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Submissions should be made electronically through this website.
Once a submission has been completed, the submitting author is able to fully track the status of the paper and complete requested revisions via their online profile.
Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay the processing of your submission.
Note that word limits are meant as guidelines and some flexibility is permitted. All word limits include referencing and citation.
Title page
Authors choose whether they want to be anonymous during peer review or not. Authors who want to ensure blind peer review should be careful to only list the title and abstract on the submitted manuscript file, not the author names, and to redact any other details within the manuscript that might reasonably lead to identification.
Note: Blind peer review is not mandatory: authors are responsible for anonymising their own manuscript. If your manuscript includes identifying information, we will assume that you have chosen to identify yourself to peer reviewers.
If the submission is not blinded, then author name(s), affiliation and contact details should be added to the title page.
Abstract
Research articles must have the main text prefaced by an abstract of no more than 250 words summarising the main arguments and conclusions of the article. This must have the heading ‘Abstract’ and be easily identified from the start of the main text.
A list of up to six key words may be placed below the abstract (optional).
The Abstract and Keywords should also be added to the metadata when making the initial online submission.
Main text
The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy to follow manner. A clear introduction section should be given that allows non-specialists in the subject an understanding of the publication and a background of the issue(s) involved. Methods, results, discussion and conclusion sections may then follow to clearly detail the information and research being presented.
Up to three level headings may be present and must be clearly identifiable using different font sizes, bold or italics. Please follow the APA guidelines for choosing heading levels and style.
Supplementary Files (optional)
Any supplementary/additional files that should link to the main publication must be listed, with a corresponding number, title and option description. Ideally the supplementary files are also cited in the main text.
e.g. Supplementary file 1: Appendix. Scientific data related to the experiments.
Note: additional files will not be typeset so must be provided in their final form. They will be assigned a DOI and linked to from the publication.
Data Accessibility Statement (if applicable)
Data Reports and Research Articles, along with any other submission that include the usage of data must include a statement providing a permanent link to a publicly-available data repository, or provide a statement to explain why the data cannot be made available (for example legal or ethical contraints). It is a mandatory requirement to make the data public unless it is impossible to do so.
Please provide a summary of information, along with a DOI that links to the deposited data.
Ethics and consent
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee and the authors should include a statement detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval. The identity of the research subject(s) must be anonymised whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian). A consent statement must be provided within the publication.
Experiments using animals must follow national standards of care. For further information, click here.
If ethical approval and/or consent was not required, please add such information to this section.
Acknowledgements (optional)
Any acknowledgements must be headed and in a separate paragraph, placed after the main text but before the reference list.
Funding Information (optional)
Should the research have received a funding grant then the grant provider and grant number should be detailed.
Competing interests
If any of the authors have any competing interests then these must be declared. A short paragraph should be placed before the references. Guidelines for competing interests can be found here. If there are no competing interests to declare then the following statement should be present: The author(s) has/have no competing interests to declare.
Authors' contributions (recommended)
A sentence or a short paragraph detailing the roles that each author held to contribute to the authorship of the submission.
References
All references cited within the submission must be listed at the end of the main text file.
The author is responsible for obtaining all permissions required prior to submission of the manuscript. Permission and owner details should be mentioned for all third-party content included in the submission or used in the research.
If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, it is the author's responsibility to check the license and obtain the necessary permissions. Statements confirming that permission was granted should be included in the Materials and Methods section.
Capitalisation
For the submission title:
Capitalise all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and subordinate conjunctions (i.e. as, because, although). Use lowercase for all articles, coordinate conjunctions and prepositions.
Headings within the main text:
First level headings in the text should follow the same rule as the main title.
For lower-level subheadings, only capitalise first letter and proper nouns.
Headings should be under 75 characters.
Spelling
Submissions must be made in English. Authors are welcome to use American or British spellings as long as they are used consistently throughout the whole of the submission.
When referring to proper nouns and normal institutional titles, the official, original spelling must be used.
Grammar
American or English grammar rules may be used as long as they are used consistently and match the spelling format (see above). For instance, you may use a serial comma or not.
Font
The font used should be commonly available and in an easily readable size. This may be changed during the typesetting process.
Underlined text should be avoided whenever possible.
Bold or italicised text to emphasise a point are permitted, although should be restricted to minimal occurrences to maximise their efficiency.
Lists
Use bullet points to denote a list without hierarchy or order of value. If the list indicates a specific sequence then a numbered list must be used.
Lists should be used sparingly to maximise their impact.
Quotation marks
Use single quotation marks except for quotes within another speech, in which case double quotation marks are used.
Quotations that are longer than three lines in length must be in an indented paragraph separate from the main text.
The standard, non-italicised font must be used for all quotes.
It must be clear from the text and/or citation where the quote is sourced. If quoting from material that is under copyright then permission will need to be obtained from the copyright holder.
Acronyms & Abbreviations
With abbreviations, the crucial goal is to ensure that the reader – particularly one who may not be fully familiar with the topic or context being addressed – is able to follow along. Spell out almost all acronyms on first use, indicating the acronym in parentheses immediately thereafter. Use the acronym for all subsequent references.
A number of abbreviations are so common that they do not require the full text on the first instance. Examples of these can be found here.
Abbreviations should usually be in capital letters without full stops.
Common examples from Latin origin do not follow this rule and should be lower case and can include full stops.
Use of footnotes/endnotes
Use endnotes rather than footnotes (we refer to these as ‘Notes’ in the online publication). These will appear at the end of the main text, before ‘References’.
All notes should be used only where crucial clarifying information needs to be conveyed.
Avoid using notes for purposes of referencing, with in-text citations used instead. If in-text citations cannot be used, a source can be cited as part of a note.
Please insert the endnote marker after the end punctuation.
Symbols
Symbols are permitted within the main text and datasets as long as they are commonly in use or have explanatory definition on their first usage.
Hyphenation, em and en dashes
There is no set rule on the use of hyphenation between words, as long as they are consistently used.
Em dashes should be used sparingly. If they are present, they should denote emphasis, change of thought or interruption to the main sentence and can replace comas, parentheses, colons or semicolons.
En dashes can be used to replace ‘to’ when indicating a range. No space should surround the dash.
Numbers
For numbers zero to nine please spell the whole words. Please use figures for numbers 10 or higher.
We are happy for authors to use either words or figures to represent large whole figures (i.e. one million or 1,000,000) as long as the usage is consistent throughout the text.
If the sentence includes a series of numbers then figures must be used in each instance.
If the number appears as part of a dataset, in conjunction with a symbol or as part of a table then the figure must be used.
If a sentence starts with a number it must be spelt, or the sentence should be re-written so that it no longer starts with the number.
Do not use a comma for a decimal place.
Numbers that are less than zero must have ‘0’ precede the decimal point.
Units of measurement
Symbols following a figure to denote a unit of measurement must be taken from the latest SI brochure. See http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf for the full brochure.
Formula
Formulae must be proofed carefully by the author. Editors will not edit formulae. If special software has been used to create formulae, the way it is laid out is the way they will appear in the publication.
Figures
Figures, including graphs and diagrams, must be professionally and clearly presented. If a figure is not easy to understand or does not appear to be of a suitable quality, the editor may ask to re-render or omit it.
All figures must be cited within the main text, in consecutive order using Arabic numerals (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.).
Each figure must have an accompanying descriptive main title. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the figure image. A short additional figure legend is optional to offer a further description.
Figure titles and legends should be placed within the text document, either after the paragraph of their first citation, or as a list after the references.
The source of the image should be included, along with any relevant copyright information and a statement of authorisation (if needed).
If your figure file includes text then please present the font as Ariel, Helvetica, or Verdana. This will mean that it matches the typeset text.
NOTE: All figures must be uploaded separately as supplementary files during the submission process, if possible in colour and at a resolution of at least 300dpi. Each file should not be more than 20MB. Standard formats accepted are: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS. For line drawings, please provide the original vector file (e.g. .ai, or .eps).
Tables
Tables must be created using a word processor's table function, not tabbed text.
Tables should be included in the manuscript. The final layout will place the tables as close to their first citation as possible.
All tables must be cited within the main text, numbered with Arabic numerals in consecutive order (e.g. Table 1, Table 2, etc.). The table number should appear (in plain text) above the table.
Each table must have an accompanying descriptive title. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the table. The title (in italics and title case) must be placed immediately below the table number.
Notes or a short additional table legend is optional to offer a further description of the table. These must be placed underneath the table.
Tables should not include:
NOTE: If there are more columns than can fit on a single page, then the table will be placed horizontally on the page. If it still can't fit horizontally on a page, the table will be broken into two.
The journal permits audio and/or visual material to be included within submitted papers. These may be linked to a publication for download, or available to stream directly from the publication. If you would like to stream audio/visual elements within your submission, please contact the editorial team to assertain the suitability of the material and specifications required for the submitted files
In the interests of open scholarship and the reproducibility of results, Journal of Cognition asks all authors to deposit the data relating to their publication in an open preservation repository, which is then described and linked to from manuscript. If there are legal or ethical reasons why this cannot be completed then the submission must justify their ommission. The journal has no preference on which repository is used, as long as it is suitable to the data and provides long term preservation and a DOI along with the citation. This could be an open repository, such as Figshare, or Dataverse, or your institutional repository.
We ask that the version of data described in your paper, if applicable, is available in a repository that satisfies the criteria below:
Details concerning the summary and availability of data (or lack of availability) must be added to the 'Data Accessibility Statement' section of the submission, which should be placed prior to the reference list. This should include the DOI linking to the repository
If you would like more information on this subject, please contact us.
In-text citations
Every use of information from other sources must be cited in the text so that it is clear that external material has been used.
If the author is already mentioned in the main text then the year should follow the name within parenthesis.
If the author name is not mentioned in the main text then the surname and year should be inserted, in parenthesis, after the relevant text. Multiple citations should be separated by semi-colon and follow alphabetical order.
If three or fewer authors are cited from the same citation then all should be listed. If four or more authors are part of the citation then ‘et al.’ should follow the first author name.
If citations are used from the same author and the same year, then a lowercase letter, starting from ‘a’, should be placed after the year.
If specific pages are being cited then the page number should follow the year, after a colon.
For publications authored and published by organisations, use the short form of the organisation’s name or its acronym in lieu of the full name.
Please do not include URLs in parenthetical citations, but rather cite the author or page title and include all details, including the URL, in the reference list.
Reference list
All citations must be listed at the end of the text file, in alphabetical order of authors’ surnames.
All reading materials should be included in ‘References’ – works which have not been cited within the main text, but which the author wishes to share with the reader, must be cited as additional information in endnotes explaining the relevance of the work. This will ensure that all works within the reference list are cited within the text.
NOTE: If multiple works by the same author are being listed, please re-type the author’s name out for each entry, rather than using a long dash.
NOTE: DOIs should be included for all reference entries, where possible.
Reference format
This journal uses the APA system – see below for examples of how to format:
Author, A. A. (year). Title of work. Location: Publisher. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxxxxxxx
Leaver, B. L., Ehrman, M., & Shekhtman, B. (2005). Achieving success in second language acquisition. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511610431
Jacobs, G. M., & Hall, S. (2002). Implementing cooperative learning. In J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 52-58). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667190.009
NOTE: If multiple works by the same author are being listed, please re-type the author’s name out for each entry, rather than using a long dash.
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (year). Article title. Journal Title, volume number(issue number), page numbers. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxxxxxxx
Radford, M. (2001). Aesthetic and religious awareness among pupils: Similarities and differences. British Journal of Music Education, 18(2), 151-159. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0265051701000249
NOTE: Please include DOIs for all journal articles where possible.
Author, A. (year, date). Article title. Newspaper. Retrieved from www.URL
McMahon, S. (2010, July 19). Fund new Victorian era. Herald Sun. Retrieved from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/
Author, A. (year, date). Article title. Newspaper. pp. page number
Parker, K. (2008, December 3). Plea for languages. Koori Mail, pp. 19-20
Author, A. (year, month). Title. Paper presented at Conference title, Location, Country.
Liu, C., Wu, D., Fan, J., & Nauta, M. M. (2008, November). Does job complexity predict job strains? Paper presented at the 8th Biannual Conference of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, Valencia, Spain.
Organisation. (year). Title. Series/publication number. Retrieved from (if online)
World Bank. (2008). Textbooks and school library provision in secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank Working Paper No. 126. Africa Human Development Series). Retrieved from EBL database.
Author, A. A. (year). Thesis title (Doctoral dissertation, Institution, location). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxxxxxxx
Murray, B. P. (2008). Prior knowledge, two teaching approaches for metacognition: Main idea and summarization strategies in reading (Doctoral dissertation, Fordham University, New York)
Author, A. A. (year). Title of work. Retrieved month day, year, from source.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2011). Australia's health 2004. Retrieved from http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/index.cfm/title/10014
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
Submitting to the journal implicitly confirms that all named authors and rights holders have agreed to the above terms of publication. It is the submitting author's responsibility to ensure all authors and relevant institutional bodies have given their agreement at the point of submission.
Note: some institutions require authors to seek written approval in relation to the terms of publication. Should this be required, authors can request a separate licence agreement document from the editorial team (e.g. authors who are Crown employees).
The European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP) is committed to ensuring that professional cognition research is accessible to the public. To make this possible, we need to ask an Article Processing Fee (APC) from authors. The regular APC is €1150 per published article, although this may be reduced or waived, as below. There are no submission charges; APCs are only raised in case of publication.
The Journal of Cognition differs from many other open-access journals in that it is run by an academic society, not by a private publisher. Any surplus income generated through the APC is used entirely for scientific purposes. Some of the APC serves to cover the cost for the services needed to create a professional product, with the journal's publisher receiving €565 per publication. This ensures the availability of editorial support, professional typesetting services, continuous archiving & indexing of published articles, DOI management and assistance in promoting the research so that its impact is maximized. ESCoP uses the remainder for advancing cognitive psychology. This includes ensuring the quality of the contents of the Journal of Cognition by securing an expert editorial team to handle the peer review process and covering APCs for certain kinds of articles (e.g., invited content, Special Research Themes, Commentaries, etc.), as well as sponsoring workshops and summer schools.
Reduced APCs
From 2019, corresponding authors who have completed a peer review for the Journal of Cognition within the 12 months before they submit their article or who are affiliated with the same institution as one of our editorial board members shall receive a discount of €150. Corresponding authors who are associate or full members of ESCoP receive a discount of €150. These discounts may be combined (i.e., corresponding authors who qualify for the reviewer discount and are current members pay only €850).
One way we acknowledge the efforts and commitment of editorial board members is by extending their €150 discount to all of their institutional colleagues. If your institution would like to nominate a qualified consulting editor, please contact the Editor-in-Chief (moreyc@cardiff.ac.uk). Editorial board members must be able to demonstrate expertise in cognition, experience with academic publishing and peer review, and a professional, constructive approach to delivering feedback. Editorial board members must commit to accepting review requests in their area of expertise and returning high-quality feedback promptly.
If you do not have funds available to pay the APC (eg because your institution/funder will not cover the fee) then we may be able to offer a discount or full waiver.
Please ensure that you contact the Journal Manager as early as possible, should you need to discuss waiver options or the APC in general.
Requests for waivers should be made upon submission of your manuscript to the journal.