Psychology of Language and Communication

Article Processing Charge (APC)

The journal does not have article processing charges (APCs) nor article submission charges.

Volume Open Publishing

Psychology of Language and Communication publishes in the Volume Open mode. A new, single Volume Open is opened at the beginning of each calendar year. Articles accepted for publication are continuously published in the yearly Volume Open, at a pace of about 1-2 articles per month.

Author Guidelines of Psychology of Language and Communication

Please read the following instructions before submitting your manuscript. Psychology of Language and Communication reserves the right to reject manuscripts, which are not formatted in accordance with the guidelines below.

Submission and publication of manuscripts in the Psychology of Language and Communication is free of charge and follows the Diamond Open Access model.

Article types

We accept the following types of submissions:

• Full-length empirical articles
• Replication studies and reports of null findings
• Short research reports
• Literature reviews or theoretical contributions

Preprints

• Psychology of Language and Communication allows and encourages authors to upload preprints of their submissions to appropriate websites such as PsyArXiv. Please note that, if accepted for publication, the submission in PLC will have a different DOI number than the preprint.

Submitting manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted using the Editorial System.
If you do not have an account yet, please register at www.editorialsystem.com/plc/register
If you are already registered, you can login at www.editorialsystem.com/plc/login/
After logging into the system, in order to send your submission to the editorial office, click the "Submit new article" button available at the top of the section "Your articles". Later, you can use your account to track the progress of your submission.

Manuscript language

Manuscripts should be written in legible, academic English. The Psychology of Language and Communication reserves the right to reject manuscripts written in languages other than English, as well as manuscripts that demonstrate a poor level of written English. The Psychology of Language and Communication offers in-house English editing and proofreading services only for manuscripts that have been accepted for publication (see below).

Manuscript length

• Full-length empirical articles or reviews should have a maximum length of 10,000 words including notes (excluding the abstract, tables, figures, and references).
• Short research reports should have a maximum length of 5,000 words (excluding the abstract, tables, and figures) and up to 40 references.

General manuscript formatting

Manuscripts should be prepared in .doc, .docx or related formats, using a 12-point size, double-spaced, common, neutral font (e.g., Times New Roman). Pages should be A4 in size, and the text should be clearly divided into paragraphs, sections, and subsections.

Submissions should follow the style and referencing system recommended in the Seventh Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association both in the main text, as well as in figure and table formatting and the end reference list.

The main manuscript file should contain (in this order):

• The title (without author information, see blind peer-review below)
• An abstract of a maximum of 150 words, concisely describing the research problem, methodology, and main results of the study
• 5-7 keywords
• Manuscript body
• References
• (Appendices and supplementary information if necessary)

All identifying information (authors, affiliations, references to own work etc.) should be blinded in the manuscript for the purposes of reviews. After the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors will be asked to fill in this information.

Figures and tables

Figures (photographs, drawings, diagrams) should be numbered consecutively in the text. Figures and figure captions should be embedded in the manuscript, not placed at the end of the manuscript. Figure captions should contain the description of the figure as well as explanations for all abbreviations used in the figure in order to make it legible on its own. Photographs should be large prints with high contrast. Graphs and diagrams should be large enough to allow reduction to 10cm x 10cm.

Tables should be numbered and referred to by number in the text. Table captions should contain explanations for all abbreviations used in the table in order to make it legible on its own.

Figures and tables should be in their final, ready-to-publish version.

The authors are responsible for acquiring the rights to tables, figures, illustrations, and quotes from other publications (text, tables, figures, illustrations).

Please note that figures in color are free.

Appendices and supplementary materials

We encourage authors to share their materials, data, and analysis code on publicly available databases or as supplementary materials to be included as an appendix to the article published on the website.

Ethical practices

When submitting your manuscript to PLC, you will be asked to declare that (a) the manuscript constitutes your original work which (b) has not been published or accepted for publication (c) nor is it currently being considered for publication in another outlet.

During the submission process, you will be asked to provide statements and/or information regarding:

• Authorship and authors’ contributions to the study and manuscript (the submitting/corresponding author takes responsibility for the accurate and mutually agreed-upon declaration of authorship).
• Acknowledgments (if applicable).
• Conflicts of interest.
• Funding sources, including grant numbers, names of the awarding organizations, identification of the author to whom the grant was awarded.
• Research ethics statement, which (a) states whether institutional ethical approval has been granted to the study and either identifies the approving institution or provides an explanation as to why it was not obtained, (b) declares concordance with official research ethics guidelines (e.g.,the Declaration of Helsinki, the APA Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct, etc.), and (c) specifies whether and how informed consent was obtained from the participants.

In cases where ethical approval and/or participant informed consent was not required for the study, you will be asked to provide an appropriate explanation.

Psychology of Language and Communication invites authors to make their study data available. Data availability statements, including links to publicly accessible repositories, should be included in the “Acknowledgments” section.

Plagiarism, data manipulation (including fabrication of data), ghostwriting, guest authorship, and manipulations of the review process (e.g., through inappropriate or fraudulent reviewer suggestions) are a violation of academic integrity. It is the responsibility of the author to provide information about all persons contributing to the publication, all sources of funding, and all conflicts of interest.

In case any such ethical misconduct on the part of any of the authors, managing editors, or reviewers is suspected or detected, the processing of the manuscript will be halted and the editorial board will follow the COPE guidelines in order to resolve the issue. Read the COPE guidelines here: publicationethics.org/files/Systematic_manipulation_of_the_publication_process.pdf

We also encourage authors to consult the COPE guidelines if necessary to resolve authorship issues (changing authors, changing authors’ contributions).

Review and manuscript processing

After a preliminary assessment by a member of the Editorial Board who checks whether the article meets the above guidelines and represents a topic suitable for the journal’s thematic scope, all submissions are assigned a Managing Editor and are sent out for a thorough evaluation to a minimum of two reviewers in a double-blind review process (i.e., the identities of authors and reviewers are not revealed). The reviewers are recognized experts in the field.

Where possible, we aim to get a decision to authors in six weeks. The Managing Editors have a possibility to evaluate reviewers through the Editorial System. The Managing Editors issue a decision. The types of decisions are:

• Accept as is
• Resubmit with Minor Revisions
• Resubmit with Major Revisions
• Reject and Resubmit
• Reject
• Desk Reject (in case of manuscripts out of the thematic scope of the journal or below the publishing standards of the journal).

After acceptance for publication, the manuscript is subjected to in-house language editing and typesetting. The corresponding author will then receive the manuscript proofs for acceptance. After acceptance, the manuscript will be converted into the final PDF version. The PDF will also be sent to the corresponding author for acceptance.

Copyright

This journal provides immediate open access to its content under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY NC ND 4.0 license.

Open Access Statement

The journal is an Open Access journal that allows a free unlimited access to all its contents without any restrictions upon publication to all users.

Why is my accepted article not online yet?

There may occur delays between the authors having their submission accepted for publication and having the article published on the PLC website. Nevertheless, the decision to accept the submission for publication remains binding.

Why the delay?

Psychology of Language and Communication publishes yearly open volumes. At the beginning of each calendar year, a new yearly open volume is initiated and articles are published continuously throughout the year, at an estimated pace of 1-2 articles per calendar month, resulting in a ratio of about 20 articles per calendar year. Submissions accepted for publication towards the end of the calendar year may thus be published in the upcoming year. This is done to ensure a consistent and reliable publishing schedule that at once meets the criteria of bibliographic indexing databases and is sustainable for our Editorial Board.

In cases where the authors are required to report, register, or disclose their article as soon as possible after acceptance for publication (e.g., for academic evaluation), a PDF, screenshot, or printout of the automated email confirming the acceptance of the submission should be sufficient.