Author Guidelines

Announcement: EJP will be published by Sage from January 2021. Any submitted manuscripts may be processed and published by Sage.

Please carefully read these Author Guidelines before submitting a paper to EJP. Please note that this includes a careful consideration of EJPs transparency guidelines that need to be confirmed during the submission process in case you are submitting an empirical paper.

If you are planning to submit a Registered Report (i.e., manuscripts that contain a study proposal submitted prior to data collection, see https://cos.io/rr) please refer to our Registered Report Author Guidelines. Please note, that replications should by default be submitted within the Registered Reports format.

We also recommend to read the 2017 Editorial, 2018 Editorial and 2019 Editorial for further details and discussion.

                     

Some basic information about EJP

EJP publishes papers that advance personality science in its broadest sense. We consider all research fields relevant to the understanding of personality (e.g., personality structure, processes, expressions in social context, causes, development, and consequences) and across aspects of personality (e.g., temperament, character, motives and goals, self-concept, identity, life narratives, reputations, interpersonal styles, values, attitudes, stereotypes and prejudice, vocational as well as leisure interests and intelligence as well as other abilities such as creativity or emotional competencies).

EJP welcomes high quality empirical contributions, innovative theoretical and methodological papers as well as systematic reviews and meta-analyses. We also welcome and encourage well-designed preregistered replications of previously published findings that are highly relevant to the field. We do not encourage submissions of papers that are primarily aimed at the psychometric validation of measurement scales. Further, we do not encourage psychopathological approaches with little relevance to the understanding of personality in general.

EJP encourages authors to be as succinct as possible and yet as detailed as necessary to fully explain the background and hypotheses, to completely describe the methods and results, and to thoroughly interpret the findings, in the light of limitations and alternative explanations. EJP has no word limit for manuscripts, but we do encourage authors to use supplementary material for additional details of the materials, data, analyses, and results.

EJP has an increasing reputation as publishing high quality, in-depth contributions to personality science, and a current impact factor of 3.91. EJP is highly selective with a current overall rejection rate of around 88% and a desk-rejection rate of around 55%, and we are committed to constructive, fast and in-depth feedback. The overall average time to first decision is just 20 days and below 40 days for papers sent out to review. Final proof-read articles are published online within a month of the acceptance date and typically appear in a printed issue shortly afterwards.

In these Author Guidelines, we provide information on EJPs evaluation criteria, mandatory transparency standards, information on streamlined review options, our blind review policy, and formal details regarding manuscript preparation, submission, and production. It is also recommended to read the 2017 Editorial, 2018 Editorial and the 2019 Editorial for further details and discussion.

                        
                  

If you are planning to submit a Registered Report (i.e., manuscripts that contain a study proposal submitted prior to data collection, see https://cos.io/rr) we ask you to additionally refer to our Registered Report Author Guidelines.

Evaluation criteria

Personality psychology is a broad and rich field, and there is, naturally, not just a single recipe for an excellent paper worthy of being published in EJP. In the following, we briefly highlight a number of evaluation criteria for judging the contribution of a submitted paper by action editors. These criteria are also used by reviewers to provide formal ratings in addition to their regular review.

• Overall Contribution

• Importance: Does the paper deal with a key question of personality research, relevant to several research fields within personality psychology and beyond?
• Novelty: Does the paper address novel questions and provides novel insight? Does it explore important but overlooked phenomena, a creative approach to a topic, new or seldom used designs and methods, or understudied samples?

• Theoretical background

• Conceptual reasoning: Do authors provide a thought-through and well-outlined theoretical reasoning and delineation of hypotheses and/or research questions? Are constructs and research problems well-defined and distinguished from each other?
• Literature review: Do authors provide a comprehensive and well-integrated overview of previous work relevant to the theoretical rationale and methodological approach?

• Methodology

• Transparency: Does the paper include all necessary information regarding sampling, procedures and measures (e.g., including if necessary supplemental material)?
• Robustness: Are the results based on sufficiently high statistical power? Does it include cross-cultural, cross-laboratory and/or cross-sample validations of the results?
• Representativeness: Did the design and measures allow for a good representation of the phenomena of interest? Were participants, as well as stimuli, or situational context features representative samples of the universe of relevant participants, stimuli etc.?

• Analyses and results

• Reporting standards: Are all necessary descriptive information reported (including means, standard deviations, and reliabilities for all measures, as well as zero-order correlations between all measures)? Do the authors report effect sizes, confidence (or credible) intervals, and exact p-values (when they rely on the frequentist inference framework)?
• Statistical analyses: Are the statistical analyses appropriate and up-to-date? Do the authors include sufficient alternative/supplementary analyses to back-up the robustness of the findings?
• Multiple testing: Do the authors sufficiently address issues of multiple testing?
• Careful language: Does the description and interpretation of results reflect the fact that the results cannot be interpreted as ultimate truth (e.g., past tense, non-causal language)?

• Discussion:

• Careful inferences: Is there a good correspondence between data and results and the inferences drawn? Is the writing cautious regarding causality and finality? Are results and effect sizes discussed in an appropriate and context-sensitive way?
• Theoretical discussion: Do the authors provide a thought-through discussion of the conceptual implications of their work? Does the discussion reflect a careful thinking about mechanisms and causality in how the phenomena are linked? Is there a meaningful integration into previous work and competing theories?
• Limitations section: Is the limitations section thorough? Do the authors show awareness to a restricted statistical power, potential alternative interpretations, and potential methodological confounds? Is there a careful discussion of generalizability? Do authors provide thoughtful and stimulating guidance regarding potential solutions to these limitations in future research?

• Quality of writing / presentation

• Clarity and coherence: Is there a well-organized and consistent structure? Does the manuscript have clear and meaningful subsections and -headings? Is the reasoning and labeling consistent throughout the manuscript?
• Formal standards: Is the writing correct and concise (spelling, grammar, and style)? Does the manuscript follow APA standards (incl. references, tables, figures, and notes)?

Transparency and Open Science Requirements and Guidelines

EJP has signed the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP)-Guidelines (see https://osf.io/9f6gx/) and has adjusted the Author Guidelines and the submission process accordingly. In essence, all authors have to confirm that their manuscript explicitly deals with open science issues. While we allow authors to solve these issues differently (e.g., to make the data openly accessible or not), we ask them to be transparent as to their choices. In doing so, we account for the fact that some circumstances (e.g., ethical, legal or resource-related restrictions) do not allow authors to implement all open science practices that are otherwise desirable. This being said, we encourage open science practices and positively weigh their use when evaluating manuscripts submitted to EJP.

Six transparency statements need to be confirmed in order to proceed with the submission process. Here we present these six statements along with some further clarifications. Generally, material, data and/or scripts are considered “open” if there is a link within the main text of the paper that directly leads to an openly accessible respective document that is permanently stored at a public, open-access repository (such as the Open Science Framework). Please also note that the option for other researchers to simply ask you for such documents is not considered “open”.

• Preregistration statement: We report whether our hypotheses were preregistered or not and if they were, provide a link to the respective preregistration. In case our research was purely exploratory, we clearly describe it as such.

• If hypotheses were included but not pre-registered, please include a brief sentence in the main text of the manuscript simply stating that the hypotheses were not preregistered.
• Please accurately describe your research as exploratory if it was exploratory.

• Sampling statement: We describe how the sample size was determined for each study. We also disclose any data exclusions and explain the rationale for these exclusions.
  • Optimally this includes considerations of statistical power based on conservative estimates of the most complex effects that are analyzed.

• Open material statement: We provide information regarding all procedures applied and all measures assessed in this study; either in the manuscript itself or by including the information necessary to openly access this material. We also indicate if the dataset has appeared in any other papers and where (submitted or accepted).

• In the Method section(s) of your paper please make sure that your research can be directly replicated in principle. Also, in case of a broader empirical project that goes beyond just this paper, the selection of procedures and measures for this specific paper out of a broader set of available procedures and measures needs to be transparent. Therefore, full disclosure of all applied procedures and measures in the whole research project the paper is based on is needed – independent of whether they are deemed as important for the current paper or not. Therefore, a link should be given within the method section(s) directly leading to the needed materials. Optimally the link would lead to a detailed codebook but in cases such a codebook is not (yet) available, a simple list of all procedures and measures applied (including appropriate references or the original wording of items) might suffice.
• Any other papers (submitted or accepted) that were based on the same dataset need to be mentioned explicitly. Please also describe for each paper the nature and degree of overlap and how the other papers differ from the submitted paper.

• Open data statement: The data needed to reproduce the results are open and we included the information on how to access the data. Alternatively, we explain in the Method section of the manuscript why the data are not made openly accessible.
  • Please note that a statement regarding the fact that others can ask you for the data (provision of data upon request) is not sufficient. You can of course include such a statement but should additionally explain why the data cannot be made openly accessible. In these cases, please also carefully consider whether it might be able to make (parts of) the data openly accessible, for example, by appropriate anonymization, or data aggregation.
  • In cases, analyses of your paper are based on publicly available data, please include a link to this public resource and explain how it can be accessed. Preferably, however, you are able to provide a link to exactly the data that has been used for the analyses of the submitted manuscript.

• Reproducible script statement: We provide openly accessible data analysis scripts that allow to reproduce all reported results and include any information necessary to access these scripts.

• The statistical code should be provided even in cases where it is not possible to make the data openly accessible - since it makes the analyses perfectly transparent and comprehensible

• Effects statement: We report basic descriptive statistics, effect sizes, exact p-values, and 95% confidence (credible) intervals. Alternatively, we explain why this is not possible or why alternative statistics are appropriate.
  • If applicable, all papers should include a table in the main manuscript with descriptives of and correlations between all measures.
  • Reliability (or at least internal consistency) estimates should be given for all measures for which this is possible.
  • Exact p-values should be given for all p-values > .001.

Authors should carefully check that the confirmation of the six transparency statements is accurate before submitting a paper to EJP.

Any necessary supplemental documents (i.e., preregistration files, materials, data, code) should be posted to a public, open-access repository (e.g., the Open Science Framework, https://osf.io/) and the permanent path for accessing the materials should be provided in the main text of the manuscript (e.g., in the first part of the Methods section). We also strongly recommend to upload all alternative/control/additional analyses that are not included in the main manuscript as a separate “supplemental analyses” file on the same repository and to provide links to these analyses at appropriate places within the main manuscript. Please assure that the link is working and provides access to the needed information and files for independent researchers/reviewers (e.g., in case of an OSF project, assure that the setting is changed to “public”). In case, the authors wish the review process to be completely blind (see “Blind review policy” below), “view-only”-links should be included that allow editors and reviewers to access the necessary information and files without having access to the authors identity (e.g., see http://help.osf.io/m/sharing/l/524049-view-only-links). View-only links need to be replaced by the original links in the manuscript prior to the final acceptance of the manuscript, and the project needs to be made publicly available.

In addition, EJP encourages preregistrations involving registering the study design, variables, and treatment conditions as well as analysis plans prior to conducting the research. Particularly, if there are hypotheses that were derived a priori, or in the case of a replication (of published research or in a series of studies included in one’s own paper), preregistering hypotheses is straightforward and recommended. If the research is preregistered, permanent links in the text to the preregistration are required.

If you are interested in submitting a Registered Report (i.e., manuscripts that contain a study proposal submitted prior to data collection (see https://cos.io/rr), please additionally check out our Registered Report Author Guidelines. Please note, that replications should, if possible, be submitted within the Registered Reports format.

EJP also recommends appropriate citations of all data, program code and other methods. All data sets and program code used in a publication should be cited in the text and listed in the reference section. References for data sets and program code should include a persistent identifier, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Data set citation example:

• Campbell, Angus, and Robert L. Kahn. American National Election Study, 1948. ICPSR07218v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1999. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07218.v3

Please note that the provision of Open Science Badges (Open material, Open data, Preregistered; see: indicate if the dataset has appeared in any other papers and where (submitted or accepted)) will be dealt with once a paper has been accepted (see below: Formal aspects - Post acceptance - Open Science Badges). Please make sure that you apply for all badges that your paper is eligible for during the proof-reading stage.

Streamlined review

EJP allows authors to ask for a streamlined review and deals with it within the regular submission system. To this aim, authors should indicate their request and the journal the paper was rejected by in the cover letter and add copies of the original (i.e., unaltered) decision letter and reviews along with a letter detailing their response to these comments as supplementary material (not for review). We as editors will take this information into account. If the previous editorial letter, reviews and the respective response allow us to render a decision without or with a smaller number of reviews, we will do so.

Blind review

EJP has changed its default settings to blind review. Therefore, the first page of the paper should exclude information regarding authors and affiliations and an additional title page with such information should be uploaded as “Title Page”. To allow reviewers to access all necessary information during the revision process, editorial letters will be impersonalized and author’s should not include their names in their response letters

If authors desire a completely blind review process, they need to make sure that the manuscript does not contain information that breaches anonymity. Anonymization should, however, not preclude full transparency regarding the submitted research (see transparency requirements above). In case of a trade-off between blindedness and transparency, transparency will be valued more and will be demanded even if it comes along with information associated with the author’s identity.

Consideration of articles previously available on pre-print servers

EJP will consider for review articles previously available as preprints on non-commercial servers such as ArXiv, bioRxiv, PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, engrXiv, etc. Authors may also post the submitted version of their manuscript to non-commercial servers at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

Formal aspects

Manuscript style and submission preparation

The language of the journal is English. The manuscripts should confirm to the most recent publication manual by the American Psychological Association (APA). It is not necessary to double-line space your manuscript.

• Title page: The title page of the manuscript should only include the title of the paper without any information regarding names or affiliations of authors. In addition to the manuscript file, however, a title page including names and affiliations of all authors should be uploaded as “Title Page”. In this additional title page please include the full address, including email, and telephone, of the corresponding author as well as the name(s) of any sponsor(s) of the research contained in the paper, along with grant number(s).
• Include an abstract of up to 200 words for all articles. An abstract is a concise summary of the whole paper, including the methods, not just the conclusions, and should be understandable without reference to the rest of the paper. It should contain no citation to other published work.
• Include a minimum of three and up to five keywords that describe your paper for indexing purposes.
• Main text: EJP manuscripts have no word limit but EJP values succinct writing. Where appropriate, you should use sub-headings to structure the Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion parts of the manuscript.
• Tables should be part of the main document. For initial submissions, tables can be either incorporated into the main text or on separate pages after the reference list. For revised submissions, tables should be on separate pages after the reference list, and not be incorporated into the main text. At his stage, if the table is created as a spreadsheet the file should be uploaded separately.
• Figures: For initial submission, figures can be part of the main document and can be either incorporated within the main manuscript or placed at the end of the document. For revised submissions, upload each figure as a separate file in either .tiff or .eps format, with the figure number and the top of the figure indicated.
• Compound figures e.g. 1a, b, c should be uploaded as one figure.
• Tints are not acceptable.
• Lettering must be of a reasonable size that would still be clearly legible upon reduction, and consistent within each figure and set of figures.
• Where a key to symbols is required, please include this in the artwork itself, not in the figure legend.
• All illustrations must be supplied at the correct resolution:

• Black and white and color photos - 300 dpi
• Graphs, drawings, etc - 800 dpi preferred; 600 dpi minimum
• Combinations of photos and drawings (black and white and color) - 500 dpi

• Color Policy. Where color is necessary to the understanding of the figures, color illustrations will be reproduced in the journal without charge to the author.

• If it applies to your study, please ensure that an ethics statement is included in the article.

• Pre-submission English-language editing:

  Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

  Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript. All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.

Manuscript Submission

The European Journal of Personality operates an online submission and peer review system that allows authors to submit articles online and track their progress via a web interface. Please read the remainder of these instructions to authors and then click http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/per to navigate to the European Journal of Personality online submission site.

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. All papers must be submitted via the online system.

Amongst other things you will need to:

• indicate that you have read and understood the Author Guidelines (above).
• indicate whether your paper is an empirical paper, a non-empirical paper or a Registered Report (specific rules apply to this type of submission; see Registered Reports Author Guidelines and whether it is submitted for consideration in a special issue, and if yes, for which one.
• confirm that your work contains original unpublished work and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere at the same time.
• enter the full title, short title of up to 70 characters, a minimum of 3 and up to 5 keywords, and names and affiliations of all authors. Give the full address, including email, and telephone, of the author who is to check the proofs.
• indicate whether the manuscript is a revised version of a manuscript that has been submitted previously to EJP, and if yes indicate the previous submission number.
• confirm 6 transparency statements in case of an empirical paper (see Transparency requirements above). The accuracy of these statements will be checked by the editors.
• upload appropriate files. Preferred formats for the text and tables of your manuscript are .doc, docx, .rtf, .ppt, .xls, .xlsx. LaTeX files may be submitted provided that an .eps or .pdf file is provided in addition to the source files. Figures may be provided in .tiff or .eps format.
  • NON-LATEX USERS: Upload your manuscript files. At this stage, further source files do not need to be uploaded.
  • LATEX USERS: For reviewing purposes you should upload a single .pdf that you have generated from your source files. You must use the File Designation "Main Document" from the dropdown box.
  • NON-LATEX USERS: Editable source files must be uploaded at this stage. Tables must be on separate pages after the reference list, and not be incorporated into the main text. Figures should be uploaded as separate figure files.
  • LATEX USERS: When submitting your revision you must still upload a single .pdf that you have generated from your now revised source files. You must use the File Designation "Main Document" from the dropdown box. In addition you must upload your TeX source files. For all your source files you must use the File Designation "Supplemental Material not for review". Previous versions of uploaded documents must be deleted. If your manuscript is accepted for publication we will use the files you upload to typeset your article within a totally digital workflow.
• INITIAL SUBMISSION
• REVISION SUBMISSION
  

Preprint Policy
This journal will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. 

Post acceptance

• Proofs: For accepted manuscripts, the publisher will supply proofs to the submitting author prior to publication. This stage is to be used only to correct errors that may have been introduced during the production process. Prompt return of the corrected proofs, preferably within two days of receipt, will minimize the risk of the paper being held over to a later issue. Free access to the final PDF offprint of your article will be available via author services only. Please therefore sign up for author services if you would like to access your article PDF.

• Copyright Transfer Agreement: If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper. If the OnlineOpen option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs: CTA Terms and Conditions
• Open Science Badges: After acceptance authors are sent an Open Practices Disclosure form in which they indicate whether their paper qualifies for and they are interested in receiving one or more Open Science Badges (Open material: https://osf.io/gc2g8/ , Open data: see https://osf.io/g6u5k/ , Preregistered: see https://osf.io/7d4wa/ or Preregistered with Analysis Plan: see https://osf.io/6q7nm/ ) and provide necessary links to access possible supplemental material. After receiving the filled out form, it is checked whether the provided links are working. If yes, badges are automatically tied to the paper.
• Dissemination: EJP is committed to making articles published in the journal as visible as possible. For this, we encourage you to spread the word about the article as widely as possible, through any media channels, social or otherwise. From our side, it is possible that someone from the EJP communications team will contact you to discuss possible options for disseminating your interesting work through EJP-related social media (such as our blog: https://www.ejp-blog.com/). In addition, authors are encouraged to share their accepted papers in line with Wiley’s Self-Archiving Policy (https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing-open-access/open-access/self-archiving.html). Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

• For authors choosing OnlineOpen: If the OnlineOpen option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA): Creative Commons Attribution License OAA, Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA, Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA. To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services and visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.

If you select the OnlineOpen option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: http://www.wiley.com/go/funderstatement.

• Permission grants - if the manuscript contains extracts, including illustrations, from other copyright works (including material from on-line or intranet sources) it is the author's responsibility to obtain written permission from the owners of the publishing rights to reproduce such extracts using the Wiley Permission Request Form.

• Further Author Resources: Check out our suite of tools and services for authors and sign up for: Article Tracking, E-mail Publication Alerts, Personalization Tools

• Cite Early View Articles: To link to an article from the author’s homepage, take the DOI (digital object identifier) and append it to "http://dx.doi.org/" as per following example:

DOI 10.1002/hep.20941, becomes http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hep.20941.

• All papers published in the European Journal of Personality are eligible for Panel A: Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience in the Research Excellence Framework (REF).