Description

Founded in 1961 to report on the latest work in psychiatry and cognate disciplines, the Journal of Psychiatric Research is dedicated to innovative and timely studies of four important areas of research:

(1) clinical studies of all disciplines relating to psychiatric illness, as well as normal human behaviour, including biochemical, physiological, genetic, environmental, social, psychological and epidemiological factors;

(2) basic studies pertaining to psychiatry in such fields as neuropsychopharmacology, neuroendocrinology, electrophysiology, genetics, experimental psychology and epidemiology;

(3) the growing application of clinical laboratory techniques in psychiatry, including imagery and spectroscopy of the brain, molecular biology and computer sciences;

(4) advances in basic and clinical research methodology, including the process of "bench-to-bedside" transfer of new research findings.

The Editors-in-Chief will accept papers of high scientific caliber, if necessary after appropriate revision, and will aim for their rapid publication.

In addition, the Journal will be enhanced by the inclusion of commissioned reviews, news items, book notices and letters to the Editors.

Submission of Manuscripts

The Journal of Psychiatric Research now proceeds totally online via an electronic submission system. Mail submissions will in principle no longer be accepted. By accessing the online submission system http://ees.elsevier.com/jpsychiatrres you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of the various files. When submitting a manuscript online, authors need to provide an electronic version of their manuscript and any accompanying figures and tables. The author should select from a list of scientific classifications, which will be used to help the editors select reviewers with appropriate expertise, and an article type for their manuscript (Original article, review article, clinical Practice and Service Development, letter to editor. Once the uploading is done, the system automatically generates an electronic (PDF) proof, which is then used for reviewing. All correspondence, including the Editor's decision and request for revisions, will be processed through the system and will reach the corresponding author by e-mail.

Submission of a paper to the Journal of Psychiatric Research is understood to imply that it is an original paper which has not previously been published, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Prior publication in abstract form should be indicated. Furthermore, authors should upload copies of any related manuscript that has been recently published, is in press or under consideration elsewhere. The following circumstances indicate that a paper is related to the manuscript submitted to the Journal: a) any overlap in the results presented; b) any overlap in the subjects, patients or materials the results are based on.

Once a manuscript has successfully been submitted via the online submission system authors may track the status of their manuscript using the online submission system (details will be provided by e-mail). If your manuscript is accepted by the journal, subsequent tracking facilities are available on Elsevier's Author Gateway, using the unique reference number provided by Elsevier and corresponding author name (details will be provided by e-mail). See Tracking Accepted Manuscript section.

Authors may send queries concerning the submission process or journal procedures to the Editorial Offices at rwyse@stanford.edu (for authors coming from the United States, Canada or Mexico) or jpr@mpipsykl.mpg.de (all other authors). For further details on how to submit online, please refer to the online EES Tutorial for authors or contact Elsevier's Author Support Team at authorsupport@elsevier.com

Manuscript submission requirements:

Papers should be written in the English language.

Structure of the manuscript
1. Addresses for all of the authors as they should appear in the publication and full contact details for the corresponding author (address, phone, FAX and E-mail).
2. An abstract of no more than 250 words should be provided in single paragraph format.
3. Up to six keywords should be given for indexing.
4. State the objectives of the study and give concise, but sufficient information on the background.
5. Materials and Methods: Give detailed information on the study population you investigated and the methods you have used. Studies reporting results obtained in humans must include a statement that the investigation was carried out in accordance with the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki, that the study design was reviewed by an appropriate ethical committee and that informed consent of the participants was obtained after the nature of the procedures had been fully explained. Statistical procedures should be explained.
6. Results may be represented verbally, in tables or figures, as appropriate. However, do not duplicate presentation (e.g. do not repeat numerical data from tables in the text). It is not appropriate to present means or medians exclusively; please also provide measures of the distribution of values.
7. Discussion: The results of your study should be placed in the appropriate context of knowledge, with discussion of its limitations and implications for future work.

8. Author Disclosure - NEW!!

Role of Funding Source. Authors are kindly requested to briefly describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, authors should so state.

eg, Funding for this study was provided by NIMH Grant XXXXXXX; the NIMH had no further role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication.

The second aspect of the Journal's new policy concerns the Conflict of Interest. ALL authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three (3) years of beginning the work submitted that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership (except for personal investment purposes equal to the lesser of one percent (1%) or USD 5000), honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications, registrations, and grants. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should state that there are none.

eg, Author Y owns shares in pharma company A. Author X and Z have consulted for pharma company B. All other authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Finally, before the references, the Journal will publish Acknowledgements, in a separate section, and not as a footnote on the title page.

eg, We thank Mr A, who kindly provided the data necessary for our analysis, and Miss B, who assisted with the preparation and proof-reading of the manuscript.

The submitting author is also required to make a brief statement concerning each named author's contributions to the paper under the heading Contributors. This statement is for editorial purposes only and will not be published with the article.

eg, Author X designed the study and wrote the protocol. Author Y managed the literature searches and analyses. Authors X and Z undertook the statistical analysis, and author W wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to and have approved the final manuscript.

NB. During the online submission process the author will be prompted to upload these four mandatory author disclosures as separate items. They will be automatically incorporated in the PDF builder of the online submission system. Please do not include in the main manuscripts.

9. References should be arranged in alphabetical order with authors' names, article title, and journal spelt out in full. Follow the citation style of the Journal e.g.

Jones SH, Gray JA, Hemsley DR. Loss of the Kamin blocking effect in acute but not chronic schizophrenics. Biological Psychiatry 1992; 32:739-755.

Bowlby J. Attachment. New York: Basic Books, 1969.

Brown, B. Interviewing styles. In: Jones A., Smith S., editors. Techniques of assessment. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980. p. 197-208.

10. Citations in the text should appear in parentheses: for publications with only one or two authors, list them in full with the names separated by an "&," followed by the year; for publications with more than two authors list the name of the first author only, followed by "et al" and the year.
11. Tables are to be uploaded, numbered consecutively with Arabic numbers. Each table should include a header. Do not use vertical bars. For every variable, the units of measurement should be clearly identified.
12. Figures of good quality should be submitted online as a separate file and numbered consecutively with Arabic numbers. Please use a lettering that remains clearly readable even after reduction to about 66%. For every figure, a legend should be provided. Please refer to the generic Elsevier artwork instructions: http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork/jpsychires

Submission of Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor may be considered for publication if they include important comments on previous papers in the Journal, interesting case reports or preliminary findings of importance. The text should not exceed 1000 words. One figure or one table may be included. If new data are presented, the same rules apply as for regular papers (see above).

Review Process

Papers, except invited reviews, will be evaluated by at least two external experts. The authors are invited to propose three potential referees by providing their names, postal and E-mail addresses, phone and fax numbers. However, the choice of reviewers is made by the Editors exclusively. The authors will be notified as soon as possible whether a contribution is accepted for publication in the form that it was submitted, acceptable after a revision (which, in general, will be reviewed again), or rejected.

Fast-Track Review and Publication

Eligible manuscripts Papers entering the fast-track procedure should present clear-cut, novel findings of unusual and timely significance. Complex studies, even those of major importance, do not qualify, because it is unlikely that reviewers can handle them quickly. Fast-track papers are expected to be acceptable for publication in essentially the form submitted. Manuscripts that require substantial revision do not fit the criteria for fast-track processing.

Submission procedure A. Explain in the cover letter why you are requesting rapid review.
B. Explicitly state whether there is any overlap with already published or submitted work.

Review procedure
1. Within a maximum of 2 weeks the editorial office will decide whether the paper can enter the fast track.
2. If the editorial office denies fast-track review, the author is offered the option of having the manuscript placed in the regular review process. He or she must respond within a week or the paper is rejected.Within a maximum of 5 weeks the decision for acceptance or rejection is made. This decision is final (rejected manuscripts will not enter the ordinary review process).
3. If acceptance requires minor changes they must be performed by the authors within a week.
4. Accepted papers are published in the next issue.
5. All correspondence with authors and reviewers is performed by E-mail and fax exclusively.

Supplementary material

Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material (e-components) to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the Author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file.

For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at the Author Gateway at: http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork/jpsychires. Files can be stored on 3? inch diskette, ZIP-disk or CD (either MS-DOS or Macintosh).

The paper in the journal must be complete and fully comprehensible without reference to the Supplementary Material. The purpose of Supplementary Material is to provide additional and usually more detailed information for readers who are particularly interested in the study. Supplementary Material is not an integral part of a published paper; the suitability of the Supplementary Material is assessed by the editor but it is not subject to the peer review procedure as applied to papers in the journal. Supplementary Material may either accompany the first version of a Paper submitted to the journal or in response to a request from an editor.

Digital Object Identifier

The digital object identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The DOI will never change. Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly Articles in Press because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information. The DOI can also be used to create an URL hyperlink to supplementary material associated to an article.

When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are guaranteed never to change.

Complete the following steps to resolve a DOI:

Open the following DOI site with your browser: http://dx.doi.org
. Enter the entire DOI citation in the text box provided, and then click Go
. The article or supplementary material that matches the DOI citation appears in your browser window.

The DOI scheme is administered by the International DOI Foundation. Many of the world's leading learned publishers have come together to build a DOI-based article linking scheme known as CrossRef

Colour reproduction

The Journal of Psychiatric Research is now also included in a new initiative from Elsevier: 'Colourful e-Products'. Through this initiative, figures that appear in black & white in print can appear in colour, online, in ScienceDirect at http://www.sciencedirect.com. There is no extra charge for authors who participate.

For colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. Please indicate your preference for colour in print or on the Web only. Because of technical complications which can arise by converting colour figures to "grey scale" (for the printed version should you not opt for colour in print) please submit in addition usable black and white versions of all the colour illustrations. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork/jpsychires

Copyright Transfer

Upon acceptance of an article, you will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright see http://authors.elsevier.com/journal/jpsychires. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included in the submission, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Philadelphia, PA, USA: phone (+1) 215 238 7869, fax (+1) 215 238 2239, e-mail healthpermissions@elsevier.com.

Requests for materials from other Elsevier publications may also be completed on-line via the Elsevier homepage http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions

Proofs

One set of proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. A form with queries from the copyeditor may accompany your proofs. Please answer all queries and make any corrections within 2 days of receipt. No alteration of the substance of the text, tables or figures will be allowed at this stage. Should there be no corrections, please confirm this.

Elsevier will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurate as possible. In order to do this we need your help. When you receive the (PDF) proof of your article for correction it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Subsequent corrections will not be possible, so please ensure your first sending is complete.

Tracking Accepted Manuscripts

After acceptance of your article by the journal, and following receipt of the files at Elsevier, authors can keep track of the progress of their accepted article, and set up e-mail alerts informing them of changes in their manuscript's status using the 'Track Your Paper' feature of Elsevier's Author Gateway ( http://authors.elsevier.com/journal/jpsychires). You will receive a unique reference code together with the acknowledgement e-mail from Elsevier sent upon receipt of your manuscript files in the Elsevier production system.

Offprints

Twenty-five offprints will be supplied free of charge. Additional offprints and copies of the issue can be ordered at a specially reduced rate using order form sent to the corresponding author after the manuscript has been accepted. Orders for reprints produced after publication of an article will incur a 50% surcharge.