Instructions for Authors

Types of Papers

Nigerian Psychological Research accepts the following types of submissions:

Original article: Quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods studies are accepted. All manuscripts should contain abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusions.. Reported statistics must follow the 7th edition of APA style. We also encourage authors to present, if applicable, sample size calculation, analysis of the statistical power for the proposed analyzes and samples, effect size, exact p-value and 95% confidence interval when appropriate. For experimental designs and randomized control trials, we also recommend preregistration of the research plan in advance.

Review article: The journal accepts both systematic reviews and scoping reviews with or without meta-analysis. Systematic reviews should be in conformity with PRISMA and scoping reviews with PRISMA-ScR. We recommend systematic reviews to be preregistered.

Theoretical article: Original or historical analysis seeking critical reflections or theoretical refinements.

Original, Review and Theoretical articles should not exceed 10,000 words (excluding the abstract, reference list, tables and figures). In exceptional cases the editorial board could accept to publish articles beyond this length. In such cases, authors must state their reasons in the cover letter. The journal also accepts manuscripts that are already published as preprints, however, this fact needs to be notified to the editorial board in the cover letter.

Authors are required to pay a fee to publish in Nigerian Psychological Research because we publish with Open Access. Ethical procedures in research with humans or animals, data sharing and availability, and definition of the role of authors and contributors must be in accordance with International standards.

Manuscript Submission

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” on the right and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen. Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files. Failing to submit these source files might cause unnecessary delays in the review and production process.

Title Page

Please make sure your title page contains the following information.

Title

The title should be concise and informative.

Author information

The name(s) of the author(s)

The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country

A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author

If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)

If address information is provided with the affiliation(s) it will also be published. For authors that are (temporarily) unaffiliated we will only capture their city and country of residence, not their e-mail address unless specifically requested.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references. Please note: For some articles (particularly, systematic reviews and original research articles), 250 words may not be sufficient to provide all necessary information in the abstract. Therefore, the abstract length can be increased from the 250-word limit (to up to 450 words) if the topic dictates, and to allow full compliance with the relevant reporting guidelines.

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

Acknowledgements

An Acknowledgment section may be included to acknowledge, for example, people who have assisted with aspects of the work (but who do not qualify as authors), disclaimers, collaborations, etc.

Statements and Declarations

The following statements should be included under the heading “Statements and Declarations” for inclusion in the published paper. Please note that submissions that do not include relevant declarations will be returned as incomplete.

Competing Interests: Authors are required to disclose financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Please refer to “Competing Interests and Funding” below for more information on how to complete this section.

Text

Text Formatting

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.

Use italics for emphasis.

Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.

Do not use field functions.

Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.

Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.

Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.

Save your file in docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

Headings

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

References

Citation

Cite references in the text by name and year in parentheses. Some examples:

Negotiation research spans many disciplines (Nwankwo, 1990).

This result was later contradicted by Balogun and Afolabi (1996).

This effect has been widely studied (Abbott, 1991; Barakat et al., 1995; Kelso & Smith, 1998; Medvec et al., 1999).

Authors are encouraged to follow official APA version 7 guidelines on the number of authors included in reference list entries (i.e., include all authors up to 20; for larger groups, give the first 19 names followed by an ellipsis and the final author’s name). However, if authors shorten the author group by using et al., this will be retained.

Reference list

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text.

Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last names of the first author of each work.

Journal names and book titles should be italicized.

If available, please always include DOIs as full DOI links in your reference list (e.g. “https://doi.org/abc”).

Journal article Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185 

Article by DOI Hong, I., Knox, S., Pryor, L., Mroz, T. M., Graham, J., Shields, M. F., & Reistetter, T. A. (2020). Is referral to home health rehabilitation following inpatient rehabilitation facility associated with 90-day hospital readmission for adult patients with stroke? American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1097/PHM.0000000000001435

Book Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books.

Book chapter Dillard, J. P. (2020). Currents in the study of persuasion. In M. B. Oliver, A. A. Raney, & J. Bryant (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (4th ed., pp. 115–129). Routledge.

Online document Fagan, J. (2019, March 25). Nursing clinical brain. OER Commons. Retrieved January 7, 2020, from https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/53029-nursing-clinical-brain/view

Tables

All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.

Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order. 

For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.

Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.

Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Supplementary Information (SI)

NPR accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. This feature can add dimension to the author’s article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form. Before submitting research datasets as Supplementary Information, authors should read the journal’s Research data policy. We encourage research data to be archived in data repositories wherever possible.

After Acceptance

Upon acceptance, your article will be exported to Production to undergo typesetting. Once typesetting is complete, you will receive a link asking you to confirm your affiliation, choose the publishing model for your article as well as arrange rights and payment of any associated publication cost. Once you have completed this, your article will be processed and you will receive the proofs.

Article publishing agreement

The author grants the Publisher an exclusive licence to publish the article or will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the Publisher.

Offprints

Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

Color illustrations

Publication of color illustrations is free of charge.

Proof reading

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Online First

The article will be published online only after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After download of the published online version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.

Benefits:

Increased researcher engagement: Open Choice enables access by anyone with an internet connection, immediately on publication. 

Higher visibility and impact: In Springer hybrid journals, OA articles are accessed 4 times more often on average, and cited 1.7 more times on average*.

Easy compliance with funder and institutional mandates: Many funders require open access publishing, and some take compliance into account when assessing future grant applications.

It is easy to find funding to support open access – please see our funding and support pages for more information.

Copyright and license term – CC BY

Open Choice articles do not require transfer of copyright as the copyright remains with the author. In opting for open access, the author(s) agree to publish the article under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

Research Data Policy and Data Availability Statements

This journal operates a type 3 research data policy. Authors publishing in this journal must provide a data availability statement as part of their articles. Authors are encouraged to share their data or other materials underpinning their study, but are not required to do so. Editorial decisions on the acceptance and publication of submitted articles will not be affected by whether or not authors share their research data.

Data availability statements

The journal requires authors to include a data availability statement as part of their article. If no data was generated or analysed, a statement to that effect should be included. For the purposes of the data availability statement, “data” refers to any of the materials or sources that were used as inputs to your study, or were generated as outputs: they may include text extracts or images, maps, archival documents, photographs, audio or film recordings, field notes, spreadsheets, interview notes, or other material. The inclusion of a data availability statement will be verified as a condition of publication. Data availability statements should include information on where data associated with the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Where research data are not publicly available, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, this must be stated in the data availability statement along with any conditions for accessing the data. 

Data sharing

The journal does not require that research data are shared in a repository, although authors are recommended to do so if possible.In particular, the journal does not require public sharing of quantitative or qualitative data that could identify a research participant unless participants have consented to data release. Additionally the journal does not require public sharing of other sensitive data, such as the locations of archaeologically sensitive areas. If authors would like to share sensitive or personal data, recommended methods include:

Deposition of research data in controlled access repositories

Anonymisation or deidentification of data before public sharing

Only sharing metadata about the research data

Stating the procedures for accessing your research data in your article and managing data access requests from other researchers

Supplementary materials

We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate). Sharing research data as supplementary information files with a journal article is discouraged.

Data citation

The journal encourages authors to cite any publicly available research data in their reference list as well as the data availability statement. References to datasets (data citations) must include a persistent identifier (such as a DOIs, Handles, ARKs, or archival accession codes) where available. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite (Dataset Creator, Dataset Title, Publisher [repository], Publication Year, Identifier [e.g. DOI, Handle or ARK]) and should follow journal style.

Data licensing

The journal encourages research data to be made available under open licences that permit reuse. The journal does not enforce particular licences for research data when research data are deposited in third party repositories. The publisher of the journal does not claim copyright in research data. If you are using data owned by a third party it may not be possible for you to apply a particular licence to the dataset. Please check the licensing terms for materials you are reusing, for example if they are sourced from library, archives or museum collections.