Please note that Collabra: Psychology only publishes any of the following items if they have been invited for a specific scenario or purpose or have been pre-agreed with a Senior Editor:
Please note that figures and supplemental material should always be submitted separately as individual files, although please also embed figures in your manuscript to help with readability during the review process.
We have no explicit requirements for section organization between these beginning and ending sections, but we remind you that the Methods and Results sections must adhere to our Transparency and Openness policy, and we generally recommend the style of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition (with the exception that figures and tables should also be embedded within the main text near to where they are discussed, to help the readability during the review process).
Please note that, for Registered Reports, you should refer to Registered Reports Detailed Guidelines.
The APA Guide for New Authors is a helpful resource for information on manuscript preparation.
Abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and defined upon first use in the text. Non-standard abbreviations should not be used unless they appear at least three times in the text.
Components
Title
The full title must be 250 characters or fewer. It should be specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the subject field. Avoid abbreviations if possible.
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author must have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Those who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgments.
When a large group or center has conducted the work, the author list should include the individuals whose contributions meet the criteria defined above, as well as the group name.
One author should be designated (with an asterisk) as the corresponding author, and his or her email address should be included on the manuscript cover page. This information will be published with the article, if accepted.
All author names should be listed in the following order:
- First names (or initials, if used),
- Middle names (or initials, if used), and
- Last names (surname, family name)
Affiliations
Each author should list an associated department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country. If the article has been submitted on behalf of a consortium, all author names and affiliations should be listed.
Abstract
The abstract should provide a clear description of the main objective(s) of the submission, explain how the study was done (as applicable), and summarize the article’s most important conclusions and their significance. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, and should not include sub-headings.
Please do not include citations in your abstract and avoid the use of abbreviations, if possible.
Main Text Between Abstract and References
We have no explicit requirements for section organization between these beginning and ending sections, but we remind you that the Methods and Results sections must adhere to our Transparency and Openness policy, and we recommend the style of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition (with the exception that figures and tables should also be embedded within the main text near to where they are discussed, to help the readability during the review process).
References
Published works, works accepted for publication, and citable datasets, code, and materials, should appear in the reference list. Mentions of unpublished work should be cited parenthetically within the main text of the article as personal communications.
The style of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition, must be followed with respect to handling of references.
Contributions
Please indicate author contributions as clearly as possible, according to the following criteria:
- Substantial contributions to conception and design
- Acquisition of data
- Analysis and interpretation of data
- Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
- Final approval of the version to be published
Example:
Contributed to conception and design: KDM, Y-LC
Contributed to acquisition of data: KDM
Contributed to analysis and interpretation of data: KDM, Y-LC
Drafted and/or revised the article: KDM, Y-LC
Approved the submitted version for publication: KDM, Y-LC
Acknowledgements
People who contributed to the work but do not fit our author criteria should be listed in the acknowledgments, along with their contributions. You must ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to being so named.
Funding sources should not be included in the acknowledgments, but in the section below.
Funding information
Please provide a list of the sources of funding, as well as the relevant grant numbers, where possible. List the authors associated with specific funding sources. You will also enter this information in a form during the submission process, but it must be repeated here.
Competing interests
In order to provide readers of articles with information about interests and relationships that might influence, or might be perceived to influence, the interpretation of articles published in Collabra: Psychology, all individuals involved with a submission (authors, editors, external reviewers) are required to declare all competing interests. Corresponding authors must provide a statement of competing interests on behalf of all authors, and, if no competing interests exist, state this specifically.
Authors who are also editors at Collabra: Psychology play no role during the review process of their specific paper, and this is ensured by the publisher. However, authors who are also editors should still declare this (and corresponding authors should be aware of this on behalf of other authors who are also editors).
Erring on the side of full disclosure is best. For guidance, we encourage authors and editors to consult the thoughtful guidelines provided by PLoS One.
Supplemental material
Although we do not limit the number or type of supplemental material items authors may include, we do require that they provide a relevant and useful expansion of the article, and that they be as well described as are figures and tables included within the body of the article. Good metadata of this material are key to discoverability and usefulness. Examples of supplemental material include appendices, very large tables, audios, videos, three-dimensional visualizations, interactive graphics, and so on. All supplemental material should include the following:
- Type and number: Supplemental material can be named in almost any way, provided that the files are consistently named, and numbers are preceded by “S” and closed with a period. Examples:
- Figure S1.
- Table S1.
- Text S1.
- Video S1.
- Alternative Language Abstract S1.
- Title: Supplemental material titles should be no more than 15 words, using sentence case ending with a period. For example:
- Legend: Supplementary material figures and tables should follow the requirements for main-text figures and tables. Other types of supplementary material files should include a descriptive caption of no more than 300 words, describing the key message of the item.
- File Type: Please indicate the format of the file (e.g., DOC, PDF, CSV, AVI)
Data accessibility statement
We require that authors include a “data accessibility statement” (DAS) with their submission. This should list the database(s) and, if appropriate, the respective accession numbers and DOIs for all data from the manuscript that has been made publicly available.
Example 1:
All the stimuli, presentation materials, participant data, and analysis scripts can be found on this paper’s project page on the [Appropriate repository. Supply link.]
Example 2:
The following datasets were generated:
- R scripts: uploaded as online supporting information
- DNA sequences: Genbank accessions F234391-F234402; NCBI SRA: SRX0110215
- Final DNA sequence assembly: uploaded as online supporting information
- Phylogenetic data: TreeBASE Study accession no. S9345
Figure Legends
Figures should be cited in ascending numeric order upon first appearance. Each figure caption should be inserted immediately after the first paragraph in which it is cited in the article file, and not as part of the figure files themselves.
Files, figure and equations
File Types
You may submit your manuscript files in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx), Open Office, LaTeX (as .pdf), or RTF format. Only RTF and .doc/.dox files can be used during the production process. Word files must not be protected.
LaTeX submissions. Articles prepared in LaTeX must be submitted in PDF format for use during the review process. The PDF file is both necessary and sufficient for the review process. After acceptance, however, .tex files and formatting information will be required as a zipped file.
Submissions with Equations
Microsoft Word Submissions with Equations. Editable versions of equations are required for production. If using a version older than Word 2010, please format equations using MathType. Do not insert your equations as Graphic Objects and do not use of Symbol font.
Figures
Figures should be included in the manuscript file, inserted immediately after the first paragraph in which it is cited in the article file, to help with readability during the review process. However, they must be also uploaded as separate files to our manuscript submission system.
Tables
Tables should be cited in ascending numeric order upon first appearance. Each table should be inserted immediately after the first paragraph in which it is cited in the article file. All tables should have a concise title. Table footnotes can be used to explain abbreviations. Citations should be indicated using the same style as outlined above. Tables occupying more than one printed page should be avoided, if possible. Larger tables can be published as supplemental material.
File Submission & Upload Order
- Write or paste your cover letter into the web form on the first page of the submission process, including all the required elements.
- Upload your article file first.
- Figures and supplemental material should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text, and uploaded in the same order. For example, Figure 1 should be uploaded as the first figure file, Figure 2 the second, etc.; Video S1 should be uploaded as the first Supplemental Material file, Video S2 the second, etc.
- All figures, main and supplemental, should be uploaded in the desired display orientation.
- Multimedia files (.avi or .swf files) must be uploaded as supplementary material and not main figures.