Submissions

This journal is not accepting submissions at this time.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  • We fight plagiarism: please understand that your article will be checked with available tools for discovering plagiarism.
  • The text is DOUBLE-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
  • Please read this advice and download associated files. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has recently published in all ICMJE journals an editorial introducing a new “Disclosure Form for Potential Conflict of Interest”, with the aim to establish uniform reporting system, which can go over the existing differences in current formats or editors’ requests. We at PAGEPress Publications welcome this initiative as a possible uniforming, standardizing way to have this important disclosure authorizing the publications of manuscripts. We are therefore asking you to duly fill in the “Uniform Format for Disclosure of Competing Interests in ICMJE Journals” and upload it on the Web site of the PAGEPress journal your work is involved with or email it back to us, in mind to allow PAGEPress to peer-reviewing your work. The document is in Adobe format, it includes instructions to help authors provide the requested information and the completion procedure is user-friendly. Kindly note that the format have to be completed and signed by each author of the work. We remain waiting for the completed form to proceed with publication. Please be informed that if this Disclosure Form is missing, we will not be able to publish your work.
  • Authors are kindly required to suggest at least two potential reviewers (name, affiliation and e-mail) for their manuscript in the "Comments to the Editor" field (Step 1. Submission Process).

Author Guidelines

To submit a new paper to our journal:

  1. Register on the Journal website; we encourage you to register also as a Reviewer at the same time;
  2. Download and follow the Guidelines for Authors;
  3. Read our Editorial Policies and our Competing Interest policies.
  4. Log in;
  5. Click on the "MAKE A SUBMISSION" button to start the online procedure.

To submit a revised version:

  1. Log in;
  2. Click on the title of your paper;
  3. Next to the heading "REVISIONS", upload your revised paper by using the "UPLOAD FILE" button;
  4. Inform the Editors that a revised version has been uploaded.

Guidelines for Authors

Manuscripts have to be double-spaced with one-inch margins. Headings must be used to designate the major divisions of the paper. To facilitate the review process, manuscripts should contain page and line numbering. Manuscripts must be written in English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to have their manuscript checked by a language editing service, or by an English mother-tongue colleague prior to submission.

As an option, PAGEPress offers its own professional copyediting service. Professional copyediting can help authors improve the presentation of their work and increase its chances of being taken on by a publisher. In case you feel that your manuscript needs a professional English language copyediting checking language grammar and style, you can find a reliable revision service at:

Manuscript preparation

First and second pages

The first page must contain:

  1. title (lowercase), without acronyms;
  2. first name and family name of each author, separated by commas;
  3. affiliation(s) of each author (in English);
  4. acknowledgments;
  5. full name and full postal address of the corresponding author. Phone, fax number and e-mail address for the correspondence should also be included;
  6. three to five key words.

The second page should contain:

  1. authors' contributions, e.g., information about the contributions of each person named as having participated in the study (http://www.icmje.org/#author);
  2. disclosures about potential conflict of interests;
  3. further information (e.g., funding, conference presentation ...).

Tables and Figures

If tables are used, they should be double-spaced on separate pages. They should be numbered and cited in the text of the manuscript.
If figures are used, they must be submitted as .tiff or .jpg files, with the following digital resolution:

  1. color (saved as CMYK): minimum 300 dpi;
  2. black and white/grays: minimum 600 dpi;
  3. one column width (8.5 cm) or 2 column widths (17.5 cm).

A different caption for each figure must be provided at the end of the manuscript, not included in the figure file.
Authors must obtain written permission for the reproduction and adaptation of material which has already been published. A copy of the written permission has to be provided before publication (otherwise the paper cannot be published) and appropriately cited in the figure caption. The procedure for requesting the permission is the responsibility of the Authors; PAGEPress will not refund any costs incurred in obtaining permission. Alternatively, it is advisable to use materials from other (free) sources.

Other

If abbreviations are used in the text, authors are required to write full name+abbreviation in brackets [e.g. Multiple Myeloma (MM)] the first time they are used, then only abbreviations can be written (apart from titles; in this case authors have to write always the full name).
If names of equipment or substances are mentioned in the text, brand, company names and locations (city and state) for equipment and substances should be included in parentheses within the text.

Journal Sections

  • Original Articles (structured abstract 300 words max; text 4000 words max excluding abstract, references, figures and tables; max 5 tables and/or figures; max 40 references): Articles that report original empirical investigations.
  • Short communications (structured abstract 300 words max; text 1500 words max excluding abstract, references, figures and tables; max 3 tables and/or figures; max 15 references): Articles that fall short of the criteria for full original articles. These may include, but are not limited to studies that have a limited sample size or duration.
  • Review papers (unstructured abstract 300 words max; text 5000 words max excluding abstract, references, figures and tables; max 6 tables and/or figures; max 60 references): Articles that provide systematic overviews, evaluations and interpretations of research in a given field of health psychology.
  • Theoretical papers (unstructured abstract 300 words max; text 3000 words max excluding abstract, references, figures and tables; max 4 tables and/or figures; max 30 references): Articles that analyse or debate established theories in health psychology, or presentations of theoretical innovations.
  • Letters to the Editor (no abstract required; text 500 words max excluding references, figures and tables; max 2 tables and/or figures; max 10 references): Letters to the editor will be considered for publication. Typically, letters will contain information critical to health psychology research or in relation to recently published data.
  • Editorials (no abstract required; text 1000 words max excluding references, figures and tables; max 2 tables and/or figures; max 15 references): Invited by the editor only.
  • New Researchers (unstructured abstract 300 words max; text 1500 words max excluding abstract, references, figures and tables; max 3 tables and/or figures; max 15 references): Articles authored typically by researchers within 3 years of PhD completion or 3 years of full time employment.

References
References should be prepared strictly according to the APA style. To ensure the correct citation format, please check your references here: http://www.apastyle.org/learn/.

Manuscript style and content

Authors are advised that publication in Health Psychology Research requires references, symbols and abbreviations to be in line with the manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition. To support the preparation of articles for submission in Health Psychology Research, authors are encouraged to review the American Psychological Association Guide for New Authors. Authors should pay particular attention to the readability of articles, in particular the methods and results sections of Research Articles and Short Communications.

Ethical considerations

Articles that report on research involving either human or nonhuman animal participants should indicate whether approval was gained by an institutional board. Research involving nonhuman animal participants should also indicate whether guidelines for the care and use of animals were adhered. Articles that report on research in healthcare settings should likewise indicate whether NHS approval or equivalent from an appropriate committee was gained. All research should meet the provisions of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Peer-review policy

All manuscripts submitted to our journal are critically assessed by external and/or in-house experts in accordance with the principles of peer review (http://www.icmje.org/#peer), which is fundamental to the scientific publication process and the dissemination of sound science. Each paper is first assigned by the Editors to an appropriate Associate Editor who has knowledge of the field discussed in the manuscript. The first step of manuscript selection takes place entirely in-house and has two major objectives: i) to establish the article appropriateness for our journals readership; ii) to define the manuscript priority ranking relative to other manuscripts under consideration, since the number of papers that the journal receives is much greater than it can publish. If a manuscript does not receive a sufficiently high priority score to warrant publication, the editors will proceed to a quick rejection. The remaining articles are reviewed by at least two different external referees (second step or classical peer review). Manuscripts should be prepared according to the Uniform Requirements established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (http://www.icmje.org/#prepare).

Authorship
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the ICMJE criteria (http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html). Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should only be based on substantial contributions to i) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on iii) final approval of the version to be published. These three conditions 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 not sufficient for authorship. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author. Authors should provide a brief description of their individual contributions.

Obligation to Register Clinical Trials (http://www.icmje.org/#clin_trials)
The ICMJE believes that it is important to foster a comprehensive, publicly available database of clinical trials. The ICMJE defines a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or concurrent comparison or control groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Medical interventions include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, process-of-care changes, etc. Our journals require, as a condition of consideration for publication, registration in a public trials registry. The journal considers a trial for publication only if it has been registered before the enrollment of the first patient. 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 non-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 a minimum of data elements (http://www.icmje.org/#clin_trials). For example, ClinicalTrials.gov (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov), sponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine, meets these requirements.

Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research
When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013 (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision, https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-statement-on-animal-use-in-biomedical-research) and from the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare (http://www.veteditors.org/consensus-author-guidelines-on-animal-ethics-and-welfare-for-editors). When reporting experiments on ecosystems involving non-native species, Authors are bound to ensure compliance with the institutional and national guide for the preservation of native biodiversity.

Original Articles

Original Articles should normally be divided an Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions and References. The Abstract should contain about 180 words. A maximum of 10 authors is permitted, and additional authors should be listed in an ad hoc Appendix.

Reviews

No particular format is required for these articles, though headings should be used to designate the major divisions of the paper. Reviews should have an informative, unstructured Abstract of about 250 words. Reviews may also include meta-analyses, guidelines and consensus papers by scientific societies or working groups. These studies must be conducted following proper, widely accepted ad hoc procedures.

Brief Reports

Brief Reports must provide conclusive findings: preliminary observations or incomplete findings cannot be considered for publication. They should have a short Abstract of no more than 150 words, a text of about 2000 words, a maximum of 3 tables and/or figures (total), and up to 20 references.

Case Reports

Case reports describe observations on clinical cases that can be educational, including adverse effects of drugs or outcomes of a specific treatment. They should be divided into: Abstract, Introduction (optional), Case report(s), Discussion, Conclusions and References. Case reports should contain about 2000 words.

Letters to the editor

These are written on invitation, short essays that express the authors’ viewpoint, may respond to published manuscripts in our journals, or deliver information or news regarding an issue related to the Journal scope. If the letter relates to a published manuscript, the authors of the original manuscript will be given the opportunity to provide a respond. Authors of Letters to the Editor should provide a short title.

Book Reviews

Short (500 words) critical analysis and evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of a book which addressed at least one of main topics of the Journal. The publication of Book Reviews is subject to approval by the Editor-in-Chief together with the Editorial Board and the Publisher.

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