Preparing your materials

Important notice: We have become aware that there are websites such as University Press Journals, Association of British University Presses and International Agency for Development of Culture, Education and Science (IADCES) which are claiming to offer publication in certain Cambridge University Press journals for a fee. We do not work with such companies. Submissions to Cambridge University Press journals can only be made via the online peer review systems linked to from this Cambridge Core website, or else directly to the editorial offices of those journals that do not operate online peer review systems. To submit a paper, go to the 'Submission of manuscripts' section below and follow the instructions. For more information on predatory publishing, please visit the Think Check Submit website

Please see the below table for the types of papers accepted:

Article Type	Usual Max Word count*	Abstract	References	Tables/figures**	Supplementary material online only	Eligible for Transformative Agreement Coverage
Original article	4500	250 words, structured, using subheadings Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions	APA style – see elsewhere in this document for full details	Usually up to 5 total	Yes	Yes
Review article	4500	250 words, not structured	APA style	Usually up to 5 total	Yes	Yes
Editorial	3500	No	APA style	Usually up to 5 total	Yes	No
Correspondence***	1500	No	max 20 APA style	Max 1	No	No
Commentary	2000 By invitation of editor	No	max 20 APA style	Not usually	Yes	No

* Editors may request shortening or permit additional length at their discretion in individual cases

** May be adjusted in individual cases at Editors' discretion

*** Please note, Correspondence papers must be in response to content published in PSM

Generally papers should not have text more than 4500 words in length (excluding abstract, tables/figures and references) and should not have more than a combined total of 5 tables and/or figures. Papers shorter than these limits are encouraged. For papers of unusual importance the editors may waive these requirements. Articles require a structured abstract of no more than 250 words including the headings: Background; Methods; Results; Conclusions. Review Articles require an unstructured abstract of no more than 250 words. The name of an author to whom correspondence should be sent must be indicated and a full postal address given in the footnote. Any acknowledgements should be placed at the end of the text (before the References section).

Contributors should also note the following:

1. S.I. units should be used throughout in text, figures and tables.
2. Authors should spell out in full any abbreviations used in their manuscripts.
3. Foreign quotations and phrases should be followed by a translation.
4. If necessary, guidelines for statistical presentation may be found in: Altman DG., Gore SM, Gardner, MJ. Pocock S (1983). Statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals. British Medical Journal 286, 1489-1493.

Neuroscience-based Nomenclature

For papers concerning neuropsychopharmacological treatments, Psychological Medicine encourages authors to utilize the ‘Neuroscience-based Nomenclature’ developed by the ECNP Taskforce on Nomenclature. The need for such a change arose to address a longstanding concern within the neuropsychopharmacological community that the nomenclature of psychotropic drugs did not properly reflect the underlying neuroscience of these compounds, as well as being unhelpful to clinicians and confusing to patients (e.g. the prescription of ‘antipsychotics’ for depression).

More information about the nomenclature can be found on the ECNP website here, website here, and in the paper here. The Neuroscience-based Nomenclature (NbN) itself is available free of charge as a mobile app (for both Android and iOS devices).

References

The guidelines set forth in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) should be used in the text and a complete list of References cited given at the end of the article.

Citing References in Text:

Type of citation	First citation in text	Subsequent citation int text	Parenthetical format, in first citation	Parenthetical format, Subsequent citation int text
One work by one author	Walker (2007)	Walker (2007)	(Walker, 2007)	(Walker, 2007)
One work by two authors	Walker and Allen (2004)	Walker and Alien (2004)	(Walker & Allen, 2004)	(Walker & Alien, 2004)
One work by three authors	Bradley, Ramjrez, and Soo (1999)	Bradley et al. (1999)	(Bradley, Ramirez, & Soo, 1999)	(Bradley et al., 1999)
One work by four authors	Bradley, Ramirez, Soo, and Walsh (2006)	Bradley et al. (2006)	(Bradley, Ramirez, Soo, & Walsh, 2006)	(Bradley et al., 2006)
One work by five authors	Walker, Alien, Bradley, Ramirez, and Soo (2008)	Walker et al. (2008)	(Walker, Allen, Bradley, Ramirez, & Soo, 2008)	(Walker et al., 2008)
One work by six authors or more	Wasserstein et al. (2005)	Wasserstein et al. (2005)	(Wasserstejn et al., 2005)	(Wasserstejn et al., 2005)

The References section should be in alphabetical order. Examples follow:

Journal article Author’s Last name, F. M. (Year published). Article title. Journal Title, Volume(Issue), pp.-pp.

Journal article with DOl Nevin, A. (1990). The changing of teacher education special education. Teacher Education and Special Education: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, 13(3-4), 147-148. doi:XXX

Light, M. A., & Light, I. H. (2008). The geographic expansion of Mexican immigration in the United States and its implications for local law enforcement. Law Enforcement Executive Forum Journal, 8, 73–82. doi:XXX

Journal article without DOl (when DOl is not available) Good, C. D., Johnsrude, I. S., Ashburner, J., Henson, R. N. A., Firston, K. J., & Frackowiak, R. S. J. (2001). A voxel-based morphometric study of ageing in 465 normal adult human brains. NeuroImage, 14, 21–36. Retrieved from http://xxxx

No retrieval date is needed.

Journal article with DOl, more than seven authors Gilbert, D. G., McClernon, F. J., Rabinovich, N. E., Sugai, C., Plath, L. C., Asgaard, G., ... Botros, N. (2004). Effects of quitting smoking on EEG activation and attention last for more than 31 days and are more severe with stress, dependence, DRD2 A1 allele, and depressive traits. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 6, 249–267. doi:XXX

Journal article without DOl, title translated into English, print version Guimard, P., & Florin, A. (2007). Las evaluations des enseignants en grande section de maternelle sont-elles predictives des difficultes de lecture au cours préparatoire? [Are teacher ratings in kindergarten predictive of reading difficulties in first grade?]. Approche Neuropsychologique des Apprentissages chez l'Enfant, 19, 5–17.

Journal article with DOI, advance online publication Von Ledebur, S. C. (2007). Optimizing knowledge transfer by new employees in companies. Knowledge Management Research & Practice. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1 057/palgrave.kmrp.8500141

In-press article Briscoe, R. (in press). Egocentric spatial representation in action and perception. Philosophy and Phenornenological Research. Retrieved from http://cogprints.org/5780/l/EC...

Citations for Websites

Author’s Last name, F. M. (Year, Month Day published). Title of article or page. Retrieved from URL

Simmons, B. (2015, January 9). The tale of two Flaccos. Retrieved from http://grantland.com/the-trian...

Online Supplementary Material

Relevant material which is not suitable for print production, such as movies or simulations/animations, can be uploaded as part of the initial submission. Movies should be designated as ‘Movie’ and each individual file must be accompanied by a separate caption and a suitable title (e.g., Movie 1). Accepted formats are .mov, .mpg, .mp4, and .avi, though they should be archived as a .zip or .tar file before uploading. Each movie should be no more than 10MB. Upon publication these materials will then be hosted online alongside the final published article. Likewise, should there be detailed tables or figures which are likely to take up excessive space in the printed journal, these can also be published online as supplementary material [designated as `Other supplementary material']. Note that supplementary material is published 'as is', with no further production performed.

Figures and tables

Only essential figures and tables should be included and should be provided in black and white except in exceptional circumstances, eg PET scan images etc. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article. Further tables, figures, photographs and appendices, may be included with the online version on the journal website.

All wording within submitted figures must be Arial, point size 8. To ensure that your figures are reproduced to the highest possible standards and your article is published as quickly and efficiently as possible, Cambridge Journals recommends the following formats and resolutions for supplying electronic figures. Please note that submitting low quality figures may result in a delay in publishing your valuable research.

Please ensure that your figures are saved at final publication size (please see the latest issue of the journal for column widths) and are in our recommended file formats. Following these guidelines will result in high quality images being reproduced in both the print and the online versions of the journal.

Line artwork

Format: tif or eps Colour mode: black and white (also known as 1-bit) Size: please size to final publication size Resolution: 1200 dpi

Combination artwork (line/tone)

Format: tif or eps Colour mode: grayscale (also known as 8-bit) Size: please size to final publication size Resolution: 800 dpi

Black and white halftone artwork

Format: tif Colour mode: grayscale (also known as 8-bit) Size: please size to final publication size Resolution: 300 dpi

Colour halftone artwork

Format: tif Colour mode: CMYK colour Size: please size to final publication size Resolution: 300 dpi

If you require any further guidance on creating suitable electronic figures, please visit the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide.

All graphs and diagrams should be referred to as figures and should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Captions for figures should be typed double-spaced on separate sheets. Tables should be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals and each typed on a separate sheet after the References section. Titles should be typed above the table.

NOTE:

1. Figures should be submitted as discrete files, not embedded in the text of the main document.
2. Supplementary material for online only should be submitted as discrete files, not as part of the main text.

Required Statements

Acknowledgements

You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, 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 manuscript. 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 statement:

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

Ethical standards

Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included (as applicable): “The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.” and “The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guides on the care and use of laboratory animals.”

Proofs and offprints

Page proofs will be sent to the author designated to receive correspondence. Authors will automatically receive a PDF of their article as soon as the issue in which it appears is published.

Papers will be published at no charge to the author under a standard author publishing agreement, unless the author elects to publish their paper under an open access license. Both forms can be found here. Please see Cambridge Open section below for more details.

Author Support

Author AID

AuthorAID is a global network that provides free support, mentoring, resources and training to help researchers in developing countries to write, publish and otherwise communicate their work.

Key features of AuthorAID are:

discussion and questions

world-wide training workshops and MOOCs on scientific writing
personal mentoring by highly published researchers and professional editors

For any authors new to publishing research articles, we encourage you to make use of the AuthorAID resources before submitting your paper to Psychological Medicine. Through the AuthorAID network, guidance can be found to help researchers through the process of writing and submitting scientific papers, advice about responding to reviewer comments, as well as research design and grant applications.

Please note that seeking support through AuthorAID will not guarantee acceptance for publication in Psychological Medicine, or affect the editorial process in any way.

Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.

English language editing services

Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.

In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their main manuscript file. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.

For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.

ORCID

We encourage authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

See our ORCID FAQs for more information. If you don’t already have an iD, you can create one by registering directly at https://ORCID.org/register.

ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.

In particular, any use of an AI tool:

to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.