American Journal of Psychology

For Authors

Submit Manuscript

Article types

AJP focuses on the science of the mind and behavior, publishing reports of original research in experimental psychology and also theoretical presentations, combined theoretical and experimental analyses, historical commentaries, and in-depth reviews of significant books.

Submission requirements

  • Contributors are asked to follow the style in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed., 2020, and to consult Appendix A, Checklist for Manuscript Submission, in the Manual as a guide (see https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines for reference).

  • Please include all statistical indices, descriptive and inferential, required for evaluation of your experimental findings.

  • The abstract should not exceed 250 words (and be followed by three to six keywords).

  • Special mathematical symbols and abbreviations should be identified.

  • All elements in a figure should be large enough to be readable when the drawing is reduced to fit the maximum width of 11 cm. Figures should be submitted as .TIF or .JPG files with a resolution of at least 300 dpi.

  • All titles in the reference list should be spelled out rather than abbreviated.

  • References cited in the text should agree with those in the reference list.

  • A copy of the letter of permission for the use of previously published material (e.g., long extracts and reproductions of figures) should be included.

  • Upload a title page separate from the manuscript file. The manuscript file, without a title page, would be free of author information to allow for double-blind peer review.

  • In a cover letter to the submission, authors are asked to confirm that:

    • The submitted manuscript is not and will not be under concurrent review elsewhere;
    • The submitted manuscript is not duplicating the reporting of results or analyses (on the same data set) previously published elsewhere;
    • Either there is a link to the pre-registered experimental protocols, unidentified data, data logs or dictionaries, and analysis scripts or the authors are providing an explanation for each of the unavailable items;
    • All authors listed in the manuscript have contributed enough to the research and production of the manuscript to be named as authors, have agreed to the order of authorship, and constitute the whole of contributors.

Book reviews

Books intended for review and proposals for book reviews should be sent, outside of this system, to:
Dominic W. Massaro
Department of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
massaro@ucsc.edu

Peer reviewing

  • Again, authors wishing to allow for double-blind peer review must upload a title page separate from the manuscript file (which, without a title page, would be free of author information). The system will not remove any page or redact any information from the submitted manuscript file.
  • AJP is pleased to have maintained average times of under five days for desk rejections and under 45 days for first decisions (during 2025). Naturally, times for decision for each individual submission vary, depending on queue size and availability of peer reviewers and timeliness of their reviews.