Editorial Policies
The rules under which the Journal of Human Psychology assesses, publishes and corrects research, and what each of them requires of authors, reviewers and editors.
JHP ISSN 2644-1101 Open access · CC BY 4.0 Single-blind by default; double-blind on request COPE guidance
Editorial independence
Editorial decisions are independent of fees, services, memberships, and any role an author holds with the journal or the publisher.
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal. The decision on a manuscript rests with the handling editor, taken with the reviews in hand.
The article processing charge is raised only after a manuscript has been accepted, and the decision to accept is taken before any charge is discussed. Payment, membership, language editing, or any other paid service has no bearing on the assessment of a manuscript, on the order in which manuscripts are handled, or on the outcome.
A manuscript submitted by a member of the editorial board is handled independently by an editor with no involvement in it. The submitting editor is recused from handling and deciding the manuscript and has no privileged editorial access. As an author, they receive the normal author-facing correspondence, review reports and decision through the standard submission process. Reviewer anonymity is maintained.
Peer review
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
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What screening covers
Scope fit, ethics documentation, completeness, originality and the presence of the required declarations. A manuscript may be returned at this stage without external review, and a manuscript under consideration at another journal is returned here.
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Requesting double-blind review
Authors may request double-blind review at submission. When double-blind review is requested, editors must ensure that author-identifying information is not shared with reviewers. For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors. The preparation requirements for a double-blind manuscript are on the instructions for authors.
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Reviewer confidentiality
A submitted manuscript is a confidential document. Reviewers must not share it, discuss it with anyone outside the review, or use its unpublished content. After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
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Reviewer conflicts
Reviewers decline any manuscript in which they hold a competing interest, including recent collaboration, shared affiliation, a commercial relationship, or a personal connection to an author. Editors recuse themselves on the same terms.
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Use of AI in review
Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.
Research with human participants
Almost everything the journal publishes involves people who agreed to take part in it, so these requirements apply to every manuscript rather than to a category of them.
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Ethical approval
Research involving human participants must be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors must declare Institutional Review Board or ethics committee approval, naming the approving body and the reference number, or state the documented basis on which their institution determined that review was not required.
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Informed consent
Authors must confirm that informed consent was obtained, and describe how it was obtained where the circumstances made it a more demanding matter — research with children and adolescents, with adults whose capacity to consent may fluctuate, with participants in a dependent relationship to the researcher, or in a setting where declining to take part carries a cost.
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Privacy and identifiable material
Authors must confirm adherence to applicable national and institutional privacy regulations. Where an individual could be identified from a case description, a quotation, an image, a recording or a combination of demographic details, written consent for publication is required and the manuscript states that it was obtained. Data should be reported at the level of detail the analysis needs and no more.
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Trial registration
Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.
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Participant safety and distress
Where a study asks about trauma, self-harm, suicidality, substance use, violence or other material capable of causing distress, the manuscript describes the safeguards used: how risk was monitored, what support or referral was available to participants, and how disclosures requiring action were handled.
Requirements specific to psychological research
Three of the journal’s requirements exist because of what psychological research is made of: a measure, a population, and an inference about people.
Psychological measures
Manuscripts identify each instrument used, give its version, and where relevant the psychometric evidence supporting its use in the population studied. Where an instrument has been translated or adapted, the manuscript says so and describes how. A scale used outside the population it was validated in is reported as such.
Sensitive data
Mental-health, clinical, educational and workplace records carry a high re-identification risk in small samples. Datasets are de-identified before analysis where the design allows, access restrictions are stated in the data-availability statement, and the manuscript describes how the material was stored and who could reach it.
- Claims match the design. A cross-sectional association is reported as an association. Causal language, and any claim about therapeutic benefit, must be supported by the study’s own design and data.
- Non-stigmatizing language. Manuscripts describe people rather than categorize them by condition, and avoid language that presents a diagnosis, a behavior or a group as an identity.
- Cultural context is part of the result. Participant characteristics and setting are reported in enough detail for a reader to judge whether the finding applies elsewhere, and generalization beyond the sample is argued rather than assumed.
- Vulnerable groups. Research with participants who may be at greater risk of harm describes the additional protections applied and, where relevant, the involvement of the community or population concerned in the design.
Authorship, disclosure and funding
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Authorship
Authorship follows the ICMJE recommendations: substantial contribution to the work, involvement in drafting or revising it, approval of the version submitted, and accountability for it. Everyone who meets the criteria is listed, and no one who does not. Contributions that fall short of authorship are acknowledged with the contributor’s permission.
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Changes to the author list
Any addition, removal or reordering after submission requires a written statement of the reason, signed by every author including the one affected. Requests received after acceptance are handled as a correction to the record.
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Competing interests
Authors must disclose financial or personal relationships that could influence the research, including employment, consultancy, grants, patents, paid expert testimony, and relationships with organizations with an interest in the findings. A declaration is required from every manuscript, including one that has nothing to declare.
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Funding
All funding is named, with grant numbers where they exist, and the manuscript states what part the funder played in design, analysis, interpretation or the decision to publish. A funder has no role in editorial assessment.
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Use of AI by authors
AI tools cannot be authors. Where an AI tool has been used in preparing a manuscript, its use is disclosed and the authors remain accountable for the accuracy, originality and integrity of everything submitted.
Data availability and reporting
Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement.
The statement says where the data are, on what terms they can be reached, and, where they cannot be shared, why. A restriction grounded in participant confidentiality, an ethics approval, or a data-sharing agreement is a legitimate answer; silence is not.
Empirical manuscripts follow guidance appropriate to their design — CONSORT for randomized controlled trials, TREND for non-randomized behavioral interventions, STROBE for observational research, PRISMA for systematic reviews, and COREQ for qualitative interviews or focus groups. Other qualitative designs use appropriate guidance such as SRQR; mixed-methods reports explain each strand and their integration. Authors report the analysis in enough detail that a reader in the same subfield could evaluate the inference. Where analytic code or materials can be shared, the journal encourages it.
Preprints and conference presentations are permitted, and are disclosed at submission so reviewers can see what has appeared before and where.
Repositories, permissions and participant privacy
Choose a repository suited to the material and access conditions. Options include Open Science Framework, PsychArchives, ICPSR, Zenodo, Figshare and Dryad. Cite a stable identifier where available and describe the files, measures and analysis code needed to interpret the work. Use FAIR principles to make the materials findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.
De-identify participant data before sharing. Consent, ethical approvals and applicable privacy requirements determine what may be released. Use controlled access when open sharing would expose participants or breach an agreement, and explain the restriction and access procedure in the data-availability statement. Obtain permission for reused third-party material and identify its source and terms in the relevant caption.
Accepted manuscripts and funder deposit
JHP permits authors to deposit their accepted manuscript in funder-designated repositories. Authors are responsible for identifying the requirements that apply, initiating any required deposit and completing the approval steps.
Eligible NIH-funded manuscripts may be deposited individually in PubMed Central through the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS).
Individual manuscript deposit does not establish journal-level PubMed, MEDLINE or PubMed Central indexing. See the Indexing page for the journal's discovery and preservation information.
Originality, images and misconduct
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Originality and text overlap
Submissions are screened with Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate. A similarity report is read by an editor rather than applied as a threshold: overlap in a methods section that cites its source is a different matter from an undisclosed reuse of an argument, and the assessment is editorial. Material reproduced from another source requires permission from the copyright holder and full attribution.
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Redundant publication
A manuscript must not have been published elsewhere and must not be under consideration at another journal. Where a dataset has produced more than one paper, the manuscript cites the companion work and explains what is new here.
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Image and figure integrity
Figures must represent the data as collected. Adjustments to brightness, contrast or color are applied to the whole image and disclosed; selective alteration, splicing, duplication or removal of features is not permitted. Original figure files may be requested at any stage.
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Handling an allegation
The journal follows COPE guidance on allegations of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation, undisclosed conflicts and authorship disputes. The corresponding author is asked to respond, the institution may be notified where the matter is within its remit, and the outcome is recorded in the published record where publication has already occurred.
Correcting the published record
The published record is corrected in public rather than quietly amended. An article is never silently replaced, and every action below is itself a citable item linked bidirectionally with the article it concerns.
- CorrectionAn erratum or corrigendum, where an error affects part of the article but not its conclusions. The original stays available and is linked to the notice.
- Expression of concernIssued where a serious question has been raised that cannot yet be resolved — for example while an institution investigates. It records the concern without prejudging the outcome, and is replaced by a correction, a retraction or a withdrawal of concern when the matter is settled.
- RetractionIssued where the findings are unreliable, whether through error or misconduct, or where the work was published in breach of the journal’s ethical requirements. The article remains available and clearly marked, because removing it would leave citations to it unanswerable.
- RemovalReserved for the rare case where leaving the content available would itself cause harm — a legal order, or material that breaches an individual’s privacy. The citation and a statement remain in place.
Readers who believe a published article contains an error, or who have a concern about its integrity, are asked to write to the editorial office at [email protected] with the article details and the specific point at issue.
Copyright, licensing and self-archiving
Authors retain copyright and grant Open Access Pub a non-exclusive license to publish and distribute the article. JHP publishes the version of record under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).
The license permits sharing and adaptation, including commercial reuse, with appropriate credit, a link to the license and an indication of changes. Reusers must not impose additional restrictions that prevent others from exercising the licensed rights.
Authors may post preprints, deposit the accepted manuscript and self-archive the final published version. Disclose prior dissemination at submission and update preprint records with the published citation and DOI when available. Third-party material requires its own permission or compatible license; clearly identify any material excluded from the article's license and contact the editorial office when its terms are incompatible.
Complaints and appeals
Appealing a decision
An author who considers a decision to rest on a misreading of the work may appeal in writing to the editorial office, addressing the specific points in the reviews and reports. An appeal is considered by an editor who was not involved in the original decision. A single appeal is considered per manuscript, and a decision reached on appeal is final.
Complaints about process
Complaints about the conduct of the review, the handling of a manuscript, or the behavior of an editor or reviewer are investigated independently of the editor concerned, who takes no part in the response. Where a complaint concerns publication ethics, it is handled under COPE guidance.
Appeals and complaints are answered in writing. The journal does not publish a target period for either, and a figure that has not been verified is not published in its place.
Charges and withdrawal
The journal charges an article processing charge after acceptance. There is no fee at submission and no fee for peer review. The amount, the fee-relief route and the payment terms are on the charges page.
Withdrawal policy
Authors should contact the editorial office promptly and wait for written confirmation before submitting the work elsewhere.
Manuscripts withdrawn within 3 days of submission are not subject to a withdrawal charge.
Manuscripts withdrawn more than 3 days after submission incur a withdrawal charge equal to 30% of the journal’s APC.
Authors must receive official withdrawal confirmation before submitting the manuscript to another journal.
Related pages
Concerns about a published article are answered in writing
Write to the editorial office at [email protected] with the article details and the specific point at issue. Authors preparing a manuscript should start with the instructions for authors, which carry the requirements each of these policies places on a submission.
Journal of Human Psychology (JHP) · ISSN 2644-1101 · Crossref DOI prefix 10.14302 · Published by Open Access Pub · Content licensed CC BY 4.0, authors retain copyright
Digital preservation
This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish. Read our preservation policy.