Instructions for authors
These instructions are also available in pdf format.
Primenjena psihologija is Open Access, a peer-reviewed journal, which publishes empirical research covering a wide range of the science of psychology. The journal’s coverage is comprehensive and includes organizational psychology, clinical psychology; developmental psychology; experimental psychology (and cognitive neuroscience); educational psychology; social psychology; mental health, biological psychology; psychometry, personality psychology and sport psychology. Journal publishes original research papers, meta-analysis and replication studies related to the latest achievements in psychology, if they have direct or indirect implications for psychological practice. In addition to publishing manuscripts that have a clearly applied focus, Primenjena psihologija solicits interdisciplinary research that integrates psychology with other related research fields, such as political science, medicine, molecular genetics, educational science, etc., encouraging interdisciplinary authorship. Primenjena psihologija provides a contribution to a systematic approach to the replication crisis in psychology, publishing papers that directly reproduce previous research by the same or other authors, using the same methodology.
In addition to freely submitted articles, Primenjena psihologija publishes Special Issues once a year. Special Issues refer to scientific articles with a certain thematic focus compiled by guest editors.
Ethical statement
When submitting the manuscript, the authors must state that they agree with the ethical standards of publication in Primenjena psihologija. More information regarding Code of Ethics in Paper Publishing and Data Abuse Prevention can be found at following link: http://primenjena.psihologija.ff.uns.ac.rs/dodatni_dokumenti/Publication_Ethics.pdf
Authors should ensure that the research described in manuscript has been carried out in accordance with ethical standards. The authors should indicate in the manuscript that consent of the institutional ethical body to conduct the research which include experiments with human subjects was obtained, as well as the permission for the legal use of questionnaires and software in the research. The editorial board may request permission to translate, use and modify the instruments, as well as the software.
Inclusive language
Inclusive language is defined as “language that avoids the use of certain expressions or words that might be considered to exclude particular groups of people”. [1] Authors should use language that is free of bias and avoid describing a person’s age, disability, gender identity, participation in research, racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or other characteristic in a way that would imply prejudice.
Primenjena psihologija encourages authors to use General Principles for Reducing Bias of the APA Publication Manual 7th edition at following link: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/general-principles
Responsible publication practice
Responsible publication practice implies that only manuscripts that have not been previously printed anywhere, in English or any other language, may be submitted to the journal. It is extremely important that the submitted manuscript is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submitted manuscript should be approved by all authors. Corrected manuscript after reviews should also be approved by all authors. Only manuscripts for which there are no conflicts of interest may be submitted.
Authors must ensure that this is an original manuscript, which does not contain plagiarized parts, in accordance with Primenjena psihologija Plagiarism policy. If the author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in the previous published article, it is necessary to immediately inform the Editor-in-Chief of Primenjena psihologija and enable retraction or corrections of the article.
Language
Primenjena psihologija publishes papers in English, as well as in Serbian and related languages of the regional speaking area (Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrian). Authors should provide proofreading of the manuscript. The Faculty of Philosophy provides an external editing service, such as Centre for Languages (http://centarzajezike.ff.uns.ac.rs) if authors need assistance with language.
Preprints
Primenjena psihologija will consider manuscripts which have already been posted as a Preprint in an online repository, such as PsyArXiv. In that case, the authors should provide a statement that they did not transfer copyright of the manuscript to another publisher. The published article in Primenjena psihologija must contain the following statement:
A preprint of this article before peer review by Primenjena psihologija can be found at (URL and doi).
The preprint must be updated to cite the Primenjena psihologija published article doi in preprint repository.
Peer-review
Primenjena psihologija applies a double-blind peer review process. All manuscripts are initially assessed by the Editor-in-Chief for suitability for the Journal. The manuscript is then forwarded to an Associate Editor for further evaluation. All papers are reviewed anonymously by at least two independent reviewers. The final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles is made by the Associate Editor. Based on the received reviews, the Associate Editor makes one of the following decisions on the manuscript: A - acceptance, B - acceptance with corrections, C - rejection with the suggestion that the paper is largely corrected and resubmitted, or D - rejection. If the author submits the corrected manuscript, answers to all suggestions made by the reviewer should be provided. Correspondence regarding decisions of the editorial board is not encouraged.
Blind peer-review
To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to this press, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:
- The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text, with "Author" and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.
- With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see under File in Word), by clicking on the following, beginning with File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.
- With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.
Submission
Authors can submit manuscript via the online platform, which is available at the journal website. Before submitting a manuscript, authors are encouraged to carefully go through a Submission Preparation Checklist.
Cover Letter
The authors send a cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief, as a separate file during submission. In the cover letter, authors can take the opportunity to explain why the manuscript will be of interest to readers. Important parts of cover letter are:
- Title of the manuscript
- Main results and their relevance
- Specific requirements that need to be complied with, such as ethical issues, permission to use of copyrighted material etc.
- Previous open science activities, such as deposited open data, deposited preprints of the submitted manuscript, preregistration of research, etc.
Cover letters should contain the following statements:
We confirm that this manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration elsewhere.
All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission to Primenjena psihologija.
Title page
The title should be concise, precise, and informative. The APA standard recommendation is that the title should not contain more than 15 words. Below the title, the names of the authors and their affiliations are listed. The corresponding author's name should be followed by a footnote containing his e-mail address. The corresponding author will handle correspondence at all stages of peer-reviewing, publication, and post-publication.
The title page should contain information on funding sources and acknowledgements, in the following format:
Funding: This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number POLAP1175055] and European Commission Joint Research Centre [grant number 114-451-2072/2016]
Acknowledgement: List here all individuals who provided help during the research and writing the manuscript. Acknowledgment will be placed in the published version of the article immediately before the list of references.
Conflict of interest statement
The title page should contain conflict of interest statement, in the following form:
Conflict of interest: We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Authors should disclose any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest in the following form:
Conflict of interest: description of conflict of interest. I have disclosed those interests fully to Primenjena psihologija, as well as the plan for managing any potential conflicts arising from that.
The title page should be attached to the platform as a separate document.
Manuscript structure
The manuscript should be written in a Microsoft Word processor, on an A4 page, in Times New Roman or Cambria font (12 points), with a spacing of 1.5 lines, with margins of 2.54 cm (applies to all margins). The paper should be up to 30,000 characters long, with spaces (without references and appendix), and in the case of a short report, the paper should be up to 5,000 characters, with spaces (without references and appendix). The page numbers should be given in the upper right corner, together with a header containing the running head, written in capital letters. The running head should not be longer than 50 characters. Pagination should start from the first page. The manuscript should be structured in accordance with the IMRAD format and rules defined in the APA Publication Manual 7th edition. Accordingly, the paper should contain the following sections: Abstract with keywords, Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusions (optional), References, and Appendix (optional).
Abstract
The abstract should be up to 250 words long and constitute the first page of the article. The abstract should not contain references, unless necessary. Immediately after the abstract, it should be provided a maximum of 5 keywords.
Section headings
Headings should be formatted according to APA standards in order to separate and classify paper sections. There are five types of headings organized by levels of subordination. Each major section of the paper should start with the highest level of heading.
Headings levels according to APA:
| Heading level | Format |
| 1 | Results |
| 2 | Spatial Ability |
| 3 | Test One |
| 4 | Teachers in Training. |
| 5 | Teaching Assistants. |
Footnotes and abbreviations
Footnotes should be avoided. Abbreviations should also be avoided, except for the most common ones. The abbreviations listed in the tables and figures should be explained. Explanations (legends) are given below the table or figure.
Tables and figures
Tables and figures should be placed within the manuscript, next to the relevant text. The same data should not be reproduced in both tables and figures. Moreover, the data in the tables and figures should not be repeated in the text.
The number and name of the table should be placed above the table, aligned to the left. The data in the tables should be given in the middle of the column, with the decimal places positioned by the left tab.
The example of the table:
Table 1
Correlations of violent behavior and components of test anxiety
| Physical violence | Verbal violence | Relational violence | |
| Worry | -.23** | -.24** | -.14* |
| Negative emotionality | .27** | .36** | .24** |
Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01.
Figures should be sent in electronic form with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. Figures should be adapted to the black and white press. If an illustration from a published source is used, the written consent of the copyright owner is required. The figure number and title should be displayed below. For example:
Figure 1. Effects of gender and grade level on the level of Neuroticism
Results
The results of statistical tests should be given in the following form: F (1, 9) = 25.35, p <.001 and similar for other tests (e.g. χ² (5, N = 454) = 5.311, p> .10 or t (452) = 2.06, p <.05). If the number is theoretically less than 1 (e.g., α, r, loads in factor analysis, p level), zero is not placed in front of the full stop. As a rule, the names of statistical tests and labels should be written in italics, unless it is about Greek symbols, that are not written in italics. Respecting statistical conventions, decimal numbers should be written with a full stop. All decimal numbers should be rounded to two decimal places, except in case of the fit indicators, p significance level, etc., when the data on the differences on the third decimal point is important.
References
References in the text
References should be prepared in the style of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition. References should be quoted in the text by giving the author's name, followed by the year, e.g. (Costa & McCrae, 1992) or Costa and McCrae (1992). For more than two authors, only the name of the first author is given followed by the words et al. For example, (Roberts et al., 2004) or Roberts et al. (2004).
Any citation taken directly from the text, regardless of length, should be accompanied by a reference with the page number. For each citation longer than 350 characters, the author must have the written permission of the copyright owner to enclose.
List of references
The list of references contains only references to which the author referred in the paper, in alphabetical order by the author's surnames. If the paper contains several references whose first author is the same, the papers in which that author is the only author are listed first, in ascending order of years of publication. Then, the papers are listed in alphabetical order of the first letter of the surname of another author. For each reference in the bibliography, if available, must be provided the DOI, in the link format, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.04.039.
References to journals
References to journals should include the author's name followed by initials, year, paper title, journal title (italics), volume number (italics), page numbers and DOI, e.g.
Orbach, L., Herzog, M., & Fritz, A. (2019). Relation of state- and trait-math anxiety to intelligence, math achievement and learning motivation. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 5(3), 371–399. https://doi.org/10.5964/jnc.v5i3.204
References to books and chapters
References to books should include the author's name followed by initials, year, book title (italics), place of publication, publisher, e.g.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books.
References to book chapter should include the author's name followed by initials, year, paper title, editors, book title(italics), volume and page numbers, place of publication, publisher, e.g.
Day, R. L. (1988). Measuring preferences. In R. Ferber (Ed.), Handbook of marketing research (pp. 112-189). McGraw-Hill.
Reference to a dataset
The dataset deposited in the online repository should be cited in the same way as published references. For example:
O’Donohue, W. (2017). Content analysis of undergraduate psychology textbooks (ICPSR 21600; Version V1) [Data set]. ICPSR. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36966.v1
Ministry for the Environment. (2016). Vulnerable catchments (Version 17) [Data set]. https://data.mfe.govt.nz/layer/53523-vulnerable-catchments/
Ministry of Education. (2015). Transient students [Data set]. https://catalogue.data.govt.nz/dataset/transient-students
Web references
Web references should include author's name, year, title of the document (in italics), date when the site was visited, and URL, e.g.
Degelman, D. (2000). APA Style Essentials. Retrieved May 18, 2000 from: http://www.vanguard.edu/psychology/apa.pdf
Unpublished materials
Unpublished materials are not recommended in the reference list. However, if these references must be included, they should follow the standard reference style with a substitution of the publication date with 'Unpublished material'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the paper has been accepted for publication.
Supplementary material
Primenjena psihologija encourages authors to submit supplementary material that will enhance the online version of a published research article. Supplementary material typically includes relevant additional data such as computer code, large tables, additional figures or appendices. Submission of supplementary material is at the same time as the main manuscript. Authors should provide a descriptive caption for each supplementary file. Although supplementary material is not an integral part of the article and cannot be formally cited, it is subject to peer review process.
Research data statement
To foster transparency, Primenjena psihologija encourages authors to state the availability of research data in manuscript. Transparent treatment of research data encourages good scientific practice, reproducibility and trust in science. If you are sharing data in one of the data repositories, you are encouraged to cite the data in your manuscript and reference list. The information about data citation is in the "References" section. If datasets are unavailable to access or unsuitable to post, the authors should indicate why in the section entitled Data availability statement. This statement will appear with the published article. For more information, visit the Open science section on the journal website.
Proofs
Proofs will be sent to the corresponding author by email and should be returned within 48 hours of receipt. Corrections should be restricted to technical errors. The Editorial Office of Primenjena psihologija will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurately as possible.
Published article
The corresponding author will receive a link to the PDF with the final published version of the article, which is available in open access. The link can be used for sharing the article via any communication channel, including email and social media.
[1] Inclusive language. Dictionary.com. Accessed February 20, 2021. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/inclusive-language
