Before submitting your work, please make sure that

  1. all required components of your submission are available
  2. all components meet the detailed specifications (regarding content and format) as described below.

Submission Components — Overview

First-time submissions include

  • A title page with identifying information (mandatory, not for review).
  • The anonymized article text, including figures and tables (mandatory, for review).
  • Supplementary material (if any, for review).
  • A cover letter (optional, not for review).

If a manuscript is accepted for publication you are requested to provide:

  • The final article text, deanonymized and including all revisions. Required file format is MS Word (.docx).
  • Each figure as a separate, high-resolution (300 ppi), print-ready image file. File formats: PNG, SVG, EPS, TIFF, editable charts from MS Excel or MS Word.

Title Page

Please use  Interpersona's Title Page Template for your submission!

Authors should submit the title page with identifying information separately from the main manuscript. The identifying Title Page should include:

  • Title: Complete title of the manuscript.
  • Running Head: Short title (one line), no more than 50 characters including spaces.
  • Preregistration: Add URL(s) or DOI(s) of the preregistered study protocol(s) (if any). Please note that preregistration requires a public file archive  that garantees the preservation of a time-stamped, immutable version of your study plan (embargos may be applied). Just uploading a study protocol to an OSF Project (for example) will not be considered as preregistration.
  • Author Names, Affiliations: Name, affiliation (format: institution, city, country) for each author. Include no more than two affiliations per author. Mark the corresponding author with an asterisk (*).
  • ORCID: ORCID identifier (format: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-2345-6789) for all authors (if available).
  • Corresponding Author: Corresponding author's contact address (email and post).
  • Author Contributions: Authors may wish to further clarify author contributions using, for example, the CRediT taxonomy.
  • Funding/Financial Disclosure: All sources of funding should be declared.
  • Acknowledgements: Any non-financial support (such as specialist statistical or writing assistance) from other persons or organizations should be disclosed.
  • Competing Interests: Financial and personal relationships of any author with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence the work should be declared. Membership in one of the journal boards (e.g., Associate Editor) must also be indicated here.
  • Ethical Practice: Please include a statement about the ethics of the research conducted and ethical approval from an institutional ethics or review board whenever appropriate (e.g., human participants involved, parental consent for research with children, etc.). If not applicable (e.g., simulation studies), please state: ‘No ethical issues and/or ethics approvals need to be disclosed’ - or explain why your study is considered exempt from specific requirements.

Anonymized Article Text

  • Article texts must conform to the 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual. The most basic formatting requirements, including some publisher specific rules, are detailed in the general  PsychOpen GOLD Style Guide.
  • To ensure masked review, all identifying information needs to be removed from the document. When using software like MS Word make sure to remove identifying information (author name, company), the software automatically adds to a document.
  • The article text should  have no more than 7,000 words (considering the whole file).
  • The article and all its components must be submitted in proficient English (concistent use of UK or US spelling). Language editing is not provided by the journal. Authors whose native language is not English are advised to have the text checked by a native speaker or a professional language editor.
  • The article text should be double spaced and include page numbers. Tables and figures should generally be located near their first reference in the text.
  • All elements of the article text (see below) should be submitted as a single file. Accepted papers must be provided in MS Word (docx) format.
  • The article text should include all of the following:
    1. Titles
      • Complete title of the manuscript.
      • Running head: short title (one line), no more than 50 characters including spaces.
    2. Abstract
      • Abstracts are limited to 250 words. They should briefly summarize the motivating questions for the research, methods, results, and conclusions.
    3. Keywords
      • 5 – 7 keywords or brief phrases separated by commas.
    4. Article Body
      • Text sections organized by headings into an unambiguous hierarchy.
      • All figures (including relevant captions) placed within the main body of text.
      • All tables (including titles, description, footnotes) placed within the main body of text.
    5. References
      • References must be formatted according to the 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual.

Supplementary Material

Authors may submit study data, analysis scripts, and other study materials for manuscripts that involve new data as Supplementary Materials (SM). The SM is not included in the word count of the article. In general, SM contains additional items that are not essential for inclusion in the full text but would nevertheless benefit the reader (e.g., raw data sets).

SM will be published online as received from the author(s) without any conversion, testing, or reformatting. SM will not be checked for typographical errors or functionality. The responsibility for the content and functionality remains entirely with the author(s). 

SM will be published at the PsychArchives repository. PsychArchives is a disciplinary repository for psychology, provided by Leibniz  Institute for Psychology (ZPID). All SM will be published under a CC-BY license, meaning that authors grant others permission to use the SM in whole or in part provided that the original work is properly cited. Please check that no copyrighted material is included unless that material has also been made available under a CC-BY license.

Cover Letter

  • Motivation: The cover letter may clarify the motivation for submitting to Interpersona beyond those aspects covered in the abstract or in the main text of the manuscript. Present highlights of the submitted contribution (what we already know on this subject, and more importantly what this paper adds).
  • Reviewer Suggestions: Although editors are in no way obliged to consider authors’ requests regarding the handling of submissions, authors may – while considering the ethics for scientific peer-review – suggest reviewers (with contact information) that they consider particularly suitable (or unsuitable) and indicate why. The proposed reviewers must not be from the same country as the authors.
  • Word Count: Word count of manuscript.
  • Replication Study: Please indicate if any studies or study parts replicate prior studies.
  • Open Science Badges: Please indicate in the cover letter if you anticipate your work to be eligible for an Open Science badge.
  • Other Information: As necessary, authors may wish to include information about author contributions, ethics, related versions of the paper (e.g., if the paper is based on a thesis), etc.

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