemental material will not be formatted or edited by editorial staff and therefore should be in final form for posting “as is.” The journal will accept the following categories of supplemental data:
Supplemental files should be uploaded as one file separate from the manuscript and named Online Supplement when uploading. Please remember that the larger the file size, the longer it will take users to download. For this reason, please limit your files to 10 MB. The journal can accept the following formats:
If your document type is not listed here, please contact the editorial office at [email protected]. Please name your files and cite within the printed text as ST1 for tables, SF1 for figures, SR1 for references, and SA1 for appendices.
Manuscripts are accepted with the understanding that the Editor and the editorial staff have the right to make revisions aimed at greater conciseness, clarity, and conformity with journal style. Preliminary page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. Authors who will be away from their offices for a long period or who change address after notification of acceptance should inform the journal staff.
Individuals interested in reviewing for Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice should visit ScholarOne Manuscripts and create an account.
Abstracts of articles within a reviewer’s given area of expertise are sent via e-mail to the reviewer. Within 3 days, the reviewer is asked to indicate willingness to review and availability to perform the review within a 2-week time frame.
Most competing interests, financial or otherwise, do not disqualify one from participating in the peer-review process, but the journal requests that you indicate any conflict that you may have in reviewing any particular manuscript. You can also notify the journal if you feel that you cannot review a manuscript because of a competing interest. This will not affect your reviewer status in any way.
Manuscripts must be reviewed with due respect for authors’ confidentiality. In submitting their manuscripts for review, authors entrust the journal with the results of their scientific work and creative effort, on which their reputation and career may depend. Authors’ rights may be violated by disclosure of the confidential details of the review of their manuscript. Reviewers should never copy, share, or discuss a manuscript under review or the data within with anyone without expressed written permission of the journal’s Editor and the authors.
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