Publication Guide
The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) is the scholarly home of personality and social psychology. Founded in 1974 and based in Washington, DC, it reports over 7,500 members worldwide, runs the field's largest annual convention, and also operates as Division 8 of the American Psychological Association. Unlike a commercial publisher, SPSP owns a small, tightly focused journal program: three society journals, published on its behalf by Sage.
That structure matters when you submit. Editorial control - scope, editors, review standards - sits with SPSP and its appointed editorial teams. Production, hosting, pricing, open-access options and the submission platform come from Sage. So the author experience looks like a Sage journal, while the acceptance bar is set by the society's field norms. This guide covers which SPSP journal fits your paper, what open access costs, how peer review runs, and how to submit.
Which SPSP journal fits your paper?
The three journals divide the field by article type rather than by topic - all of them cover the full breadth of personality and social psychology.
| If your paper is... | Submit to |
|---|---|
| A full-length empirical report with multiple studies | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB) - the society's monthly empirical outlet, founded 1974, and the highest-volume of the three. |
| A theoretical contribution, integrative model or conceptual review | Personality and Social Psychology Review (PSPR) - quarterly, the field's premier review and theory venue and typically its highest-impact title. |
| A concise empirical report, ideally under about 5,000 words | Social Psychological and Personality Science (SPPS) - a short-reports journal published eight times a year in partnership with several societies. |
| A methods, applied or commentary paper you want free to read and free to publish | Personality Science - an affiliated multi-society, diamond open-access journal with no article processing charges. |
What SPSP actually publishes
- Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB) - monthly; original empirical papers across all areas of personality and social psychology, including registered reports and multi-study packages.
- Personality and Social Psychology Review (PSPR) - quarterly; original theoretical papers, meta-analyses and conceptual review articles. Highly selective, and the society's highest-cited journal.
- Social Psychological and Personality Science (SPPS) - eight issues a year; brief empirical reports, run as a collaboration among multiple partner societies.
- Personality Science - an affiliated open-access journal in which SPSP participates as part of a multi-society partnership; it charges no APCs and sits outside the core three.
SPSP also publishes Character and Context, its public-facing blog, and runs Preconference and Convention programming - neither is a peer-reviewed venue and neither should be cited as one.
Open access and APCs
All three society journals are hybrid: the default route is subscription publishing at no cost to the author, with an optional open-access route (Sage Choice) for a fee. Sage revises its prices annually and applies taxes by region, so treat the figures below as an order of magnitude and confirm on the journal's own Sage fee page before you submit.
| Route | Typical cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription (default) | $0 | No publication charge for standard articles in PSPB, PSPR or SPPS. |
| Hybrid OA (Sage Choice) | ~$3,000+ per article | Optional; article published CC BY by default. Check the current per-journal price. |
| Transformative agreement | $0 to the author | Sage Read & Publish deals cover corresponding authors at many institutions - check ESAC or your library. |
| Green self-archiving | $0 | Permitted under Sage's archiving policy; embargo and permitted version vary by journal. |
| Personality Science | $0 | Diamond OA - free to read and free to publish. |
Optional extras such as colour figures or open practice materials may carry separate charges; confirm at acceptance.
Peer review
SPSP journals use double-anonymized peer review: reviewers do not see author identities, and authors do not see reviewer identities. Prepare a blinded manuscript with a separate title page, and strip identifying information from file properties and from self-citations in the text.
The field's open-science norms are strong and increasingly enforced. Expect editors to ask for data, code and materials statements, and to look for preregistration where the design supports it. Registered Reports are accepted at PSPB. Typical time to first decision runs roughly one to three months, with SPPS usually fastest given its short-report format.
How to submit
- Pick the journal using the article-type table above - the most common desk-reject reason is submitting a review to PSPB or a full-length package to SPPS.
- Read the journal's Submission Guidelines on Sage Journals; each of the three has its own word limits and supplementary-material rules.
- Format in APA style (7th edition) - the field standard for headings, statistics, tables and references. SciSpace templates handle the layout.
- Prepare an anonymized manuscript plus a separate title page and any open-practice statements.
- Submit via ScholarOne Manuscripts (Sage Track), the platform Sage runs for these journals. Track status, revisions and reviewer correspondence there.
Ethics and integrity
SPSP maintains its own data-integrity and publication-ethics policies, and its journals follow COPE guidance on authorship, corrections and retractions through Sage. Given the field's replication history, editors pay close attention to statistical reporting, sample-size justification and the availability of materials. Undisclosed duplicate submission, salami-slicing of a single dataset across papers, and undisclosed use of generative AI in writing or analysis are all handled as ethics matters rather than editorial preferences.
