Guidelines for Authors

Please read the relevant information on this website including  About the Journal, Publication Ethics, these Authors’ Instructions.  This will ease the submission process.

Article types 

Global Psychiatry Archives considers original research articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, editorials, and Global Perspectives. 

Global Perspective articles should be authored by an international author group (usually comprising authors from at least three continents). The paper should aim to provide a global perspective on a current topic in psychiatry and mental health. 

The GPA editorial board may decide to consider other types of articles (please enquire with the Editor-in-Chief before considering a submission). 

Published papers are open access articles licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-NoDerivsLicense (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).

Language 

All articles must be written or be translated into the English language. While we do not expect perfect English skills from our global authorship, the manuscripts must be easily understandable, and any language issues must not distract from the content. 

Article processing charge (APC)

There is an article processing charge of £300 to publish an article in Global Psychiatry Archives. There are no other charges. The journal is self-funded, and its only income is the APC from the authors. However, for those who cannot afford such fees, complete or partial waivers can be considered on request. The decision of acceptance or rejection of the manuscript for publication will be independent of your ability to pay.

Article structure 

We recommend that the authors use a hypothesis-based approach for all parts of the manuscript, see Heun, How to write a scientific paper: A hypothesis-based approach Global Psychiatry, 2018, 1(1): 3-6.https://globalpsychiatry.co.uk/article_1322_7ff3ce6d594f59016276a61399b6a00b.pdf

All manuscripts must be structured as follows:

A title with fewer than 20 words, referring to the main result and/or outcome of the study.

A short title: fewer than 6 words.

A List of authors (indicate affiliations with superscript numbers).

 A list of affiliations of authors (organisation, city, country)

Only those persons who have contributed to all parts of the preparation, conduct, evaluation, drafting and write-up of the study qualify for authorship.

• Abstract: This should be no more than 300 words, structured in Objectives, Methods, Results and Conclusions.
• 5-10 Keywords
• The main text should not exceed 5000 words with the following layout: Introduction, Material and Methods, Results and Discussion.
• Under results, introduce figures and tables in the text and clarify what they mean. However, do not repeat details and contents from figures/tables in the text. The discussion contains the main results, their scientific meaning, limitations, and conclusions.
• Tables must be understandable without the full context of the text.
• Declarations are placed before the list of references and must include the following: 
  • acknowledgements (if applicable)
  • authors’ contribution (if more than one author) 
  • ethical approval (mandatory, please indicate name and institution of ethics board and approval number, if available.) 
  • conflicts of interest (mandatory) 
  • funding (mandatory) 
  • informed consent (mandatory)

• Please explain and clarify the informed consent procedures. 
• study registration (mandatory)
•  
• References: use conventional PubMed NLM or Harvard System within the text and for references). All references must include the relevant DOI numbers. 

We recommend that less experienced authors follow the latest guidance from the ICMJE concerning the content of different parts of the manuscript including table:  Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA).

Publication schedule, ahead of print papers

The journal publishes two issues per year, papers will be published ahead of print on the journal website without page numbers until the full issues are completed.

 Submission and cover letter 

Every submission should be accompanied by a cover letter indicating the name, address and contact details of the corresponding author, necessary declarations, use of copyright by the journal, and if need be, a request to waive or reduce the APC fees.

Authors must confirm in their submission letter that they have read and understood the relevant information on the website in addition to the Editorial Instructions, Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement, including: 

• that all co-authors have substantially contributed to the preparation, conduct and content of the paper and the resulting manuscript, and have approved the submitted version. We do not accept ghost or honour authorships of those who have not made a major contribution to all aspect of the research and the manuscript. 
• the funding information of the study. 
• permission to use copyrighted material including online content. 
• that all standards of ethical research conduct have been upheld during the realisation of the work. 
• that the authors commit themselves to paying the article processing fees (currently £300) as published by Global Psychiatry on its website on the day of submission or ask for a waiver,
• that the paper has been solely submitted to this journal and is not published or under review in any other journal. 
• information, outcome of previous submissions to other journals 
• the type of any potential conflict of interest and, if any, how it has been dealt with to prevent any undue influence on the content and presentation of the results and outcome of the paper.
• The use and purpose of Artificial Intelligence tools and how they influenced the study results and article presentation.

Submission of manuscripts 

All manuscripts and additional information must be submitted through the Editorial Manager at: https://globalpsychiatry.co.uk/author

Statements of ethical approval and informed consent must be individually submitted via the Editorial Manager. 

Proposal of reviewers 

Please propose at least five experts who would have sufficient knowledge and expertise to provide a valuable review of the paper. However, you should make sure that those reviewers do not have a conflict of interest in relation to the review of the publication either financial, academic, institutional, religious, or through private connections. 

Author enquiries 

All enquiries should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief at:

[email protected]

Procedures and revisions 

All submissions will be initially assessed by one journal editor. If the manuscript falls into the journal’s scope and may eventually merit publication, it will be sent out for peer-review by at least two expert reviewers. 

We will ask reviewers to provide supportive and helpful review proposals. After completion of the peer-review, the handling editor will make a decision on the manuscript. This may be rejection, acceptance, or requests for a revision. In case of the latter, the improved manuscript after revision will be accepted, rejected, or send out for review again, if required. There may be the need for more than one revision. All editorial decisions are independent and final. 

The decision to accept or reject a manuscript will solely depend on its relevance, importance, originality, and clarity. 

All studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent of the participants, which must be documented in the submission. 

After publication, all articles will be added to appropriate reference databases, the list of databases and indexes as published and regularly updated on the Global Psychiatry Archives website. 

Plagiarism and misconduct

We will not tolerate plagiarism, double-publication, citation manipulation, data falsification, inappropriate author attribution or any other form of unethical research conduct. 

In case we detect or are made aware of any potential misconduct or falsification of data, at least two members of the editorial board will investigate these concerns and will invite the authors for clarifications. If the concerns cannot be sufficiently clarified, we will expect the authors to retract the paper. If they do not do this voluntarily, the editors will do this. 

The failure to declare any major conflict of interest by the authors, either financial, academic institutional, religious, political, or by personal relationship of any type will also lead to the rejection or withdrawal of the paper from the journal. Authors whose papers must be withdrawn, will not have their article-processing charge refunded. Submission of a paper to this journal indicates the author’s agreement with these procedures.

Review and revision process 

The reviewers will provide you with a numbered list of comments and proposals. For submission of a revised manuscript, please address each point and indicate how and where you amended the paper in response. This journal will perform single-blind reviews, meaning the authors are not made aware of the reviewers’ names or affiliations. The editors and publisher will protect the names and identities of the reviewers. For more information, please see the Guide for Reviewers section. 

Editorial style decisions (in alphabetical order)

Please make sure you write all aspects of your paper in British English as we publish from the UK. For example, use ise, ised, isation endings (not ize etc). This excludes organisations that take US spellings, e.g., World Health Organization.

We want GPA published medical papers to have consistency, not only in the high quality of research content, but also in how the papers are written and presented from an editorial point of view. Here are some common examples of wording/style preferences that have been flagged at the proofreading stage for authors to look out for. Please continue to refer to this list, which is regularly updated.

• Abbreviations and acronyms: spell out any abbreviations and acronyms at first mention and include the acronym in brackets afterwards, thereafter, use the acronym in copy.
• Age: use hyphen – 30-50 years old; a 35-year-old woman.
• Capitalisation: use Sentence case for all banner titles, menu titles, headings, subheads, clickthrough buttons, and other titles. It is easier to skim read lower case text. 
• Century: write out in full until 10, no numeral e.g., first and second centuries, rather than 1st or 2^nd, but 21st century.
• Citations:in-text citations – author (year) said… OR (author, year) for indirect citations. For 2: author & author (year) said … or (author & author, year)
• For more than 2 authors include 1 et al. (year). The same if repeated in the text.  
• Comorbidity
• Conscious language: be aware of changes in language usage which have been gathering pace over the last few years, e.g., humankind not mankind. Think about how you represent a people group and define them in writing. Avoid stereotyping e.g., the elderly, frail old man. If you are unsure, go to this incredible resource: https://consciousstyleguide.com/.
• Contractions: do not use contractions in scientific and academic reporting e.g., isn’t, wasn’t. Spell things out.
• Cut-off
• Dates: UK style: 1 January 2020. Do not use the superscript 1^st
• Email: not e-mail
• En dash and em dash: follow Guardian style for writing and use the spaced en dash to present extra/additional info that is part of a sentence, but not vital to the meaning. For more info, go to ‘dashes’ here: com/guardian-observer-style-guide-d
• Foreign words: include a brief explanation in brackets at first mention. 
• Fourfold
• Hyperintensity
• Hyphenation: dates: Use a hyphen for year dates spanning more than one year e.g., 2012-2015 and within words.
• Job titles: job titles are upper case when used alongside a name, official title, or job description, but lower case when describing a function e.g., the president said.
• Later-life
• Lifespan
• Medical conditions: do not capitalise disorders or medical conditions e.g., anxiety not Anxiety, depressive disorder not Depressive Disorder, but capitalise disease nouns e.g., Alzheimer’s disease.
• Numbers: use numerals not written out e.g., 29 years old, not twenty-nine years old. Numbers one to nine spelt out and numerals thereafter e.g., 10, 29, 31 etc.
• Obsessive-compulsive
• Preprocessing
• PubMed: use PubMed for references – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
• Quotation marks: use curly quote marks not straight e.g., “not". Use double quote marks for direct speech and single quotes for words within the quoted section. Use double quotes for words that aren’t actually quotations.
• References/endnotes: use PubMed style i.e., authors, title, journal year, citation. It is easier to cut and paste from PubMed. For articles/reports with lots of authors e.g., 20 authors, just take six and add et al. for the references. 
• Self-reporting
• Well-being
• Word-finding
• Use this dictionary for spellings: Oxford University Press: lexico.com

Research and Publication ethics most relevant to Author (For the complete Research and Rublication Ethics see Research and Publication Ethics link under About the Journal)  

Studies to be published by the Global Psychiatry Archives must follow the highest ethical standards as outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki and the following updates published by the World Health Organisation. All studies need a positive ethical approval of the local or national Ethics Committee following individual national guidelines. Authors must confirm the positive decision of the approving organisation and must provide the necessary documentation if requested by the journal.

Human Hazards and Animals

If the submitted paper involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

Animal research will only be accepted in exceptional cases. The author should contact the editor in chief for any potential submission. The highest standards for ethical research with animals that are available in the public domain at the time of submission will be the guide for the editors. Such papers and their potential publication will be discussed by at least three editors who have sufficient experience to deal with such requests.

Publication Ethics Policy follows the Committee on Publication Ethics Recommendations

For all parties involved in the act of publishing (the author, the journal editors, the peer reviewers, and the publisher) it is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behaviour. The ethics statements for Global Psychiatry Archives are based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (see https://publicationethics.org).

We will strictly abide by the review for publication ethics as recommended by the ‘COPE’ and remain transparent in acknowledging the source while publishing the information on a collaborative mode. Global Psychiatric Archives adheres to publication standards by honouring copyright laws. The journal will remain transparent and neutral to regions, religion, and should not discriminate based on the authors’ age, gender, race, or a person who may be physically challenged.

In case individual issues have not been covered to keep the provided information concise or because related events were unlikely to be relevant, we will apply the recommendations of COPE in its spirit.

 Specific Author's Responsibilities

Reporting standards

Authors reporting results of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the manuscript. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

Originality and plagiarism

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Multiple, redundant, or concurrent publication

An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. Global Psychiatry Archives will routinely check submitted articles for plagiarisms. 

Acknowledgement of sources

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Authorship of a manuscript

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be named in the acknowledgements section.

The corresponding author takes responsibility for the communication with the journal during submission, review and publication of the journal. He should ensure that all appropriate co-authors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the author list of the manuscript, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Editors are welcome to submit their papers. These will be assessed with the same scrutiny as all other papers. The criteria for acceptance will be based on scientific value of the papers only. The acceptance of the papers by other editors will be discussed between the handling editor and the editor in chief. The editor in chief takes the final responsibility for the quality of the publication.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editor or publisher and cooperate with them to either retract the paper or to publish an appropriate erratum.

Authors Verification Summary

Submitted manuscripts are the original work of the author(s), and that all contributing authors are listed and/or given credit. Manuscripts have not been published nor are under consideration by another journal concurrently. All sources of data used in the development of the manuscript are properly cited.

Publisher’s confirmation

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work.

Any further issues can be discussed and will be dealt with by the editor-in-chief with the support of the editorial board, as necessary.

PROCESS FOR HANDLING CORRECTIONS, RETRACTIONS, AND EDITORIAL EXPRESSIONS OF CONCERN

Should any paper need to be removed from a Journal that has already been published, that paper will be removed from the PDF version of the Journal in such a way that it does not change the page numbers of other papers published in that issue of the Journal. The authors of the removed manuscript may be subject to republication fees (if applicable). Corrected versions of the Journal will be made available on the Journal website, as well as all applicable indexes.

Corrections that need to be made to an already published Journal will be handled in such a way that it does not affect any of the other papers published in that issue. If the correction stems from author error, a republication fee may apply. Corrections due to publisher error will be handled without charge. Corrected versions of the Journal will be made available on the Journal website, as well as all applicable indexes.

Editorial concerns will be discussed within the editorial board and communicated with the authors of the paper of concern. In case the authors can address the concerns, the paper can be published. If not the editorial board (at least three members) will agree on a joint decision that will be communicated by the editor in chief.

Compliance with international guidance and recommendations 

Global Psychiatry Archives endeavours to comply with guidelines and best practices published by professional organizations, including Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA).

The guidance presented on our website are meant to be concise and cover the most essential issues. For further questions, new developments, e.g. artificial intelligence, and in case of ambiguities the above-mentioned international guidance and recommendations will be applied preferentially.