Editorial Policies

Editorial Policies

Editorial Policies

The editorial policies of the Nature-Nurture Journal of Psychology (NNJP) are designed to ensure ethical research practices, transparency, and academic integrity.

1. Ethics and Consent

  • Ethical Oversight: Research involving human participants must receive prior approval from an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee, strictly adhering to the Declaration of Helsinki and APA ethical guidelines.
  • Vulnerable Groups: Manuscripts involving vulnerable populations must include detailed, explicit descriptions of specialized consent and safeguarding protocols.
  • Informed Consent: Authors must obtain verified informed consent for both active study participation and the publication of identifiable data. Retrospective ethical approval is generally unacceptable unless explicitly granted by a recognized institutional committee under exceptional circumstances.

2. Reporting Standards

  • Methodological Transparency: NNJP promotes complete and transparent reporting. Authors are strongly encouraged to utilize established reporting guidelines and checklists, such as CONSORT (for randomized trials), STROBE (for observational studies), and PRISMA (for systematic reviews and meta-analyses).
  • Statistical Rigor: Statistical methods, measures, and analytical frameworks must be described with complete precision, including justifications for chosen models in alignment with contemporary APA standards.

3. Competing Interests

  • Declaration Requirement: Authors, reviewers, and editors must declare all financial and non-financial competing interests.
  • Scope: Financial interests include grants, funding, employment, consultancies, or stock ownership. Non-financial interests include personal relationships, academic rivalries, or political biases that could be perceived as influencing objectivity.
  • Editorial Review: Handling editors may request further documentation or clarification regarding declared interests before proceeding with editorial evaluation.

4. Authorship

  • Criteria: Credit is strictly restricted to substantial contributions to study conception, design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or critical manuscript drafting and revision.
  • Corresponding Author Responsibilities: The corresponding author acts on behalf of all co-authors to ensure final manuscript approval, proper author sequencing, and transparency throughout the publication process.
  • Dispute Resolution: Any authorship disputes or post-submission changes are managed in accordance with guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

5. Acknowledgements

  • Non-Author Contributors: Individuals who contributed to the work (e.g., technical assistance, language editing, administrative support, or funding acquisition) but do not meet the formal criteria for authorship should be explicitly recognized in the acknowledgements section.

6. Manuscript Submission

  • Direct Submission: Manuscripts must be submitted directly by the author(s) through our online editorial management system. Third-party, proxy, or agency submissions are strictly prohibited.

7. Citations

  • Academic Integrity: All scientific claims, background assertions, and methodological frameworks must be supported by accurate, relevant, and objective citations. Authors must avoid excessive, artificial self-citation and ensure that cited sources faithfully represent original scholarship.

8. Originality and Duplicate Publication

  • Exclusivity: Manuscripts submitted to NNJP must be entirely original, unpublished, and not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.
  • Disclosure: Authors must fully disclose any overlapping papers, preprint server postings, or related work derived from the same study dataset.

9. Open Science & Prior Dissemination

  • Transparency: Authors who have previously shared preliminary findings on preprint servers, academic blogs, or professional networks may submit their work for consideration, provided they declare prior dissemination. The editorial team will evaluate each case to ensure sufficient scholarly added value and avoid redundant publication.