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Submission guidelines

Contents

Instructions for Authors

Manuscript Preparation Resources

The writing format of the manuscripts submitted to Psychometrika should follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), 7th ed., 2020. The Psychometrika LATEX package is one way to produce manuscripts in APA format.

Springer’s Author Academy

Open Choice—Your Way to Open Access

English Language Editing

Submission Information

A Manuscript that belongs to any of the following types is likely to be assigned a lower priority for publication in Psychometrika (Unless the manuscript has important implications for the field):

  • Manuscripts with a focus outside the domains of psychology, education and broader social sciences.
  • Manuscripts that primarily are reviews of literature on a specific area of psychology, education or broader social sciences.
  • Manuscripts that illustrate or compare existing psychometric tools using simulated or real data.
  • Manuscripts that describe the development of new curricula or tests or questionnaires.
  • Manuscripts that report routine investigations of the psychometric adequacy of specific tests or routine analysis of one or more education data sets.
  • Manuscripts that only describe computer programs and do not include a methodological component.

Page Limit

Manuscripts should generally not exceed roughly 40 double-spaced pages, including references, tables, figures, and not including appendixes. Manuscripts longer than 40 pages will be considered for publication only under exceptional cases and at the discretion of the editors.

Explanation of Journal Sections

Psychometrika Sections

When submitting a manuscript, authors may request that their manuscript be considered for either Theory and Methodology or Application Reviews and Case Studies. (However, the editors may recommend a different section after considering the manuscript.) Instructions regarding the third section of the journal, Book Reviews, can be found at the following link:

Book Review Information

Theory and Methodology

Empirical studies will be considered only if they involve new or particularly interesting uses of quantitative techniques. Articles about the development and/or results of specific tests will generally not be considered.

Application Reviews and Case Studies

Application Reviews can be integrative, drawing together disparate methodologies for applications, or comparative and evaluative, discussing advantages and disadvantages of one or more methodologies in applications. Case Studies highlight methodology that deepens understanding of substantive phenomena through more informative data analysis, or more elegant data description.

A list of recently accepted and published papers can be found here.

Editorial Manager Submission Instructions

Editorial Manager

Psychometrika uses the Editorial Manager system to help manage our review process. The system will guide you through the steps you need to take, but here is a brief outline and explanation of some of the parts that people have found confusing or problematic in the past. If you find that they are missing something, or are wrong in some way, or you would like a new set that isn't currently available please tell us! For submission-related inquiries, please email the JEO at Springer whose information is available under the Contacts tab.

General tip: If at any point you do not see the link described but you do see a link for "Action Links", then the link you want is hidden under the "Action Links" link. To get at the correct link either

• use your mouse pointer to hover over the words "Action Links" until a sub-menu appears, then click on the link you want

or

• click on the little plus symbol in the column header. This will replace "Action Links" with the actual links, and it'll stay that way until you hide them again by clicking on what is now a minus sign.

Logging In

• If you do not already have an account: Click on the "Register Now" link below the four login buttons and register for an account.

• If you already have an Editorial Manager account: Simply enter your username and password and click on "Reviewer Login".

• If you have forgotten your login information: Click on the "Send Username/Password" link, and enter your first name, last name, and email address.

• If you are not certain whether you already have an account or have forgotten your login information: Click on the "Send Username/Password" link, and enter your first name, last name, and email address.

Author Main Menu

• If you are submitting a new manuscript: Click on the "Submit New Manuscript" link. It should be the first one in the first shaded box.

• If you are submitting a revised manuscript: Click on the "Submissions Needing Revision" link. It should be the first one in the second shaded box.

• If you are completing a submission: If you already started the submission process, click on the "Incomplete Submissions" link in either the first or second shaded box. Then in the next screen click on the "Edit Submission" for the submission you want to finish submitting.

Note: If you do not see the manuscript submission options, you might have logged in with the wrong role. Look to see if the words "Author Main Menu" are in the white column near the top of the left of the screen. If they are not, look for a drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the screen, in the blue bar underneath the Editorial Manager logo. It should be labelled "Role:" and will be set to Reviewer or something else other than Author. Change it to "Author" and wait for it to re-load.

Select Article Type

Select "Original Research" from the drop-down menu.

Note: If you see an option for "Editorial Content", do not select it unless specifically instructed to do so. Manuscripts intended for review which are submitted as Editorial Content will be sent back to the author for proper submission without ever reaching one of the Section Editors.

Enter Title

Enter the title of your manuscript in the text field. Then click on the "Next" button.

Add/Edit/Remove Authors

• If you are the only author: Click "Next".

• If you have co-authors: Click on the "Add Author" button and enter the information in the pop-up window. When you are done adding authors, click "Next".

Note: You can also change the order of the authors in this screen! If the first author is not the one submitting simply change the numbers in the boxes next to each author's name, and then click on the "Update Author Order" button.

Submit Abstract

Enter the abstract here. If it's in LaTeX the code will appear to reviewers, but it will get cleaned up for final publication. When you are done, click on the "Next" button.

Enter Keywords

Enter the keywords for your manuscript. They will be published with your manuscript, if it is accepted. Then click on the "Next" button.

Select Classifications

• Click on the "Select Classifications" button.

• In the pop-up window that appears, put a checkmark next to any classifications that you consider relevant.

• Click on the "Select->" button.

• Click on the "Submit" button

Note: If none of the classifications fit your manuscript, just remember: the computer can't think, but the editors can. Choose whatever fits best and trust the section editor to depend more on your manuscript than on your selections when choosing the Associate Editor/Reviewers.

Enter Comments

This is where you specify for which section you’d like your manuscript to be considered. It can be a simple statement (i.e. "This is for ARCS"), or it can be part of a longer letter ("Dear ARCS Editor, I am submitting this..."). Other comments relevant to your manuscript, or anything else you want the Editors to read, goes here. Some possible examples are

• if the relevant section editor has approved a manuscript over 40 pages.

• if certain potential reviewers have already seen your manuscript, and so should not be considered.

• if it is a revision of a previously rejected manuscript, and why you think it is sufficiently revised as to merit reconsideration. (IMPORTANT! If you do not mention this it may slip through, but if it's caught it will be flatly rejected, without review.)

Suggest Reviewers

If you are submitting an ARCS manuscript: The ARCS editor requests that 6 suitable reviewers are provided. To do this,

1. Enter the first name, last name, and email address of a person you consider appropriate to review the manuscript. Bear in mind that this is a blind review.

2. Click on the "Add Reviewer" button.

3. Repeat steps 1-2 until you have added all the reviewers.

4. Click on the "Next" button

If you are submitting a T & M manuscript: While you are not required to enter any reviewer suggestions, we prefer to get some (at least 3). We do not promise to invite these reviewers, and we certainly do not promise that they will agree if we do invite them, but we do generally consider author suggestions first if they seem reasonable. To add reviewers just follow the same procedure described for ARCS manuscripts.

Attach Files

How to submit:

• Select the appropriate type of file (manuscript, title page, figure, table, supplementary material) from the drop-down menu under the word "Item".

• Enter whatever you want in the Description textbox, or leave the default. This is for your purposes.

• Click on the "Browse" button and find the file you want to upload, then click "Okay". See the following section “Templates and File Formats” for instructions and explanations for acceptable file types. Note that no matter what sort of file you submit, Editorial Manager will convert it to a PDF for you.

• Click on the "Attach this file" button.

• Repeat steps 1-4 until all files have been uploaded.

• Scroll to the bottom of the screen, and click on the "Next" button.

What to submit: for a new T& M or ARC manuscript

1. Blind manuscript. The authors’ names must not appear in headers, on the same page as the abstract, or in authors’ notes anywhere in the body. If you are citing your own work you should cite it normally. Please remember to put the full title somewhere (before the abstract is a good place) because the cover sheet will not be distributed with the blinded manuscript.

2. Title page with the title, authors’ names and contact information. Any author notes regarding funding, etc. may be included on this page. If it's more than one page that's also fine.

What to submit: for a revised manuscript

1. Blind manuscript, as described above.

2. Title page, as described above.

3. Response to reviewer comments, explaining how you addressed them.

Generate and Approve PDF

• Once you have uploaded all of the files, you still need to tell the system to generate the PDF. Click on "Build PDF for my Approval" then click on any of the links that say "Submissions Waiting for Author's Approval".

• If you encounter errors in this process, see the following section “Templates and File Formats” for tips to resolve them.

• Once your PDF has been generated the "Submissions Waiting for Approval" page will have a variety of action links. (You will receive an automatic letter with a link to this page in case you closed the window while you were waiting.) Click on the "View PDF" link to look at the PDF and make sure it got correctly converted. If anything is wrong, click on "Edit Submission" link and go back to the appropriate step. If everything is right, click on the "Approve Submission" link

Templates and File Formats

Templates

Download the template file for LaTeX submissions to Springer journals which can be used to prepare submissions for Psychometrika

https://www.psychometricsociety.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/pmetrika_latex.zip?1591123639 (link below)

Download the LaTeX Macro Packages, customized for Psychometrika by Tim Null in 2002, here: Psychometrika LaTeX Styles. Please note that these packages were designed to make it easy for authors to submit publication-ready articles, and that the requirements for a review-ready article are slightly different. Authors who choose to use these packages to prepare a manuscript for submission to Psychometrika should make certain that the manuscript is double spaced. These packages will give the manuscript 1.5 spacing, and so must be modified. Tim Null makes the following recommendations:

• The Pmet LaTeX Class Package is the recommended packaged for users of LaTeX 2.09, and authors currently using Version 1 of our LaTeX package. The Pmet package replaces the normal article class file with a pmet class file.

• The Pmetrika Style File Package is the recommended packaged for Scientific Word users, BibTeX users, and those authors who prefer the appearance of documents with a ragged-right/ragged-bottom appearance such as what might be obtained with a word processor. The Pmetrika package uses the normal article class file, and enhances and/or changes its capabilities with several added packages.

Psychometrika LaTeX package

File Formats

Below are the file types Editorial Manager accepts, with notes where necessary.

• PDF: Editorial Manager now can accept your PDF file.

• Word: Word 2008 for Mac has a function that lets you have the figures in one file, the references in a second, and the body in a third, and just use a merge field to pull the information. Editorial Manager will just render those merge fields as error messages.

• LaTeX: LaTeX is the single most problematic format for Editorial Manager to process. This is partially due to the fact that EM does not include all of the .sty files that might be assumed to be standard. At minimum, pmet.sty and pmetrika.sty are not available on the system. If the generated PDF says something about being unable to find a particular .sty file, try uploading that and compiling again. Often, these problems are resolved by converting the LaTeX file to DVI format.

• DVI: No problems have been reported when using .DVI files with .EPS figures. However, attempts to combine .dvi files with .pdf or .jpg figures have resulted in the figures either appearing at the end or not appearing at all.

• Figures in R: Figures created in R sometimes have thick black lines where there shouldn't be any lines at all. This can be avoided by converting the files to JPEG format.

File size: Most files are fine, and there is no need to worry about file size. However, extraordinarily large graphics have caused problems in the past, making it impossible for reviewers to download the manuscript. If your manuscript is over 10Mb (10,000 kb) then it's going to cause problems. If you don't know how big your file will be, try looking at your graphics—if you have one or more graphics that take so long to fully render themselves that you even think about getting up and going to do something else, they're probably big enough to cause some reviewers problems with downloading.

Submitting Electronic Supplementary Material

In the interest of transparency and reproducibility of results, Psychometrika strongly encourages authors to include with published papers, where possible, electronic supplementary materials which will be published online on SpringerLink with the article. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form. Authors should specify the type of supplementary material they will be able to provide at the time of submission, and this information will be taken into account in the review process. This includes data and code. Data and code should be clearly documented to allow replication and verification of the results presented in the final version of the paper.

Submission Notes

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats (see below). Multiple files submitted in a .zip or .gz file are acceptable.

• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.

• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.

• In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that the manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material.

• Electronic supplementary material will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

Files and Formatting

• Text and Presentations: Submit in PDF format. .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability. A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

• Datasets: Authors are encouraged to submit data in .csv files with variable names in the first row.

• Specialized Formats such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Naming and Numbering Files

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.

• Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.

• Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_4.pdf”.

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals.

Authors should include the following statements (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” when submitting a paper:

  • Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest
  • Research involving Human Participants and/or Animals
  • Informed consent

Please note that standards could vary slightly per journal dependent on their peer review policies (i.e. single or double blind peer review) as well as per journal subject discipline. Before submitting your article check the instructions following this section carefully.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned guidelines.

Competing Interests

Authors are requested to disclose interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work. Disclosure of interests provides a complete and transparent process and helps readers form their own judgments of potential bias. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate.

Editorial Board Members and Editors are required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. In addition, they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a competing interest. This may include – but is not limited to – having previously published with one or more of the authors, and sharing the same institution as one or more of the authors. Where an Editor or Editorial Board Member is on the author list they must declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript. If they are an author or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another Editor or member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript. Editorial Board Members are welcome to submit papers to the journal. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and Editorial Board Member status has no bearing on editorial consideration.

Interests that should be considered and disclosed but are not limited to the following:

Funding: Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number) and/or research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript.

Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript. This includes multiple affiliations (if applicable).

Financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies (including holdings of spouse and/or children) that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication of this manuscript.

It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest becomes significant, any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so one possible practical guideline is the following: "Any undeclared financial interest that could embarrass the author were it to become publicly known after the work was published."

Non-financial interests: In addition, authors are requested to disclose interests that go beyond financial interests that could impart bias on the work submitted for publication such as professional interests, personal relationships or personal beliefs (amongst others). Examples include, but are not limited to: position on editorial board, advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships; writing and/or consulting for educational purposes; expert witness; mentoring relations; and so forth.

Primary research articles require a disclosure statement. Review articles present an expert synthesis of evidence and may be treated as an authoritative work on a subject. Review articles therefore require a disclosure statement.Other article types such as editorials, book reviews, comments (amongst others) may, dependent on their content, require a disclosure statement. If you are unclear whether your article type requires a disclosure statement, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Please note that, in addition to the above requirements, funding information (given that funding is a potential competing interest (as mentioned above)) needs to be disclosed upon submission of the manuscript in the peer review system. This information will automatically be added to the Record of CrossMark, however it is not added to the manuscript itself. Under ‘summary of requirements’ (see below) funding information should be included in the ‘Declarations’ section.

Summary of requirements

The above should be summarized in a statement and placed in a ‘Declarations’ section before the reference list under a heading of ‘Funding’ and/or ‘Competing interests’. Other declarations include Ethics approval, Consent, Data, Material and/or Code availability and Authors’ contribution statements.

Please see the various examples of wording below and revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

When all authors have the same (or no) conflicts and/or funding it is sufficient to use one blanket statement.

Examples of statements to be used when funding has been received:

  • Partial financial support was received from [...]
  • The research leading to these results received funding from […] under Grant Agreement No[…].
  • This study was funded by […]
  • This work was supported by […] (Grant numbers […] and […]

Examples of statements to be used when there is no funding:

  • The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.
  • No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
  • No funding was received for conducting this study.
  • No funds, grants, or other support was received.

Examples of statements to be used when there are interests to declare:

  • Financial interests: Author A has received research support from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company Wand owns stock in Company X. Author C is consultant to company Y.

    Non-financial interests: Author C is an unpaid member of committee Z.

  • Financial interests: The authors declare they have no financial interests.

    Non-financial interests: Author A is on the board of directors of Y and receives no compensation as member of the board of directors.

  • Financial interests: Author A received a speaking fee from Y for Z. Author B receives a salary from association X. X where s/he is the Executive Director.

    Non-financial interests: none.

  • Financial interests: Author A and B declare they have no financial interests. Author C has received speaker and consultant honoraria from Company M and Company N. Dr. C has received speaker honorarium and research funding from Company M and Company O. Author D has received travel support from Company O.

    Non-financial interests: Author D has served on advisory boards for Company M, Company N and Company O.

Examples of statements to be used when authors have nothing to declare:

  • The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
  • The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
  • All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.
  • The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article.

Authors are responsible for correctness of the statements provided in the manuscript. See also Authorship Principles. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject submissions that do not meet the guidelines described in this section.

Research Data Policy and Data Availability Statements

This journal operates a type 2 research data policy.

The journal strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible. Please see Springer Nature’s information on recommended repositories.

List of Repositories

Research Data Policy

General repositories - for all types of research data - such as figshare and Dryad may be used where appropriate.

Datasets that are assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs) by a data repository may be cited in the reference list. Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite: authors, title, publisher (repository name), identifier.

DataCite

Where a widely established research community expectation for data archiving in public repositories exists, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. Persistent identifiers (such as DOIs and accession numbers) for relevant datasets must be provided in the paper.

If the journal that you’re submitting to uses double-blind peer review and you are providing reviewers with access to your data (for example via a repository link, supplementary information or data on request), it is strongly suggested that the authorship in the data is also blinded. There are data repositories that can assist with this and/or will create a link to mask the authorship of your data.

For more information:

Research Data Policy Frequently Asked Questions

Data availability

The journal encourages authors to provide a statement of Data availability in their article. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found, including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Data availability statements can also indicate whether data are available on request from the authors and where no data are available, if appropriate.

Data Availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

1. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]

2. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

3. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

4.Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study

5. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available:

Data availability statements

Authors who need help understanding our data sharing policies, help finding a suitable data repository, or help organising and sharing research data can access our Author Support portal for additional guidance.

Open access publishing

To find out more about publishing your work Open Access in Psychometrika, including information on fees, funding and licenses, visit our Open access publishing page.

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