Publication Guide
The American Psychological Association is the definitive scholarly society for psychology. Founded in 1892 at Clark University and headquartered in Washington, DC, the APA today counts over 190,000 members and runs one of the most influential society publishing programs in the social sciences: roughly 90 peer-reviewed journals, the APA Books program, and the PsycInfo bibliographic database. If you work anywhere in psychology or behavioral science - clinical, social, cognitive, developmental, industrial-organizational, health, neuroscience - the field-defining journal in your subfield is very likely an APA title.
APA journals are selective, methodologically rigorous, and edited by leading academics in each subfield. Most operate on a subscription model with no fee to publish, offer a hybrid open-access option, and use masked (double-anonymized) peer review. This guide covers how to pick the right APA journal, what open access costs, how peer review works, and how to submit.
Which APA journal fits your paper?
APA's portfolio is organized by subfield and article type. Use the routes below to shortlist a venue before you read individual author guidelines.
| You're most likely to... | Choose this route |
|---|---|
| Have a broad-interest paper or policy piece relevant to all of psychology | American Psychologist - the APA's flagship; publishes high-impact papers of general relevance, not routine empirical reports. |
| Have a systematic review or meta-analysis | Psychological Bulletin - the field's premier venue for integrative research syntheses. |
| Have a new theory or formal model | Psychological Review - theory-first; empirical data serve the theoretical contribution. |
| Have empirical social/personality research | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - the top empirical outlet in social and personality psychology. |
| Have workplace or organizational research | Journal of Applied Psychology - the leading I-O psychology journal. |
| Have experimental cognitive or behavioral work | The Journal of Experimental Psychology series (General, LMC, HPP, Applied, Animal Learning and Cognition). |
| Need a Gold open-access venue | APA Open journals such as Technology, Mind, and Behavior - fully OA with an APC around $1,800. |
What the APA actually publishes
- ~90 peer-reviewed journals spanning every subfield of psychology: clinical, counseling, developmental, social, cognitive, experimental, health, neuroscience, law, and applied practice. Flagships include American Psychologist, Psychological Bulletin, Psychological Review, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- APA Books - scholarly and professional monographs, handbooks, and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition), the source of APA Style.
- Databases - PsycInfo, PsycArticles, and PsycTests, delivered through the APA PsycNet platform.
Note that the American Psychological Association is distinct from the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the American Journal of Psychiatry and the DSM - the two societies share the "APA" abbreviation but are separate organizations.
Open access and APCs
Most APA journals are subscription-based, so publishing costs nothing unless you choose open access. Three routes:
| OA route | Cost | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid OA (subscription journals) | ~$3,500 | Available on most APA subscription titles; default license CC BY-NC-ND, with CC BY available to meet funder mandates. |
| Gold OA (APA Open) | ~$1,800 | Fully-OA journals on the APA Open platform (built with PubPub), e.g. Technology, Mind, and Behavior. |
| Green OA (self-archiving) | $0 | Authors may post the accepted manuscript to personal sites, institutional repositories, and preprint servers such as PsyArXiv, with the required copyright notice and a link to the published article. |
APC waivers are available on request, and read-and-publish agreements with Jisc (UK) and CAUL (Australia/New Zealand) let authors at participating institutions publish hybrid OA at no personal cost. For NIH-funded work, APA deposits the accepted manuscript in PubMed Central on the author's behalf; UKRI, Wellcome, and NIHR-funded authors can share the accepted manuscript under CC BY. APA revises fees periodically - check the current price list before submission.
Peer review process
- Default model: masked (double-anonymized) review at most APA journals - prepare a blinded manuscript with identifying information removed.
- Editorial standard: action editors are active researchers; most empirical titles use two or more external reviewers per round.
- Turnaround: varies by title; flagship review journals such as Psychological Bulletin can take several months to first decision, while more specialized empirical titles are typically faster. Check each journal's page for current estimates.
How to submit
- Pick the journal. Match your article type (empirical report, review, theory, brief report) to the journal's scope statement.
- Read the journal's submission guidelines. Every APA journal has title-specific instructions on apa.org.
- Format in APA Style (7th edition). Use the SciSpace template for your target journal to handle references, headings, and tables automatically.
- Prepare a masked manuscript. Remove author-identifying information for double-anonymized review.
- Submit via the journal's portal. Most APA journals use Editorial Manager; the journal page links to the correct system.
Ethics and integrity
The APA is a member of COPE, OASPA, and STM. Its journals follow the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct plus COPE guidance on authorship, plagiarism, and retractions. Many titles encourage or require data-sharing statements, and the APA supports open-science practices including preregistration badges on participating journals.
