The Official Journal of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID)

Personality and Individual Differences will be published monthly with additional issues in January, April, July and October--2 volumes/annum.

Neither the Editors nor the Publisher accept responsibility for the views or statements expressed by authors.

All incoming papers are subject to the refereeing process, unless they are not appropriate for the Aims and Scope of the journal as outlined, do not follow the Guide for Authors, or clearly suffer from methodological problems (e.g. unsatisfactory sample size). Correspondence regarding decisions reached by the editorial committee is not encouraged.

US National Insitutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting/'Public Access Policy'
Elsevier facilitates author posting in connection with the voluntary posting request of the NIH (referred to as the NIH 'Public Access Policy', see http://publicaccess.nih.gov) by submitting the peerreviewed author's manuscript directly to PubMed Central on request from the author, immediately after final publication. Please e-mail us at NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com stating that your work has received NIH funding (with the NIH grant/project number(s), as well as name and e-mail address of the Principal Investigator(s)) and that you intend to respond to the NIH request. Upon such confirmation, Elsevier will submit to PubMed Central on your behalf a version of your manuscript that will include peer-review comments, for public access posting 12 months after the final publication date. This will ensure that you will have responded fully to the NIH request policy. There will be no need for you to post your manuscripts directly to PubMed Central, and any such posting is prohibited (although Elsevier will not request that manuscripts authored and posted by US government employees should be taken down from PubMed Central). Individual modifications to this general policy may apply to some Elsevier journals and its society publishing partners.

This journal should be cited in lists of references as Personality and Individual Differences.

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online. Use the following guidelines to prepare your article. Via the homepage of this journal ( http://www.elsevier.com/journals) or the EES online submission system ( http://ees.elsevier.com/paid) you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of the various files.

The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the Author's homepage, removing the need for a hard-copy paper trail. The above represents a very brief outline of this form of submission. It can be advantageous to print this Guide for Authors section from the site for reference in the subsequent stages of article preparation.

If you are unable to submit online please contact the Editorial Office at Elsevier, Stover Court, Bampfylde Street, Exeter, EX1 2AH, UK, e-mail: PAID@elsevier.com.

Manuscripts must be submitted using double-spacing throughout and should not exceed 5000 words including title page text, abstract, main text, tables, references, and any additional material.

Lengthier reviews or meta-analyses of exceptional quality will be considered for publication. Such papers will typically be no more than 10,000 words although longer papers may be submitted and will be considered at the discretion of the editors.

Review articles will be considered for a special review issue, which will appear once a year. Please select Review Article from the dropdown menu upon submission. These articles may exceed the 5000 word limit.

Short Communications should not exceed 3000 words.

The title of the paper, the author's name and surname and the name and address of the institute, hospital etc. where the work was carried out, should be indicated at the top of the paper. The name and address of the author to whom correspondence and proofs should be sent must be given on the first page. An email address and Fax number for the corresponding author should be supplied with the manuscript, for use by the publisher. Manuscripts must be double spaced and paginated.

Abstract. An abstract, not exceeding 200 words should constitute the first page of the article.

Keywords. Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 8 keywords, reflecting the essential topics of the article, which may be taken from both the title and the text. These keywords will be used for information retrieval systems and indexing purposes.

References should be prepared using the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association for style. They should be placed on a separate sheet at the end of the paper, double-spaced, in alphabetical order. Internet references should not be used.

References should be quoted in the text by giving the author's name, followed by the year, e.g. (Hersen & Barlow, 1976) or Hersen and Barlow (1976).

For more than two authors, all names are given when first cited, but when subsequently referred to, the name of the first author is given followed by the words et al., as for example--First citation: Nau, Caputo and Borkovec (1974) but subsequently, Nau et al. (1974).

References to journals should include the author's name followed by initials, year, paper title, journal title, volume number and page numbers, e.g.
Singh, N. N. (1980). The effects of facial screening on infant self-injury. Journal of Experimental Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 11, 131-134.

References to books should include the author's name followed by initials, year, paper title, editors, book title, volume and page numbers, place of publication, publisher, e.g.
Hersen, M., & Barlow, D. H. (1976). Single case experimental designs: Strategies for studying behavior change. New York: Plenum Press.
or
Brownell, K. D. (1984). Behavioural medicine. In C. M. Franks, G. T. Wilson, P. C. Kendall, & K. D. Brownell (Eds), Annual review of behavior therapy (Vol. 10, pp. 11-20). New York: Guilford Press.

Footnotes, as distinct from literature references, should not be used unless there are very exceptional circumstances. If they are included, they should be indicated by the following symbols: *, †, ‡, ∮, ||, ¶, commencing anew on each page.

Illustration and diagrams should be kept to a minimum. Number illustrations consecutively in the order in which they are referred to in the text. They should accompany the manuscript, but should not be included within the text. Photographs are only acceptable if they have good contrast and intensity. Reproductions of photographs already printed cannot be accepted. Mark the appropriate position of a figure in the article.

Preparation of electronic illustrations: Submitting your artwork in an electronic format helps us to produce your work to the best possible standards, ensuring accuracy, clarity and a high level of detail.

A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Formats: Regardless of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please ''save as'' or convert the images to one of the following formats (Note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below.):
EPS: Vector drawings. Embed the font or save the text as ''graphics''.
TIFF: Colour or greyscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (colour or greyscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.
DOC, XLS or PPT: If your electronic artwork is created in any of these Microsoft Office application please supply ''as is''.
Please do not:
-- Supply embedded graphics in your wordprocessor (spreadsheet, presentation) document;
-- Supply files that are optimised for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
-- Supply files that are too low in resolution;
-- Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Colour Reproduction: If, together with your accepted article, you submit useable colour figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figure will appear in colour web (e.g. Science Direct and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Tables and figures should be constructed so as to be intelligible without reference to this text, each table and column being provided with a heading.

Tables. Captions should be typewritten together on a separate sheet. The same information should not be reproduced in both tables and figures.

Proofs. Proofs will be sent to the author (first-named author if no corresponding author is identified on multi-authored papers) by PDF wherever possible and should be returned 48 hours of receipt, preferably by e-mail. Corrections should be restricted to typesetting errors, any other amendments may be charged to the author. Any queries should be answered in full. Elsevier will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurately as possible. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are returned to us in one all-inclusive e-mail or fax. Subsequent additional corrections will not be possible, so please ensure that your first communication is complete. Should you choose to mail your corrections, please return to: Elsevier, Stover Court, Bampfylde Street, Exeter, Devon EX1 2AH, UK.

Reprints. Reprints may be obtained at a reasonable cost, provided that they are ordered when the proofs are returned and using the reprint order form which will accompany the author's proofs.

Copyright. Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, 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, Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage ( http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

Enquiries
Authors can keep a track on the progress of their accepted article, and set up e-mail alerts informing them of changes to their manuscript's status, by using the 'Track a Paper' feature at: http://www.elsevier.com/authors. For privacy, information on each article is password-protected. The author should key in the ''Our Reference'' code (which is in the letter of acknowledgement sent by the publisher on receipt of the accepted article) and the name of the corresponding author. In case of problems or questions, authors may contact the Author Support Department, E-mail: authorsupport@elsevier.com.