Journal of Psychopharmacology

1. Article types
2. Editorial Policies
   2.1 Peer review policy
   2.2 Authorship
   2.3 Acknowledgments
   2.4 Funding
   2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
   2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
   2.7 Clinical Trials
   2.8 Reporting Guidelines
   2.9 Data
3. Publishing Policies
   3.1 Publication Ethics
   3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
   3.3 Open Access and author archiving
   3.4 Permissions
4. Preparing your manuscript
   4.1 Word processing formats
   4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
   4.3 Supplementary material
   4.4 Journal layout
   4.5 Reference style
   4.6 English language editing services
5. Submitting your manuscript
   5.1 How to submit your manuscript
   5.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
   5.3 Corresponding author contact details
6. On acceptance and publication
   6.1 SAGE Production
   6.2 Access to your published article
   6.3 Online First publication
7. Further Information

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
This Journal recommends that authors follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jop to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Journal of Psychopharmacology will be reviewed.

As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

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1. Article types

Journal of Psychopharmacology is a peer-reviewed journal which welcomes the following article types for publication:

Original Papers:Research Reports, describing new experimental findings; both full papers and short reports requiring rapid dissemination.

The journal is more flexible in terms of the length of the article. Therefore there are no word limits for any type of article.

Review Articles: The Editors wish to encourage the following types of review, but request that authors contact them (j.psychopharm@imperial.ac.uk) in advance:

1. General reviews: providing a synthesis of an area of psychopharmacology;
2. Perspectives: brief overviews, which are 4-6 printed pages in length including references, that address important new areas of general interest
3. Critiques: focused and provocative reviews that are followed by a number of invited commentaries, with a concluding reply from the main author

Null Results in Brief are original reports of null results of important a priori hypotheses tested with sufficient statistical power. Supplementary Material is generally not to be used to provide additional details about study methods or results.

Please indicate in your cover letter that your submission is for the Null Results in Brief category. Relatively rigid criteria are applied during the evaluation. The submitted manuscript should fulfill the following criteria:

1. The manuscript should add to current knowledge and be useful to future investigators making decisions regarding future research directions, replication and/or inclusion in meta-analysis.
2. Only brief methodological details should be provided, although these should be sufficient to allow readers to evaluate the results. Detailed study methodology described elsewhere (e.g., in prior publications) may be referenced.
3. The authors should clearly specify hypotheses that demonstrate a clear rationale for the data being presented. Priority will be given to articles that address well-defined biological /cognitive pathways.
4. The statistical power should be sufficient to enable the null results to be interpretable, and should be at least equal to or greater than that in prior empirical publications.
5. Authors are encouraged to combine as much null data as possible into a single publication. Authors are also encouraged to incorporate null data into studies reporting positive findings for pathway markers.

• Brief abstract (100 words)
• 800 words of text
• 8 or fewer references
• 2 figures and/or tables

Letters to the Editors: Readers' letters should address issues raised by published articles or should report significant new findings that merit rapid dissemination. The decision to publish is made by the Editors, in order to ensure a timely appearance in print.

Case Reports will only be considered if they make a major impact on the field and generally need to reflect findings from more than a single case. Please submit your work in the Short Report section.

The journal no longer accepts Book Reviews. The British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) publishes book reviews in their newsletter.

Please contact Prof Brian E. Leonard, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology, National University of Ireland, Galway (email:belucg@iol.ie).

Neuroscience-based Nomenclature (NbN) for Journal of Psychopharmacology

A few years ago on the Journal of Psychopharmacology Prof Nutt published an editorial on the need for a new nomenclature in psychopharmacology.[Nutt DJ.  (2009) beyond_psychoanaleptics_-_can_we_improve_antidepressant_drug_nomenclature.pdf?  J Psychopharmacol. 23(4):343-5.Erratum in: J Psychopharmacol. 23(7):861].

This sparked interest from the ECNP who set up a working group with several other international psychopharmacology organisations e.g. ACNP CINP, and after 5 years of regular meetings, a new nomenclature has been develop and posted as a free educational App.

The next stage is to begin the challenging process of using the new nomenclature in scientific journals and the Journal of Psychopharmacology is one of about 10 who have agreed to try to do this. The details are in an editorial published in 2016 [Nutt DJ, Blier P. (2016) neuroscience-based_nomenclature_nbn_for_journal_of_psychopharmacology.pdf. J Psychopharmacol. 30(5):413-5]

So when you write your papers for the Journal of Psychopharmacology please try to use the attached glossary to explain what drugs you used and how they work.

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2. Editorial policies

2.1 Peer review policy

The journal's policy is to obtain a minimum of three independent reviews of each article. It operates a single blind reviewing policy in which the reviewers’ names are concealed .

Referees will be encouraged to provide substantive, constructive reviews that provide suggestions for improving the work and distinguish between mandatory and non-mandatory recommendations. All manuscripts accepted for publication are subject to editing for presentation, style and grammar. Any major redrafting is agreed with the author but the Editor's decision on the text is final.

All our referees are highly valued and each year a thanks to all reviewers is published on the Journal's homepage. A Thanks to All 2016 Reviewers can be found here.

2.2 Authorship

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

1. Made a substantial contribution to the concept and design, acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data,
2. Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
3. Approved the version to be published.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.

2.3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

2.3.1 Writing Assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company or individual, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.

2.4 Funding

The Journal of Psychopharmacology requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.  Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.” 

2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests

It is the policy of Journal of Psychopharmacology to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any Acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that “The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest.”

For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.

2.6 Research ethics and patient consent

Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.

For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative.

Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants

All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The journal has adopted the Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare for Veterinary Journals published by the International Association of Veterinary Editors.

2.7 Clinical trials

The Journal of Psychopharmacology conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

2.8 Reporting guidelines

The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart as a cited figure, and a completed CONSORT checklist as a supplementary file.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives

2.9 Data

SAGE acknowledges the importance of research data availability as an integral part of the research and verification process for academic journal articles.

The Journal of Psychopharmacology requests all authors submitting any primary data used in their research articles alongside their article submissions to be published in the online version of the journal, or provide detailed information in their articles on how the data can be obtained. This information should include links to third-party data repositories or detailed contact information for third-party data sources. Data available only on an author-maintained website will need to be loaded onto either the journal’s platform or a third-party platform to ensure continuing accessibility. Examples of data types include but are not limited to: statistical data files, replication code, text files, audio files, images, videos, appendices, and additional charts and graphs necessary to understand the original research. The editor(s) may consider limited embargoes on proprietary data. The editor(s) can also grant exceptions for data that cannot legally or ethically be released. All data submitted should comply with Institutional or Ethical Review Board requirements and applicable government regulations. For further information, please contact the editorial office at j.psychopharm@imperial.ac.uk.

See also Section 4.3.  on supplementary material.

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3. Publishing policies

3.1 Publication ethics

SAGE is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the SAGE Author Gateway

3.1.1 Plagiarism

The Journal of Psychopharmacology and SAGE take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement

Before publication, SAGE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. SAGE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants SAGE the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than SAGE. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.

3.3 Open Access and author archiving

The Journal of Psychopharmacology offers optional open access publishing via the SAGE Choice programme. For more information please visit the SAGE Choice website. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit SAGE Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.

3.4 Permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway

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4. Preparing your manuscript

4.1 Word processing formats

Preferred formats for the text and tables of your manuscript are Word DOC, RTF, XLS. LaTeX files are also accepted. The text should be double-spaced throughout and with a minimum of 3cm for left and right hand margins and 5cm at head and foot. Text should be standard 10 or 12 point. Word and LaTex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit SAGE’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines 

Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from SAGE after receipt of your accepted article.

4.3 Supplementary material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full-text of the article. These will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article.  For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files, which can be found within our Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

4.4 Journal layout

The Journal of Psychopharmacology conforms to the SAGE house style.  Click here to review guidelines on SAGE UK House Style.

4.5 Reference style

The Journal of Psychopharmacology adheres to the SAGE Harvard reference style. Click here to review the guidelines on SAGE Harvard to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the SAGE Harvard output file here

4.6 English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using SAGE Language Services. Visit SAGE Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.

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5. Submitting your manuscript

5.1 How to submit your manuscript

The Journal of Psychopharmacology is hosted on SAGE Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jop to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.  For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help

5.2 Title, keywords and abstracts

Please supply a title, short title, an abstract and keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting the SAGE Journal Author Gateway for guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online

Please include an abstract (semistructured summary), incorporating the following headings: (Background, Aims, Methods, Results/Outcomes, Conclusions/Interpretation, and Declaration of interest/Funding), not exceeding 250 words. The abstract is a crucial part of the paper and authors are urged to devote some care to ensuring that all the important findings are included within the word limit. Our electronic submission system will ask you to copy and paste this section at the “Submit Abstract” stage.

5.3 Corresponding author contact details

Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers on the cover page. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review, if you prefer.

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6. On acceptance and publication

6.1 SAGE Production

Your SAGE Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly.

6.2 Access to your published article

SAGE provides authors with online access to their final article.

6.3 Online First publication

Online First allows final revision articles (completed articles in queue for assignment to an upcoming issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a final journal issue which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. For more information please visit our Online First Fact Sheet

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7. Further Information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Journal of Psychopharmacology editorial office as follows:

Dr Pallab Seth
Editorial Manager
Journal of Psychopharmacology Editorial office
Neuropsychopharmacology Unit
Imperial College London
Burlington-Danes Building
Hammersmith Hospital
Du Cane Rd
London, W12 0NN
j.psychopharm@imperial.ac.uk
p.seth@imperial.ac.uk

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Include an abstract (semistructured summary), incorporating the following headings: (Background, Aims, Methods, Results/Outcomes, Conclusions/Interpretation, and Declaration of interest/Funding), not exceeding 250 words. The abstract is a crucial part of the paper and authors are urged to devote some care to ensuring that all the important findings are included within the word limit. Our electronic submission system will ask you to copy and paste this section at the “Submit Abstract” stage.