Article types

The journal offers a variety of article types to accommodate different forms of submission. Authors are invited to contact the Editor if they are not sure which of the article types is most appropriate for their work. All submissions must be made via the online submission system.

Empirical Papers* report original data-driven studies, between 4,000–6,000 words (excluding abstract, references, tables/figures, which should be uploaded as separate files). Longer articles will also be considered if the extra word length is justified.

Review Papers* entail systematic reviews and meta-analyses. These should not exceed 10,000 words (excluding abstract, references, tables/figures, which should be uploaded as separate files), We invite papers focussing on theoretical, methodological, and applied issues.

Short Communications* need to be on a topic of high importance requiring rapid dissemination. These should not exceed 1,500 words (excluding abstract, references, tables/figures, which should be uploaded as separate files).

Letters are considered on issues of high interest and importance.

Special Issues are valuable as a source of concentrated science on a specific theme. The journal aims to publish two special issues per year, with fees waived for editors and contributors (if authors are not covered by a transformative agreement, and have no funds available for open access publication). We encourage a team of senior and junior editors. The Editor should be contacted to discuss ideas for a special issue, which may combine Empirical and Review Papers. Each Special Issue is accommodated by an Editorial to tie together the articles under a unifying theme.

* These article types may be eligible for APC waivers or discounts under one of the agreements Cambridge University Press has made to support open access.

Manuscript preparation

Language: Cambridge recommends that authors have their manuscripts checked by an English language native speaker before submission; this will ensure that submissions are judged at peer review exclusively on academic merit. Cambridge University Press partners with American Journal Experts to provide a high quality service to authors. More information can be found here. Use of this service is entirely voluntary and does not guarantee acceptance, nor does its use require authors to later submit to a Cambridge journal.

Papers can be submitted in either American or British English.

All papers submitted must contain line numbers. Up to three levels of headings are allowed. Please indicate what level each heading should be.

Authorship:

Although discretion is allowed, authors should fulfil the criteria set out by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In the process of submitting the article through the Personality Neuroscience ScholarOne system, the corresponding author is prompted to provide further details about contributions to the article using the CRediT taxonomy. People who have contributed to the article but do not meet the full criteria for authorship should be recognised in the acknowledgements section; their contribution can be described in terms of the CRediT taxonomy.

Our default position is that the corresponding author has the authority to act on behalf of all co-authors, and we expect the corresponding author to confirm this at the beginning of the submission process.

Author contact details: Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email and mailing address. Full author names and academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. 

Title page:

The title page must include:

1. The title of the article, which should be concise but informative
2. Full author names and academic affiliations for all co-authors
3. Name, affiliation, and email address of author responsible for correspondence about the manuscript
4. Abstract
5. Keywords
6. Acknowledgements
7. Financial support
8. Conflict of Interest statement

Abstract: Each paper must contain an abstract of no more than 250 words, and should be a continuous paragraph including the aim, materials and methods used in the paper, results, and conclusions.

Keywords: Each manuscript should be accompanied by 3-5 relevant keywords.

Acknowledgements: You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice and support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the following section.

Financial Support: Authors must include a Funding Statement in their title page. Within this statement please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers, for example: “Funding Statement: This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)”. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors’ initials, for example: “Funding Statement: This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (AB, grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (CD, grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (EF, grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (AB, grant number GGGG), (EF, grant number HHHH).” Where no specific funding has been provided for research, you should include the following:

“Funding Statement: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.”

Conflicts of Interest: Conflicts of Interest are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on an author’s presentation of their work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations. Your manuscript must include a statement reporting any Conflicts of Interest. This statement should be placed on the Title Page. Conflicts of Interest do not necessarily mean that an author’s work has been compromised. Authors should declare any real or perceived Conflicts of Interest in order to be transparent about the context of their work. If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting the title page must include Conflicts of Interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. 

Example wording for your Conflicts of Interest declaration is as follows: “Conflicts of Interest: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no Conflicts of Interest exist, your declaration should state “Conflicts of Interest: None”. Should your manuscript be accepted, it will be published at the end of the text of the manuscript before the References are listed.  Please download and complete the disclosure form of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), generate the disclosure statement, and insert this into your manuscript. Note each individual author should use the ICMJE disclosure form to generate the wording of their declarations. Authors should then add these declarations into their title page before submission. Where no known Conflicts of Interest exist, please include the following statement: “[Author] has nothing to disclose.”

The completed ICMJE form should be saved for your records. 

Supplementary Material: If the author has material that may be useful to the reader, but not essential to understanding the article, this can be supplied as supplementary material. Supplementary materials are peer reviewed but will not be copyedited or typeset, so they should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online – care should be taken to make them as comprehensible as possible. The supplementary material should be supplied as a separate file, and should be referenced in the article. Types of supplementary material include, but are not limited to, images, videos, podcasts, and slideshows. A statement should be added after the Conflicts of Interest statement to read:

“Supplementary Material

For supplementary material accompanying this paper, visit cambridge.org/PEN."

The link will be replaced by your article’s DOI during the production process.

References, notes, and in-text citations: The journal follows the current version of the American Psychological Association (APA) style for both references and in-text citations. More information can be found at http://www.apastyle.org and on their blog (http://blog.apastyle.org/). References should include a DOI whenever possible, in the format http://doi.org/....

Seeking permission to use copyrighted material

If your article contains any material in which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse that material. As the author it is your responsibility to obtain this permission and pay any related fees, and you will need to send us a copy of each permission statement at acceptance. Please find more information here.