Submission Criteria

Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice is an interdisciplinary, peer reviewed, academic journal that is devoted to examining the intersection of psychology and criminal justice. Authors are invited to submit their work at any time throughout the year. All peer-reviewed articles must meet rigorous standards and can represent a broad range of substantive topics, theoretical orientations, empirical methods, and analytic strategies.

APCJ welcomes submissions that explore the social and psychological aspects of human behavior as related to applied societal and criminal justice settings. APCJ takes a broad and inclusive view of applied psychology and the study of criminal justice. Material that is unlikely to be published in APCJ includes opinion and editorial manuscripts, research that is not theoretically grounded, book reviews, articles that would be better fit a law review publication, and work outside the broadly defined purview of psychology and criminal justice.

Because APCJ is designed primarily as an e-journal to provide timely dissemination of important research, manuscripts must conform to particular guidelines. APCJ reserves the right to modify submissions to meet stylistic and editorial considerations; however, APCJ requires the author to retain responsibility for general copy editing, including proper grammar, style, and formatting. Authors are directed to the current APA Publication Manual for specific guidelines in manuscript preparation. Failure to conform to these guidelines may result in the editor returning the manuscript to you (without an external review).

General Information:

  1. Unless specifically exempted, authors may have one paper in the APCJ review process at a time. Once a terminal editorial decision on a paper has been made (i.e., Accept or Reject), then authors may submit another work. Submission of an article for peer-review implies a commitment on the part of the authors to publish in this journal if accepted. Thus, authors who submit articles to this journal should not simultaneously submit their manuscript to other outlets or journals. Questions may be directed to the Editor at the following address: editor@apcj.org.
  2. Format submissions in MSWord document format. Do not use styles or characters that will not properly translate to PDF conversion. After a thorough editing and final review of your manuscript, transmit the submission through the online form in the "Submit Article" section of this web site. All submissions will be peer reviewed in a timely and constructive manner. If an error occurs in this submission process, you may e-mail the editor at editor@apcj.org for instructions.
  3. Set up the page size for 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper size (US Letter) with 1-inch margins. All pages must be in portrait layout. Do not use a landscape layout for any pages. Also, do not use page breaks or section breaks to format the manuscript (i.e., let the pages break naturally).
  4. Endnotes/footnotes should be avoided if possible. When they are necessary, an endnote should be used. Do not, however, use the endnote/footnote function in MS-Word to produce them. Instead, they must be manually entered. The endnote number should be entered in the text in brackets (e.g., "[1]") following the passage to which the footnote corresponds. They should not be superscripted. The endnote is then entered in a section at the end of the paper, with the heading "ENDNOTES" (all capital letters).
  5. Double space all copy and carefully follow the guidelines established in the APA Publication Manual for organization, expression of ideas, grammar, editorial style, structure, and format.
  6. The References section must comply with APA guidelines in format, presentation, and content.
  7. Avoid the use of symbols and other special characters that do not convert to a PDF format. If in doubt, you may wish to convert your text prior to submission to ensure proper conversion is achieved; however, the submitted file should be in MS Word format.
  8. The prototypical APCJ manuscript is relatively short (3000 - 8000 words, excluding a 120-word abstract and references). Crisp, clear writing is the goal. Longer manuscripts are accepted but may result in a slightly longer review process. All manuscripts must reflect correct U.S. English grammar, syntax, and punctuation.
  9. Use active voice, rather than passive voice. For example, "A study was conducted" is passive voice. In contrast, "We conducted a study" is active voice. Active voice is generally easier to read and clearly distinguishes the work that the author completed from the work of other researchers cited in the paper.
  10. Tables can be created with the MS-Word table editor; again, the goal is to insure smooth conversion to a PDF format if the submission is accepted. Tables should be placed within the manuscript at the desire location; they should not be submitted separately.
  11. Figures should only be used if they add to the information in the paper. They should not be used if the information they contain is redundant with information reported in the text or tables. If figures are absolutely necessary, they must be prepared prepared in a manner that provides for easy PDF conversion and should be inserted into the manuscript at the location desired; however, the copy editors may find it necessary to make adjustments for form and format. The figures should not incorporate color.
  12. If analysis of variance or regression methods are used in the analysis, a correlation matrix should generally be provided (as an appendix) that includes all variables in the analyses. The matrix must be prepared as a table and should also include variable means and standard deviations.
  13. If new scales are introduced in the paper (e.g., personality, emotion, cognition), then the complete scales should be included in an appendix to the paper.
  14. The title page should include the complete contact information for all authors and a list of 3-6 "key words" that best describe the content of the submission.
  15. The contribution of the author(s) should be completely original; it should not violate any existing copyright, and should contain nothing of a libelous or scandalous character. Permission from the copyright owner should be included as appropriate for use of any quotes or figures previously published elsewhere.
  16. The copyright of all published material, including printed, electronic and other publication formats, will be held by APCJ. Contributors will be asked to sign a copyright declaration form when their paper is accepted for publication.