Please acquaint yourself carefully with the information below before proceeding to submit your manuscript. Please note that acceptance for publication will result in being charged with €300 article processing costs (see below)

Manuscripts should be submitted using the ScholarOne Manuscript tool. First-time authors will be required to create an account in ScholarOne. Instructions and information can be found in the ScholarOne Manuscripts author guide.

Manuscripts should be written in English and should not be (a) previously published in a different or similar form (e.g., a book chapter) or (b) under consideration for publication in any other journal or outlet. However, manuscripts which have previously appeared as preprints are eligible for publication (see below). In case of detecting ethical malpractice during the peer review process, including, but not limited to, ghostwriting, plagiarism, data manipulation, or falsification, the editorial team will take appropriate action based on the COPE guidelines for ethical conduct in scientific publishing (see the Publishing Ethics section for more details).

Article Type and Length
ACP accepts the following article types:

• Original research articles
• Original theoretical articles (including method articles)
• Replication studies

ACP does not enforce a formal upper length limit, although for single study article we encourage manuscripts to be no longer than 40 pages (around 10 000 words) including the reference list (suggested amount of 60 references). Whenever appropriate, authors should include auxiliary information in the Supplementary Materials section at the end of the manuscript.

Preprints
We encourage authors to make their results available on preprint servers such as PsyArXiv or bioRxiv. This can be done before submission, during reviews, or following the editorial decision. Information about any existing preprints should be clearly disclosed in the manuscript in the Acknowledgements section.

Peer Community in Registered Reports
ACP is a member of the Peer Community in Registered Reports (PCI RR), which performs Stage 1 and Stage 2 review of RR preprints.

As a “PCI RR-friendly” journal, ACP will automatically offer Stage 1 in-principle acceptance (IPA) to any quantitative Stage 1 RR within the journal’s disciplinary scope that receives IPA at PCI RR, and will accept without further peer review any Stage 2 RR that has been recommended by PCI RR, subject to the manuscript meeting applicable journal requirements which can be found here.

Authors intending to publish in this journal via PCI RR should submit their manuscript to the journal only after a final positive Stage 2 recommendation from PCI RR.

On submission, the manuscript will be checked by the editor to confirm that the submission is identical to the Stage 2 manuscript that is approved by PCI RR. Acceptance will be subject to the editor’s satisfaction that the manuscript is the same as the preprint approved by PCI RR.

Authors taking advantage of the PCI RR track should submit their Stage 2 Registered Report using our usual submission system. The manuscript must include the URL to the reviews and recommendation at PCI RR. The submission must also be accompanied by a cover letter stating that the authors are submitting via the PCI RR track, including a URL to the recommended preprint, and confirming that the manuscript is identical to the recommended preprint.

Additional details regarding PCI RR may be found here.

Data sharing
ACP is committed to a more open research landscape, facilitating faster and more effective research discovery by enabling reproducibility and verification of data, methodology and reporting standards. We encourage authors of articles published in ACP to share their research data including, but not limited to: raw data, processed data, metadata, software, algorithms, protocols, methods, and materials such as questionnaires, stimuli, detailed and reproducible procedures, etc. We ask authors who are willing to share their data to provide links to trusted, public repositories within their manuscripts (blinded for reviews and included at the proofreading stage).

To promote open data sharing, ACP has adopted the Center for Open Science's Badges to Acknowledge Open Practices: the Open Data Badge, the Open Materials Badge, and the Preregistered Study Badge. The Badges recognize the authors' contributions to high quality, ethical science practices.The Badges are displayed on the PDF versions of the published articles.

The criteria for awarding the Badges are described on the project's OSF page. Importantly, please note that the criteria for receiving a Badge are evaluated during the peer review process. Making adjustments to manuscripts after the peer review process has concluded in order to become eligible for a Badge is not permitted.

Free-format Submission
To facilitate quick processing, ACP welcomes the initial submission of manuscripts in any consistent and comprehensive format. However, following peer-review, resubmissions will have to be formatted in accordance to the guidelines specified below.

Manuscript Formatting
ACP follows the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Information and reference examples can be found on the APA Style Blog.

Text Formatting. Manuscripts should be prepared in .doc/.docx, using a common, readable font (e.g., Times New Roman) in 12 pt. size, double-spaced. The text should be divided into indented paragraphs. The manuscript should contain a separate title page listing the following information:

• All authors and their affiliations, listed in a mutually agreed-upon order;
• The corresponding author, their correspondence address, and e-mail address;
• Any acknowledgements, funding information, and conflict of in interest disclosures.
• Data availability statement specifying whether data has been shared or not, and if yes, providing information on how to obtain the data (e.g., DOI, repository link, contact with the corresponding author).
• Ethics approval statement.

An abstract of 150-250 words, together with 5-7 keywords, should be included on a separate page after the title page. The abstract should outline the justification of the undertaken topic, the aim of the study, its methodology, the main results, and conclusions/recommendations. Keywords should describe the subject and areas of the manuscript. A running head/shortened title is not necessary.

Manuscripts reporting empirical studies should contain the following sections:

• Introduction
• Method
• Results
• Discussion

Within each section, subsections should be formatted according to the APA Publication Manual. A subsection level should be introduced only if it contains at least two elements.

All references to the authors, their publications, or affiliations should be censored in the submitted manuscript.

The Method section should clearly state information about the ethical approval for the study described in the manuscript.

A Supplementary Materials section can be appended at the end of the manuscript if necessary. It should contain secondary data such as detailed descriptive statistics, stimulus examples, or equations and algorithms used in the study. The Supplementary Materials section should be formatted in the same way as the main text.

For further instructions on organizing the structure of a manuscript, we strongly encourage authors to consult the APA JARS guidelines.

Figures and Tables. Figures should be prepared in .eps or .tiff format. Ensure that the figures submitted with the manuscript are in their final, complete version (e.g., without autocorrect markings etc.). Do not use screenshots of a program's working space to obtain the figure files.

Photographs or combinations of halftone and line art should be prepared as raster images in .tiff or .jpeg format. Use uncompressed .tiff images or lossless LZW compression; 24 bpp RGB format is prefered for color images and 8 bpp format is preferred for grayscale images.

Tables should support the conciseness and clarity of the manuscript. They should be readable without the need to refer to the text. To this end, where applicable, in addition to the statistical significance note a table note should present the definitions of all abbreviations used in the table, even if these definitions have been previously given in the text. We encourage authors to refer to the APA Publication Manual's table design guidelines. Create tables using the appropriate function of your word processing program - do not use spaces or indents to simulate a table format.

All figures and tables should be consistently numbered according to their order of appearance in the text. Each figure and table should be introduced by or referred to by the text (e.g., "see Table 1"). Each figure and table should be submitted in a separate file, accompanied by a title. In case a figure is separated into Panels, the title should clearly describe the contents of each Panel (e.g., "Panel A: ...; Panel B: ...). Tables should additionally be accompanied by a note whenever necessary.

Figures and tables can either be embedded in the manuscript or replaced by placeholder text (e.g., "Insert Table 1 here"). However, submitting each figure and table as a separate file alongside the manuscript file is necessary in both cases.

Reference Formatting
The end reference list should contain all works cited in the main text. Conversely, works not cited in the main text should not appear in the reference list. The reference list should be formatted according to the 7th version of the APA Publication Manual. Formatting and reference examples can be found on the APA Style Blog. Sort the references alphabetically. Do not number the references. Include DOI numbers for references where possible. For foreign-language works, include an English translation of the title in square brackets alongside the original title. Use of third-party reference managers and generators is allowed.

The Supplementary Materials section should have its own end reference list, if necessary.

Language
Ensure that the manuscript is written in correct scientific English before submission. Whenever necessary, we encourage authors to follow the APA Publication Manual's guidelines for reducing bias in language. We reserve the right to reject manuscripts of poor formal quality (such that it impedes their legibility or comprehension).

Terminology of "Gender" vs "Sex"
According to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities of girls, women, boys, men, and gender diverse people. It influences how people perceive themselves and each other, how they act and interact, and the distribution of power and resources in society. Gender is usually conceptualized as a binary (girl/woman and boy/man) yet there is considerable diversity in how individuals and groups understand, experience, and express it. Sex refers to a set of biological attributes in humans and animals. It is primarily associated with physical and physiological features including chromosomes, gene expression, hormone levels and function, and reproductive/sexual anatomy. Sex is usually categorized as female or male but there is variation in the biological attributes that comprise sex and how those attributes are expressed.

We encourage our authors to follow this terminology in their articles, when appropriate.

Reviewers
Authors can suggest four potential reviewers to peer-review your manuscript. Make sure that a minimum of two reviewers are from outside the country where the research was conducted. When proposing reviewers, conflict of interest should be avoided (e.g., colleagues, co-authors, close friends, etc.). The assignment of reviewers is at the discretion of the editorial team.

Editorial Policy Concerning Automatic Plagiarism Screening
ACP uses Crossref Similarity Check which automatically screens manuscript content for plagiarism at the point of submission. Manuscripts with a similarity index percentage of below 40% will proceed to evaluation in accordance with ACP’s peer-review process policy and the COPE Ethical Guidelines, as described in the “Review process” and “Publishing ethics” sections of Journal Info. Manuscripts with a similarity index percentage above 40% will be subjected to a manual review of the Similarity Check originality report, carried out by the Editor assigned to the manuscript. ACP and the Editorial Board reserve the right to withdraw the manuscript and ask the authors to resubmit it after reducing the similarity index, whereupon the manuscript will be screened for plagiarism again and proceed to evaluation after similarity concerns have been resolved.

Proofreading
Upon acceptance, the manuscript will be subjected to a comprehensive linguistic and stylistic proofreading. The authors will receive proofs for acceptance and will have the opportunity to request, within reason, to retain specific linguistic and/or stylistic decisions as well as request additional linguistic, stylistic, and/or layout changes.

Article Processing Costs
Upon acceptance of a submitted manuscript, the authors will be charged with the article processing costs of €300. These cover the production of the final PDF version of the article as well as the maintenance of the journal (website hosting, service subscription). If one of the authors is actively involved in the journal (e.g., as an editor), then the costs will be waived.

Licensing, Copyright, and Open Access
ACP applies the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) license to publish articles. Under this license, Authors agree that anyone can copy and distribute their article free of charge as long as (a) appropriate credit is given, (b) the article is not modified, and (c) the article is not used for commercial purposes.

Authors retain (hold) copyright of their articles. Authors can reuse and reupload their published articles without any restrictions, including reuploads in institutional databases and personal websites, without the need to request permission from ACP. ACP has the right of first publication. Subsequent republications will require acknowledgment that the first publication took place in ACP.

Post-publication Corrections
ACP remains open to contact regarding post-publication corrections, errata, and corrigenda. In each instance, such requests will be brought forward to the editorial team

Declaration of generative AI in scientific writing
Reports of studies which have used generative artificial intelligence (AI), large language models, machine learning, or other similar methods and techniques as part of their data analysis method will be evaluated for publication according to the same criteria of thematic fitness, appropriateness of the analysis method, and quality as other submissions.