Guide for Authors
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.
Ethics in publishing
For information on Ethics
in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
Policy and ethics
The work described in your article must have been carried out in accordance
with
The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans 
http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html;
EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm;
Uniform Requirements for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals http://www.icmje.org. This must be stated
at an appropriate point in the article.
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 years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived
to influence, their work. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission declaration
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carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any
other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
Changes to authorship
This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:
Before
the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names,
must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name
should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they
agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the
author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the
corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors
of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.
After
the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published
in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete 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 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.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of
contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher
is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations
(please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). 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: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Retained author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred
to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the funding source
You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article
and to briefly describe the role of the 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 article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement
then this should be stated. Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose
articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions
of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
Open access
This journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect
platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been
accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions
and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements
are available at
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this
option, should complete and submit the order form (available at
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf). Whatever
access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article
on your own website. More information can be found here:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Language and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted,
but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission
please visit
http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices
or our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com
for more information.
Submission
Submission to this journal proceeds totally
online and you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The system automatically converts source files
to a single PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are
converted to PDF files 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 removing the need for
a paper trail.
Submit your article
Please submit your article via
http://ees.elsevier.com/paid
Additional Information
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.
Use of wordprocessing software
It is important
that the file be saved in the native format of the wordprocessor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of
the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use
the wordprocessor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc.
When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no
grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional
manuscripts (see also the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier:
http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). Note that source
files of figures, tables and text graphics will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the text. See also the section on
Electronic artwork.
To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check' functions of
your wordprocessor.
Article structure
Subdivision - numbered sections
Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should
be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for
internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear
on its own separate line.
Introduction
State the objectives of the
work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.
Material and methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already
published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.
Theory/calculation
A Theory section should extend, not repeat, the background to the article already dealt with in
the Introduction and lay the foundation for further work. In contrast, a Calculation section represents a practical development from
a theoretical basis.
Results
Results should be clear and concise.
Discussion
This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined
Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.
Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which
may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.
Appendices
If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in
appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly for
tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.
Essential title page information
•
Title.
Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations
and formulae where possible.
•
Author names and affiliations.
Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a
double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names.
Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address.
Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.
•
Corresponding author.
Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also
post-publication.
Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address
and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
•
Present/permanent
address.
If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address'
(or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work
must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
Abstract
An abstract, not exceeding 200 words should constitute the first page of the article.
Graphical abstract
A Graphical abstract is optional and should summarize the contents of the article in
a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership online. Authors must provide images that clearly represent
the work described in the article. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image
size: Please provide an image with a minimum of 531 × 1328 pixels (h × w) or proportionally more. The image should be readable
at a size of 5 × 13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files. See
http://www.elsevier.com/graphicalabstracts for examples.
Authors can make use of Elsevier's Illustration and Enhancement
service to ensure the best presentation of their images also in accordance with all technical requirements:
Illustration Service.
Highlights
Highlights
are mandatory for this journal. They consist of a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings of the article and
should be submitted in a separate file in the online submission system. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and include 3 to 5 bullet
points (maximum 85 characters, including spaces, per bullet point). See
http://www.elsevier.com/highlights for examples.
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.
Abbreviations
Define abbreviations that are not
standard in this field in a footnote to be placed on the first page of the article. Such abbreviations that are unavoidable in the abstract
must be defined at their first mention there, as well as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.
Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references
and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided
help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).
Footnotes
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.
Artwork
Electronic artwork
General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original
artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as 'graphics' or enclose the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations:
Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical
naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to
the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure as a separate file.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork
is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You are urged to visit this site; some
excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
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: Color or grayscale 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 (color or grayscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.
If your electronic
artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) then please supply 'as is'.
Please do not:
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (e.g., 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.
Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached
to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (
not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep
text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.
Tables
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.
References
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.
References should be quoted in the text by giving
the author's name, followed by the year, e.g. (Hubbard & Ramachandran, 2001) or Hubbard and Ramachandran (2001).
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: Reuter, Roth, Holve and Hennig (2006) but subsequently, Reuter et al. (2006).
References to journals should include the author's name followed by initials, year, paper title, journal title, volume number and page
numbers, e.g. Nettle, D. (2006). Schizotypy and mental health amongst poets, visual artists, and mathematicians.
Journal of Research
in Personality,
40, 876-890.
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. Fitzgerald, M. (2004). Autism and creativity:
Is there a link between autism in men and exceptional ability? Hove and New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Or
Thompson, J. (2006).
The Mad, the ′Brut′, the ′Primitive′ and the Modern. A discursive history. In F. Andrada, E. Martin, & A.
Spira (Eds.), Inner worlds outside (pp. 51-69). Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art.
This journal should be cited in lists of references
as Personality and Individual Differences.
Web references
As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the
date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication,
etc.), should also be given. Web references should be listed separately after the reference list under a different heading - Web References.
Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference
list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are
not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they
should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished
results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication.
References in a special issue
Please ensure that the words 'this issue' are added to any references
in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same Special Issue.
Reference management software
This journal has standard templates available in key reference management packages
EndNote (
http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp) and Reference Manager (
http://refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp).
Using plug-ins to wordprocessing packages, authors only need to select the appropriate journal template when preparing their article
and the list of references and citations to these will be formatted according to the journal style which is described below.
Journal abbreviations source
Journal names should be abbreviated according to
Index Medicus journal
abbreviations:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html;
List of title word abbreviations:
http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;
CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service):
http://www.cas.org/sent.html.
Supplementary
data
Elsevier accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files
offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, 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 provide the data 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
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Submission checklist
The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please
consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure that the following items are present:
One author
has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
•
Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked'
and 'grammar-checked'
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference
list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources
(including the Web)
• Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge)
and in print, or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the
Web is required, black-and-white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please
visit our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com.
Use of
the 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 assigned DOI never changes. 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 correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example
taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059
When you use the DOI to
create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change.
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 within 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.
Offprints
The corresponding
author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. For an extra charge, paper offprints can be ordered via
the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published
article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.
Additional information
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.
For
inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission) please visit this journal's homepage. Contact details
for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the publisher. You can
track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. You can also check our Author FAQs (
http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ)
and/or contact Customer Support via
http://support.elsevier.com.
