CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION
The American Journal of Psychiatry requires, as a condition of consideration for publication, registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry. Trials must be registered at or before the onset of patient enrollment. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (for example, phase I trials), would be exempt. The Journal does not advocate one particular registry, but requires authors to register their trial in a registry that meets several criteria. The registry must be accessible to the public at no charge. It must be open to all prospective registrants and managed by a not-for-profit organization. There must be a mechanism to ensure the validity of the registration data, and the registry should be electronically searchable.

An acceptable registry must include at minimum the following information: a unique identifying number, a statement of the intervention (or interventions) and comparison (or comparisons) studied, a statement of the study hypothesis, definitions of the primary and secondary outcome measures, eligibility criteria, key trial dates (registration date, anticipated or actual start date, anticipated or actual date of last follow-up, planned or actual date of closure to data entry, and date trial data considered complete), target number of subjects, funding source, and contact information for the principal investigator. To our knowledge, at present, only www.clinicaltrials.gov, sponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine, meets these requirements; there may be other registries, now or in the future, that meet all these requirements. Registration information must be provided in the cover letter at submission and the identifying number noted in the Methods section of the paper.

AUTHORSHIP
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. The corresponding author affirms that he or she had access to all data from the study, both what is reported and what is unreported, and also that he or she had complete freedom to direct its analysis and its reporting, without influence from the sponsors. The corresponding author also affirms that there was no editorial direction or censorship from the sponsors. Preparation of drafts of manuscripts by employees of the sponsor who are not listed as authors is expressly prohibited.

Authorship credit should be based on

1) Substantial contributions to conception and design or analysis and interpretation of data.
2) Substantial contributions to drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
3) Final approval of the version to be published.

Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must ALL be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is also not sufficient. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author.

Only those with key responsibility for the material in the article should be listed as authors; others contributing to the work should be recognized in an Acknowledgment. (Because readers may infer endorsement of the data and conclusions, all persons acknowledged must give written permission for their contribution to be noted in print. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to obtain written permission.) Editors will require authors to justify the assignment of authorship. A Certification of Authorship Form, which must be signed by all authors ONLY upon acceptance of the article, is available by clicking HERE.

DISCLOSURE OF COMPETING INTERESTS AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT
Disclosure of conflict of interest and financial support is required at the time of submission and provisional acceptance of all manuscripts, including regular articles, editorials, reviews, book reviews, Treatment in Psychiatry submissions, clinical case conferences, and letters to the Editor. The authors are responsible for informing the Journal of any additional conflicts of interest or financial support that may arise prior to the date of publication of their paper. Financial support for the study is always disclosed, whether from governmental, nonprofit, or commercial sources. Nonfinancial forms of support, such as drugs, analytic support, or other assistance with preparation of the manuscript, must also be acknowledged. All authors must individually disclose all potential conflicts of interest and financial support, whether or not directly related to the subject of their paper. Such reporting must include all equity ownership, profit-sharing agreements, royalties, patents, and research or other grants from private industry or closely affiliated nonprofit funds. For income from pharmaceutical companies, the purpose must be specified, e.g., speakers bureau honoraria or other CME activity, travel funds, advisory panel payments, or research grants. If an author has no interests to disclose, this must be explicitly stated and will be acknowledged in print as “Dr. X reports no competing interests.” A Disclosure of Conflict of Interest and Financial Support Form, which must be completed and signed by all authors ONLY upon provisional acceptance of the paper, is available by clicking HERE.

The Editors will review all author statements of conflict of interest and financial support to determine if there is evidence of bias from these sources. If it appears that there may be, then further review and possible rejection of the manuscript may occur. Authors are encouraged to contact the Editor at any stage in the manuscript review process if they believe that they have conflicts of interest that require review.

COPYRIGHT TRANSFER AND SUBMISSION APPROVAL
The Journal requires approval of manuscript submission by all authors in addition to transfer of copyright to the American Psychiatric Association so that the author(s) and the Association are protected from misuse of copyrighted material. A Copyright Transfer Form, which must be signed by all authors ONLY upon provisional acceptance of the paper, is available by clicking HERE. Accepted manuscripts will not be scheduled for publication until a completed form has been received in the editorial office. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain the approval of individuals before acknowledging their assistance in the paper.

In addition, authors must obtain letters of permission from publishers and pay any fees for use of extensive quotations (more than 500 words) or figures that have been previously published or submitted elsewhere.

You should send your Certification of Authorship, Disclosure of Conflict of Interest and Financial Support, and Copyright Transfer Forms in by mail or fax ONLY after you have been notified that your article has been provisionally accepted for publication.

PATIENT ANONYMITY
Ethical and legal considerations require careful attention to the protection of a patient’s anonymity in case reports and elsewhere. Identifying information such as names, initials, hospital numbers, and dates must be avoided. Also, authors should disguise identifying information when discussing patients’ characteristics and personal history.

INFORMED CONSENT
Manuscripts and letters to the Editor that report the results of experimental investigation and interviews with human subjects must include a statement that written informed consent was obtained after the procedure(s) had been fully explained. In the case of children, authors are asked to include information about whether the child’s assent was obtained. If your submission does not describe written informed consent and Institutional Review Board approval, it will not be reviewed.

REVIEW PROCESS
All manuscripts receive an initial review by the Journal Editor and/or Deputy Editors to determine the originality, validity, and importance of content and conclusions. Manuscripts with insufficient priority for publication will be rejected promptly. Other manuscripts are sent for peer review. Authors will be sent reviewer comments that are judged to be useful to them. All reviewers remain anonymous. Authors are informed about the Editor’s decision after the review process is completed.

BACK TO TOP

Manuscript Submission

The American Journal of Psychiatry has implemented a web-based manuscript submission and tracking system to accelerate the peer review process and shorten the time from manuscript submission to publication decision. The Journal will no longer accept manuscripts and letters by mail.

To submit your paper, please visit the manuscript submission site at Manuscript Central and either create an account or use your existing account. Then follow the instructions to upload your manuscript. All submissions must include a title page and be accompanied by a cover letter and list of suggested reviewers.

Types of Articles

REVIEWS
Review articles are intended to bring together important information on a topic of general interest to psychiatry. This section is not intended to be a forum for the presentation of new data or meta-analyses. Review articles are usually solicited by the Editors, but we will consider unsolicited material. The text cannot exceed 5,000 words with an abstract of no more than 250 words, a maximum of 5 tables and figures (total), and up to 50 references. Word count includes only the main body of text (i.e., not tables, figures, abstracts or references). Additional tables or figures can be submitted in a separate file as supplemental data for posting online. (See Supplemental Data for what types of data and formats are acceptable for posting online.)

ARTICLES
Articles are reports of original work that embodies scientific excellence in psychiatric medicine and advances in clinical research. Typically, articles will contain new data derived from a sizable series of patients or subjects. The text cannot exceed 3,500 words which does not include an abstract of no more than 250 words, a maximum of 5 tables and figures (total), and up to 40 references. Word count includes only the main body of text (i.e., not tables, figures, abstracts or references). Additional tables can be submitted in a separate file as supplemental data for posting online. (See Supplemental Data for what types of data and formats are acceptable for posting online.)

BRIEF REPORTS
As of May 1, 2007, the Journal no longer accepts brief reports for review. The percentage of brief reports meeting criteria for publication had been declining dramatically because this format did not permit definitive presentation of major research and clinical findings. Authors are encouraged to report their findings as concisely as possible in the regular article format.

OTHER SECTIONS

Editorials. Editorials are primarily solicited by the Editor, but brief commentaries (500-750 words) can be submitted for consideration. In addition, as the American Psychiatric Association committees begin formal work on DSM-V, the Journal welcomes brief editorials on issues that should be considered in its formulation. These “Issues for DSM-V” editorials should not exceed 500 words.

Letters to the Editor. Brief letters (maximum of 500 words, including references) will be considered if they include a cover letter indicating that the correspondence is “for publication.” Novel case reports and other uncontrolled observations should be submitted as letters to the Editor. Case reports will be peer reviewed. Letters critical of an article published in the Journal must be received within 6 weeks of the article’s publication. Letters received after the deadline will not be considered for publication; those considered will be sent to the article’s corresponding author to reply on behalf of the group. Such letters must include the title and author of the article and the month and year of publication. Letters that do not meet these specifications will be returned unreviewed. Letters will be published on a space-available basis.

Book Forum. Books for review should be sent to the Book Forum Editor, American Journal of Psychiatry, 1000 Wilson Blvd., Ste. 1825, Arlington, VA 22209. Book reviews are usually solicited by the Book Forum Editor. Authors interested in reviewing a particular book should send an e-mail to ajp@psych.org. Reprints of reviews are not available.

Clinical Case Conferences. Clinical case conferences are disguised accounts of the diagnosis and treatment of actual patients who present interesting problems. The patient’s history should be presented in some detail. A critical element is that the case should have been discussed in a departmental forum. Interesting cases seen only by individuals are more suitable for letters to the Editor. The text of clinical case conferences cannot exceed 4,500 words with up to 20 references and 2 figures or tables.

Treatment in Psychiatry. This series highlights issues in treatment that are frequently encountered, but recognized to be difficult. An idealized case vignette in a brief paragraph summarizes the clinical issue. The authorship can be single or multiple, but needs to include a senior author who has well known expertise. The author discusses the pathophysiology and psychopathology and reviews the evidence in the literature for particular treatments. The discussion should not just reiterate guidelines, but rather present the results of studies that support an approach. The concluding paragraphs summarize what the author believes is best to do, given the available evidence and experience. Treatment in Psychiatry articles are usually solicited by the Editors, but we will consider unsolicited material. Please contact the editorial office before writing a Treatment in Psychiatry article for the Journal. The text should be limited to 3,000 words with up to 20 references and 2 figures or tables.

Education in Psychiatry. Articles in this series also begin with an idealized case vignette in a brief paragraph that illustrates an important problem in clinical psychiatry. The goal of these articles is to present and evaluate methods to teach students, trainees, and other psychiatrists how to treat patients with these problems. The authorship can be single or multiple, but needs to include a senior author who has well known expertise. Education in Psychiatry articles are usually solicited by the Editors, but we will consider unsolicited material. Please contact the editorial office before writing an Education in Psychiatry article for the Journal. The text should be limited to 2,400 words with up to 20 references and 1 figure.

Images in Psychiatry. Authors may submit brief historical or contemporary snapshots of psychiatry’s practitioners or portrayals with accompanying text of 250-500 words signifying their relevance to the field today. Permission for republication of images, if not the property of the submitting author, must be obtained before submission. Original unpublished or public domain images should be sought as the Journal does not pay permission fees for reuse.

Introspections. Brief personal vignettes of clinical or other professional experiences that have been particularly important—moments of insight or inspiration—will be considered for publication. Introspections should be limited to 1,000 words.

BACK TO TOP

Manuscript Organization and Format

All parts of the manuscript or letter to the Editor, including case reports, quotations, references, and tables, must be double-spaced throughout. The manuscript should be arranged in the following order, with each item beginning a new page: 1) cover letter, 2) title page, 3) abstract, 4) text, 5) references, and 6) tables and/or figures. All pages must be numbered.

COVER LETTER
The cover letters should include statements regarding Authorship, Disclosure, and Copyright Transfer. Also, it must include a list of 6 suggested reviewers and their e-mail addresses.

TITLE PAGE

Word count. The number of words in the manuscript text and the number of tables and figures should be noted in the upper right-hand corner of the title page. Tables and figures are no longer included in the word count.

Title. The title should be informative and as brief as possible. Journal style for titles is not to use declarative sentences.

Byline. See instructions for Authorship. Authors’ first names are preferred over initials. Degrees should be included after each author’s name.

Previous presentation. If the paper has been presented at a meeting, give the name of the meeting, the location, and the inclusive dates.

Location of work and address for reprints. Provide the department, institution, city, and state where the work was done. Include a full address for the author who is to receive correspondence and reprint requests.

Disclosures and acknowledgments. In a separate paragraph, all potential conflicts of interest and financial support for all authors must be disclosed, whether or not directly related to the subject of their paper. Such reporting must include all equity ownership, profit-sharing agreements, royalties, patents, and research or other grants from private industry or closely affiliated nonprofit funds. For income from pharmaceutical companies, the purpose must be specified, e.g., speakers bureau honoraria or other CME activity, travel funds, advisory panel payments, research grants. It is the author’s responsibility to disclose anything in addition to the above that might be construed as potentially affecting the reporting of the study. If an author has no interests to disclose, this must be explicitly stated and will be acknowledged in print as “Dr. X reports no competing interests.” Pharmaceutical company support of any kind must be acknowledged.

Grant support should be acknowledged in a separate paragraph and should include the full name of the granting agency and grant number.

ABSTRACT
The abstract is a single paragraph no longer than 250 words for Reviews and Overviews and Articles and no longer than 150 words for Brief Reports. All manuscripts should include structured abstracts with the following information, under the headings indicated: Objective—the primary purpose of the article; Method—data sources, subjects, design, measurements, data analysis; Results—key findings; and Conclusions—implications, future directions.

TEXT
The contents of the text should include four major sections: introduction, method, results, and discussion. The method section should provide a comprehensive description of the nature of the study group, methods for recruitment, measurement and evaluation techniques (including information about reliability as appropriate), and data analysis. At the end of the section describing the subjects it should be clearly stated that “After complete description of the study to the subjects, written informed consent was obtained.” If applicable, clinical trial registration information (name, number, and URL) should be listed at the end of the methods. Strengths and weaknesses of the study should be presented in the discussion.

Patient perspectives. As part of a new focus of presenting research in the Journal, authors are strongly encouraged to include as part of their submission a brief clinical vignette in which the experience of the trial is captured from the point of view of one or more subjects. These vignettes should not simply be a summary of a patient’s demographic and clinical characteristics, as would be included in a case report, but rather an idea of the patient’s subjective experience of participating in the study, obtained from notes or recollections of raters who performed structured clinical interviews, actual quotes from subjects, or some other mechanism. The vignettes, which should be no more than two paragraphs, will be set apart from the main body of the article in a shaded text box entitled “Patient Perspectives.”

Data analysis. Adequate description of statistical analysis should be provided, including the names of the statistical tests and whether tests were one- or two-tailed. Standard deviations, rather than standard errors of the mean, are required. Statistical tests that are not well-known should be referenced. All significant and important nonsignificant results must include the test value, degree(s) of freedom, and probability. For manuscripts that report on randomized clinical trials, authors should provide a flow diagram in CONSORT format and all of the information required by the CONSORT checklist. When word limits prevent the inclusion of some of this information in the manuscript, it should be provided in a separate document submitted with the manuscript for posting online. The CONSORT statement, checklist, and flow diagram can be found at http://www.consort-statement.org. (See Supplemental Data for what types of data and formats are acceptable for posting online.)

Abbreviations. The Journal is distributed to a broad psychiatric readership, therefore only a very small number of abbreviations are considered “standard” and thus acceptable for use. Spell out all abbreviations (other than those for units of measure) the first time they are used; idiosyncratic abbreviations should never be used.

Drugs. Generic rather than trade names of drugs should be used.

REFERENCES
References are numbered and listed by their order of appearance in text; the text citation is followed by the appropriate reference number in parentheses. Do not arrange the list alphabetically. References in tables and figures are numbered as though the tables and figures were part of the text. References should be restricted to closely pertinent material. Accuracy of the citation is the author’s responsibility. References should conform exactly to the original spelling, accents, punctuation, etc. Authors should be sure that all references listed have been cited in text. Personal communications, unpublished manuscripts, manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted, and similar unpublished items should not appear in the reference list. Such citations may be noted in text. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission to refer to another individual’s unpublished observations. Manuscripts that are actually in press may be cited as such in the reference list; the name of the journal or publisher and location must be included. References to the editions of DSM should not be included in the reference list.

Type references in the Vancouver style shown below, double-spaced throughout. List all authors; do not use “et al.” Abbreviations of journal names should conform to the style used in Index Medicus; journals not indexed there should not be abbreviated.

TABLES
The Journal does not publish tables that have been submitted elsewhere or previously published. Tables that duplicate material contained elsewhere in the manuscript (in text, figures, or other tables) will not be used. Authors should delete tables containing data that could be given succinctly in text. A copy of each table must be submitted with the manuscript and must be accessible for copyediting. Tables cannot be embedded within the document or provided as figure art. Authors providing tables in such a manner will be required to resubmit tables in a format that allows for copyediting. In terms of data presentation, values expressed in the same unit of measurement should read down, not across; when percentages are presented, the appropriate numbers must also be given. In preparing the tables, each cell should contain only one item of data. In rows, subcategories should be in separate cells; in columns, Ns and %s or Means and SDs should be in separate cells. For optimum readability and presentation, tables should not exceed 120 characters in width. For other guidelines, consult recent issues of the Journal.

FIGURES
As part of a new focus of presenting research in the Journal, all authors are encouraged to include as part of their submission a figure that summarizes the major findings of the study. The Journal encourages the submission of high-quality color figures (previously published figures are discouraged). Multiple figures for the same article should be prepared as a set, consistent in color and size across all figures. The cost of publishing all illustrations, including color figures, is borne by the Journal.

Consult recent issues of the Journal and the following guidelines for format. A copy of each figure should be submitted with the manuscript. If accepted, figures in manuscripts should be sent as high-resolution .eps or .tif files.

Submission

Format

Content

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA
The Journal now allows authors to submit supplemental data to be posted online in support of their printed articles. To be accepted for posting, supplemental material must be essential to the scientific integrity and excellence of the manuscript. The material is subject to the same editorial standards as the printed Journal and will be submitted for peer review. Supplemental material will not be formatted or edited by in-house editorial staff to the extent as performed for material appearing in the print version. The Editor may select material submitted for publication in the print version to be posted online only. The Journal will accept the following categories of supplemental data:

• Detailed tables (up to 3) that contain data of use to other investigators. Data should be summarized in the text of the print version
• The CONSORT table and figure for clinical trials are also appropriate for online publication only.
• Appendices. Questionnaires, tests, checklists, etc., should be submitted as supplemental data.
  

Supplemental data should be uploaded in a separate file from the for-print manuscript. Please remember that the larger the file size the longer it will take users to download. For this reason, please limit your files to 10 MB. The Journal can accept the following formats:

• Plain text (.txt)
• HTML page (.html)
• JPEG image (.jpg)
• GIF image (.gif)
• Adobe PDF (.pdf)
• Excel spreadsheet (.xls)
• ZIP compressed file (.zip)
• Word document (.doc)
• Tiff image (.tif)
• PowerPoint presentation (.ppt)
• Encapsulated Postscript document (.eps)
• Mp3 file (.mp3)
• QuickTime video

.BACK TO TOP

Processing of Accepted Manuscripts

Manuscripts are accepted with the understanding that the Editor and the editorial staff have the right to make revisions aimed at greater conciseness, clarity, and conformity with Journal style. Preliminary page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. Authors who will be away from their offices for a long period or who change address after notification of acceptance should inform the Journal staff.

Reprints & Permissions
Contact the Journal Editorial Office

BACK TO TOP