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Editorial policy​

Scope​​​

PCI Psychology reviews and recommends preprints within the field from all areas of psychological research and scholarship (see thematic categories) that use all methodological approaches (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods). Because the field of psychology is broad, we plan for PCI Psychology to initially review preprints from subfields for which the initial pool of Recommenders has substantial expertise (TBD). As PCI Psychology expands and is able to recruit more Recommenders from a more diverse set of subfields, its thematic scope will expand accordingly.

PCI Psychology is guided by the following values and features: 

PCI Psychology supports and promotes open scholarship. PCI Psychology values the principles and practices of open science, research, and scholarship. This includes, but is not limited to, behaviors that enhance transparency (e.g., preregistration, disclosures), credibility (e.g., well-designed and high-powered studies), reproducibility (e.g., open data, code, and materials), and accessibility (e.g., preprints, open materials). Central to the PCI model is open peer review reports for all recommended manuscripts (reviewers choose whether or not to be anonymous). Details on how PCI Psychology aligns with the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines are available here. 

PCI Psychology prioritizes strong conceptualization and design. The current and historical selection model for journal publication is based on the nature and novelty of the results, which contributes to publication bias and other problematic behaviors. A major goal for PCI Psychology is to shift the evaluation criteria from being centered on the findings to being centered on the conceptualization and design. Thus, a poorly designed study, regardless of its findings, is likely to be rejected. In contrast, well-designed studies will have a higher likelihood of a successful recommendation following review, even if they produce null findings, negative findings, inconclusive findings, or findings that contradict widely accepted results.

PCI Psychology is community-focused. Although a small number of people serve on the Managing Board, we seek to elicit the broadest possible involvement in the service, be it as recommenders, reviewers, authors, or other kinds of support. Community engagement and feedback are central to the development of PCI Psychology, and we will continue to engage in open communication with the psychological science community and revise policies and procedures as needed. 

PCI Psychology is free and accessible. There are no fees for authors to submit their preprints to PCI Psychology, enabling diamond open access (i.e., free to publish, free to access) if suitable publication options are chosen after a recommendation. PCI Psychology uses format-free submission, meaning that authors can follow any reasonable manuscript formatting guidelines for their submissions (e.g., APA 7 Manuscript Guidelines). 

PCI Psychology supports a flexible, author-centered publishing model. Following a positive recommendation, authors have many options for the next steps in how they disseminate their work (see next section on How it Works for details). 

PCI Psychology is not exclusive: As PCI Psychology is not a journal, but rather a platform that organizes the peer review of preprints, it supports and encourages peer review beyond what is provided by the service. Accordingly, an article may be recommended by Peer Community In as well as disseminated in other ways, including publication in a traditional journal following recommendation.

How it Works

Authors first post their preprint to a publicly-available institutional or organizational repository. We suggest using PsyArXiv or PsychArchives, preprint servers dedicated to psychology, but authors may use any non-commercial server of their choice, provided that the service uses versioning and allows for the inclusion of images in its preprints (recommended preprints should display a PCI badge on the front page). This preprint is then submitted to PCI Psychology. During submission, authors can select up to three Thematic Fields to describe their preprint. Thematic fields also help authors select suggested Recommenders, a role similar to an Associate Editor, Action Editor, or Handling Editor in the traditional publishing model.

At least two members of the Managing Board will conduct an initial review of the preprint to ensure it is within scope and meets the required minimum criteria (see below). The initial screening process, however, is only used to assess adherence to the requirements and scope of PCI Psychology, and the screening is not based on the nature of the results, the perceived novelty of the work, or the perceived importance of the work. Thus, PCI Psychology does not guarantee the evaluation or recommendation of all submitted preprints; some submitted preprints may be returned to authors without review if they are outside of scope or do not meet the minimum criteria. Additionally, PCI Psychology may decline or postpone the review of preprints due to capacity issues, because of a higher number of submissions than can be handled at a particular time, a lack of expertise among the current pool of recommenders, or an inability to secure recommenders or reviewers for the manuscript within two months. In any such case, PCI Psychology will first work to recruit additional recommenders with appropriate expertise before declining to review the submission. During this step, the Managing Board members may also add to the pool of eligible recommenders.

Following the initial review, the pool of eligible Recommenders is notified of the new preprint; any of these Recommenders may choose to accept the task, which is distributed on a first-come-first-served basis. The Recommender will secure external reviewers, followed by a decision letter indicating that the preprint has been recommended, rejected, or that it should be resubmitted following revision. 

The ultimate positive decision is not an acceptance, but a “recommendation.” Where the outcome of the review process is positive, the Recommender will write a public recommendation text that articulates the basis for the recommendation, describes the strengths of  the preprint,  and describes the nature of the review process. At that point, the authors have four choices for the future of the preprint: 1) leave the paper on the preprint server, indicating that it has been recommended and peer reviewed by PCI Psychology with a link to the recommendation; 2) publish the paper in Peer Community Journal, a diamond open access journal (i.e., no publication fees) that automatically accepts any preprint recommended by a PCI without further review; 3) submit the recommended preprint to an eligible PCI-Friendly journal, or 4) submit the manuscript to any other journal of their choice, as they would in the traditional publishing process. This last option is not an intended outcome of PCI Psychology, but highlights the flexibility and author-focused nature of the platform. 

For preprints that are recommended, the full decision process, including all reviews, author’s responses, and editorial decisions will be made publicly available. Reviewers have the option to publicly disclose their identities or remain anonymous. Reviews, author’s responses, and editorial decisions for rejected submissions are not published. For further information on the PCI peer review process, please consult the Guide for Authors.

PCI-Friendly Categories for Journals

Following a positive recommendation, authors have the opportunity to submit the recommended preprint to a participating journal for possible publication. These journals are referred to as “PCI-Friendly” and operate in two distinct categories:

Category 1 journals agree to accept any preprint recommended by PCI Psychology that a) is an article type that they indicated they would accept and b) fits their prespecified journal scope. These journals cannot request additional review, but may require minor cosmetic changes, particularly revisions to conform with formatting standards. 

Category 2 journals agree to provide an expedited evaluation process for any preprint recommended by PCI Psychology. This evaluation could result in:

• Interest in publishing the preprint as is, or pending minor cosmetic revisions. 
• Interest in considering publishing the preprint, but additional reviews or procedures (e.g., reproducibility checks) are required
• Not interested in publishing the preprint

Types of Articles

All article types will be considered, including: empirical reports (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods); exploratory reports; replication studies; theoretical papers; reviews, systematic maps, and meta-analyses; perspectives and commentaries; data or software papers; and tutorials. Registered Reports should be submitted to PCI Registered Reports (PCI RR). There are no strict article length restrictions, but general guidelines are provided for each of the article types. More details are available here. Importantly, not all participating journals (Category 1 or Category 2) will consider all article types, so authors should consider journal requirements ahead of submission if they have a specific outlet in mind. 

Review Criteria

Required criteria

PCI Psychology recommends only preprints of high quality that are methodologically and ethically sound. To this end, the following are required for all submissions to PCI Psychology: 

All submitted preprints are expected to be of high quality preparation, free of excessive typos, grammatical errors, or lack of clarity.

All empirical studies must include:

• A clear description of the target population, how the sample is appropriate for the population, and conclusions and interpretations that are appropriately calibrated (which may include indicating the boldest most general claim that could have been found wrong by possible outcomes). Sample sizes should be clearly justified, especially with respect to the following, as relevant: statistical power, Bayes factor thresholds, or estimate precision (quantitative studies) and information power or saturation thresholds (qualitative studies). Samples should be described in as much detail as possible, but there is no single standard or expectation of what must be included owing to the wide variation in norms, relevance, ethical/legal considerations, and what was collected as part of the project (especially for secondary data analysis). For human samples, this could include, but is not limited to, information about nationality, race/ethnicity, gender, social class, and/or any other relevant details that will help understand sample composition. Additional considerations for animal studies could include species, strain, and housing facilities. The Discussion section should include a Constraints on Generality [preprint] paragraph/subsection that clearly describes how the findings are relevant to, and limited by, the target population and research design. 
• PCI Psychology adheres to TOP Level 2 for open data, analytic methods (code), and materials. For all categories, the guiding principle is “as open as possible, as closed as necessary.” This principle does not imply that there is an equal balance between open and closed, but rather that open is expected to be the default. However, PCI Psychology recognizes that there are sometimes ethical constraints to sharing data, code, and materials, and these constraints will be recognized when substantiated. This means that, in the absence of well-documented ethical restrictions:

• • All raw data necessary to reproduce the analyses of submitted papers must be made available at the time of submission. Data must follow the FAIR principles: that they are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, and thus relevant metadata and data dictionaries must be included with the data files. PCI Psychology recognizes that not all data can be made publicly available (e.g., identifiable data), and so restricted data access, managed by a third party, is permitted. Moreover, it may be impossible to share raw data for ethical reasons, not even with restricted data access. These reasons must be outlined in detail, with supporting evidence, at the time of submission. See here for more details on what must be included. Authors are expected to adhere to ethical standards appropriate for their data (e.g., CARE principles for Indigenous data). 

• • For any study including quantitative analysis, all analysis scripts and/or computer code used for statistical analysis (e.g., R, Mplus, SPSS, Python) must be publicly available at the time of submission. The scripts or codes must be carefully described such that another researcher can run them (e.g., package names, documentation, details on environment).

• • For any study including qualitative analysis, all coding manuals and other relevant materials used for analysis (e.g., description of coder training and process of establishing reliability, consensus, and/or trustworthiness) that are not sensitive or identifying must be publicly available at the time of submission. 

• • All study materials (e.g., experimental protocols, survey items, experiment presentation code) necessary for a complete understanding of how the study was conducted must be publicly available at the time of submission, unless there are ethical or legal restrictions on doing so. In such cases, the restrictions must be disclosed as part of the submission.
  • The data, code, and materials must be available through an open data repository,  unless there are ethical restrictions on doing so. In such cases, the restrictions must be disclosed as part of the submission. Examples of suitable repositories include OSF, Zenodo, Dryad, ResearchBox, or some other institutional repository that ensures long-term preservation (see Directory of Open Access Repositories and Registry of Research Data Repositories) with a DOI or other persistent identifier (please note that GitHub URLs are not permanent identifiers). Ideally, all data, code, and materials are stored in the same location. 
  • See here for more details on the open data, code, and materials requirements. 

• A sample size justification must be included (see Lakens, 2022). This could include, among other possibilities, a power analysis for new quantitative data collections, obtaining sufficient Bayesian evidence, a demonstration of test severity (Dienes, 2021), a sensitivity analysis for pre-existing quantitative data, or a description of the stopping rule employed or information value of the sample in relation to the research question for qualitative data. 
• Preregistration is strongly encouraged, but not required, including for previously collected data. Preregistrations should be recorded in a time-stamped, verified repository, with an accessible link included in the manuscript. Any study that was preregistered must indicate in the text which aspects of the study were preregistered (e.g., hypotheses, research design, analyses) rather than a global statement. If the analyses were preregistered, the Results section must include the statement, “All reported analyses were preregistered unless otherwise specified,” and authors are expected to ensure that the statement is true, and either list the deviation in text or include a table of deviations from the preregistered protocol as described in Willroth and Atherton (2024). 
• Replication studies are welcome and encouraged. Any manuscript that includes assessments of replication must have a clearly articulated framework (e.g., Lakens, 2022; Lebel et al., 2019, Verhagen & Wagenmakers, 2014) and stated criteria for how successful replication was determined.
• Reproductions, re-analyses, or tests of robustness (e.g., alternative model specifications, multiverse analyses) of published claims using openly available data can be submitted as commentaries (see description of article types here). Although at this time PCI Psychology is not accepting Verification Reports using the two-step review process as intended, submissions that follow the general goal of Verification Reports are welcome (i.e., “repeating the original analyses or reporting new analyses of original data.” Chambers, 2020, p. A1).

PCI Psychology does not consider Registered Reports. Interested authors should submit their Stage 1 manuscripts to PCI Registered Reports. 

Ethics​

Peer Community In is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), an organization that provides comprehensive guidance on matters of ethics and research integrity. 

All manuscripts should include confirmation of ethical treatment of research subjects, and indicate which organizational board approved the research.

Financial conflicts of interest are forbidden (see the PCI code of conduct). Other conflicts of interest must be minimal and declared at the time of submission. PCI Psychology ensures that, as far as possible, the recommenders have no conflicts of interest and referees have as little as possible conflict of interest with the content or authors of the study being evaluated. Potential conflicts of interest stemming from co-authorship on large consortium projects (e.g., big team science) will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Acceptable non-financial conflicts of interest by reviewers must be declared.

Use of AI or LLMs to support manuscript preparation is allowed, but any significant use should be noted either in a specific section for this purpose or in the Author note  section of the manuscript. When using these tools, authors should adhere to the Principles for Responsible AI Usage in Research. Extensive undisclosed use of AI or LLMs in preparation of submitted manuscripts is considered an ethical violation and will be treated as plagiarism.

Continuing Review

In a traditional publication process, the pre-publication review phase is a “one-shot” activity that leads to acceptance or rejection of a manuscript; post-publication peer review can be done on separate platforms, such as Pubpeer. PCI Psychology, in contrast, commits to a timely continuing review of all recommended preprints, effectively providing post-recommendation reviews on the same platform. This could include, but is not limited to, amending a recommendation based on the identification of errors in the article, or issuing an expression of concern or retraction of the recommendation.

Any errors in reporting or other corrections for preprints recommended by PCI Psychology should be sent to the Recommender and at least one member of the Managing Board for review. These may be initiated by the original authors or readers. The full Managing Board will work with all parties to determine the most appropriate action (e.g., corrigendum, retraction). Importantly, this action only applies to the recommendation made by PCI, and will not have any direct bearing on any other versions of the manuscript (e.g., if it is published in a journal following recommendation). The decision to retract a recommendation will be made in line with the COPE Guidelines.

PCI Psychology will also engage in continuing review that could lead to an amended recommendation, such as a computational reproduction, methodological critique, or other commentary that casts doubt on the accuracy of the original recommendation. Knowledgeable parties are encouraged to contact the Recommender and the PCI Psychology Managing Board if they believe continuing review ought to be initiated. 

Decision Appeals

Authors may appeal a manuscript decision by emailing both the Recommender who handled the manuscript and one of the PCI Psychology Managers (currently Julia Bottesini and Moin Syed; contact@psych.peercommunityin.org). The email message must clearly state the case for why the decision should be changed. Appeals will only be considered if the authors a) identify factual errors made by the reviewers or Recommender that had a major impact on the decision, or b) can provide a substantiated claim of unfair treatment and/or bias in the review process. Appeals for any other reason will be denied without further consideration. Appeals that meet the identified criteria will be discussed among the Recommender and the full Managing Board, who will review the appeal and vote to uphold or reverse the original decision. Final decisions will be based on majority vote (i.e., decisions need not be unanimous). Authors should expect to receive a decision on their appeal within two weeks of submission. Correspondence regarding appeals will be made public for any preprint that is ultimately recommended. 

Modifying Reviews

Recommenders and the Managing Board are prohibited from unilaterally withholding reviews or modifying the content of reviews. If there are concerns about the nature of the review due to tone or content, the Recommender or Managing Board with the concerns must raise them with the reviewer directly and make suggestions for modification. If the reviewer is unwilling to address the concerns, then at least two members of the Managing Board who are not involved in the original inquiry must be consulted on the possibility of withholding the review. 

Inclusiveness and Equity

PCI is attentive to equity and inclusion at all steps of the process of scientific article evaluation. PCI focuses on bringing more people underrepresented in academia among authors submitting to PCI, and reviewers, recommenders and managing board members working for PCI. Underrepresentation is hereby linked to many factors including, but certainly not limited to, career stage, gender, and geography. At this time, PCI Psychology only considers manuscripts written in English, but may consider adding additional languages as capacity allows.

Specific recommendations are made to reviewers, recommenders and managing board members to increase equity and inclusiveness in each of their tasks.

Tools to increase equity and inclusiveness:

• Possibility to submit articles that are anonymous to peer reviewers
• All recommended articles must detail author roles using the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT)
• Transparency in the evaluation of articles
• Managing Board members take into account underrepresentation in academia when appointing new recommenders (e.g., with respect to gender, nationality, ethnicity)
• Template messages to recommenders and reviewers include recommendations about equity and inclusiveness 
• Early career researchers will be given full consideration for all roles.
• Recommender and peer review training
• Open call for recommenders and reviewers

PCI is a signatory of the Joint Statement of Principles of the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication (C4DISC)​​​​

 

Transparency and Openness (TOP) Guidelines

***Note: On September 17, 2024, a draft revision of the TOP Guidelines was released (preprint). As these guidelines are new and preliminary, for the time being PCI Psychology is only circulating this policy document based on the old guidelines. At the same time, we are drafting a separate policy document addressing the new guidelines. 

The Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines are a series of modular standards for transparency and reproducibility in published research. For background, authors are referred to the TOP overview at the Center for Open Science and the TOP introductory article published in Science (see here for a table explaining the meaning of the various TOP  levels). PCI Psychology is committed to regular review of its adherence to TOP. We currently adopt the following levels within each of the eight TOP standards, which can range from Level 0 to Level 3. Recommendation by PCI Psychology is contingent on authors adhering to these standards where they apply.

At the point of submission, authors are asked to complete a short checklist confirming adherence to the TOP guidelines.

Standard #1: Citation Standards (Level 3)

All data, program code and other methods must be appropriately cited. Such materials are recognised as original intellectual contributions and afforded recognition through citation. Articles will not be recommended until the citations conform to these standards.

All data sets and program code used in a publication must be cited in the text and listed in the reference section.

References for data sets and program code must include a persistent identifier, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Persistent identifiers ensure future access to unique published digital objects, such as a text or data set. Persistent identifiers are assigned to data sets by digital archives, such as institutional repositories and partners in the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS).

Standards #2, #3, and #4: Data, Analytic Methods (Code), and Research Materials Transparency (Level 2)

The policy of PCI Psychology is to recommend papers only if the data, methods used in the analysis, and any digital materials used to conduct the research are clearly and precisely documented and are maximally available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure. PCI Psych follows the principle of “as open as possible, as closed as necessary.”

Authors reusing data available from public repositories must provide program code, scripts for statistical packages, and other documentation sufficient to allow an informed researcher to precisely reproduce all reported results. Potential repositories that support open or embargoed archiving include (but are not limited to) Zenodo, Figshare, Harvard Dataverse, Dryad, the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity, Open Science Framework, Databrary, LDBase, and the Qualitative Data Repository.  For a comprehensive list of available data repositories, see Directory of Open Access Repositories and  Registry of Research Data Repositories. 

Authors using original data must:

• Make appropriately anonymised data available within a trusted digital repository OR provide a statement in the manuscript and TOP submission checklist explaining why data are not publicly archived and how data can otherwise be accessed. 
• Include all variables, treatment conditions, and observations described in the manuscript.
• Provide a full account of the procedures used to collect, preprocess, clean, or generate the data.
• Where applicable, provide program code, scripts, codebooks, and other documentation sufficient to precisely reproduce all reported results OR provide a statement in the TOP submission checklist explaining why code is not publicly archived and how any such code can otherwise be accessed.
• Provide digital research materials (e.g. stimuli, code) and description of procedures necessary to conduct an independent replication of the research OR provide a statement in the TOP submission checklist explaining why research materials are not publicly archived and how they can otherwise be accessed.

In some cases, some or all data, code or digital materials cannot be shared for ethical reasons. For example, in some studies, patient data can be impossible to fully anonymise, or authors may lack ethical permission to archive even fully anonymised data. In other cases, experimental materials (such as stimuli, questionnaires) or analysis code might be proprietary and may therefore be unshareable. PCI Psych will grant exceptions to data, code and material access requirements provided authors:

• as outlined above, explain the restrictions on the data, code or materials and how they preclude public access. Example text in the TOP submission checklist might include:
• “The conditions of our ethics approval do not permit public archiving of anonymised study data. Readers seeking access to the data should contact the lead author X or the local ethics committee at the Department of Y, University of Z. Access will be granted to named individuals in accordance with ethical procedures governing the reuse of sensitive data. Specifically, requestors must meet the following conditions to obtain the data [insert any conditions, e.g. completion of a formal data sharing agreement, or state explicitly if there are no conditions].”
• “Legal copyright restrictions do not permit us to publicly archive the full set of stimuli used in this experiment. Readers seeking access to the stimuli are advised to contact the lead author X or copyright holder [insert details]. Stimuli will be released on the following conditions [insert any conditions or state explicitly if there are no conditions].”
• provide a public description of the steps others should follow to request access to the data, code or digital materials – e.g. through direct contact with authors, the relevant ethics committee or other external authority.
• provide software and other documentation that will precisely reproduce all reported results.
• provide access to all data, code and digital materials for which the constraints do not apply.

Where shared publicly, any data, code, digital materials, and other documentation of the research process should be made available through a trusted digital repository. Trusted repositories adhere to policies that make data discoverable, accessible, usable, and preserved for the long term. Trusted repositories also assign unique and persistent identifiers. Author-maintained websites are not compliant with this requirement.

• Dissemination of these digital materials may be delayed until recommendation. In cases of demonstrated ethical restrictions, the PCI Psychology Managing Board may grant an embargo of the public release of data for at most one year after recommendation.
• Authors are responsible for ensuring that their articles continue to meet these conditions. Failure to do so may lead to a decision not to issue a recommendation. 

Standard #5: Design and Analysis Transparency (Level 2)

The policy of PCI Psychology is to recommend papers where authors follow standards for disclosing key aspects of the research design and data analysis. Authors are encouraged to review the standards available for many research applications (e.g., APA Journal Article Reporting Standards; http://www.equator-network.org/) and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications. All submitted empirical manuscripts must include, as an Appendix, a table that indicates whether or not they have indicated how their sample size was determined, any data exclusions, all study inclusion/exclusion criteria and when they were established, and all measures and conditions included in the study (see here [TBD] for a template table).

Standards #6 and #7: Preregistration of Studies and Analysis Plans (Level 2)

The policy of PCI Psychology is to encourage, but not require, the preregistration of studies and analysis plans. Preregistration of studies involves registering the research questions, study design, variables, interview protocols, and/or treatment conditions prior to conducting the research. Preregistration of analysis plans involves specification of sequence of analyses or the statistical model that will be reported. 

All manuscripts must indicate, in the text, whether or not the study design and analysis for each study reported therein were preregistered. 

For manuscripts that include preregistered studies:

1. The preregistration plan must be a time-stamped, unalterable document stored in an independent, institutional registry (e.g., http://clinicaltrials.gov/, http://socialscienceregistry.org/, https://osf.io/, https://egap.org/registry/, http://ridie.3ieimpact.org/). 
2. The manuscript must include an accessible link in the body text of the paper upon submission. 
3. Report all preregistered analyses in the text, or, if there were changes in the analysis plan following preregistration, those changes must be disclosed with explanation for the changes.
4. Clearly distinguish in text analyses that were preregistered from those that were not. Manuscripts must include the statement, “All reported analyses were preregistered unless otherwise specified,” and authors must ensure that the statement is true.
5. Deviations from the preregistration are permissible but must be disclosed and justified. All deviations must be stated in text (if relatively few) or via a table of deviations from the preregistered protocol as described in Willroth and Atherton (2024).
6. If the preregistration was completed after data collection (e.g., secondary data analysis), the manuscript must include a “Prior Knowledge of the Data” sub-section in the Method section that describes what aspects of the data they have already worked with.

Standard #8: Replication (Level 1)

The policy of PCI Psychology is to encourage submission of replication studies. Any manuscript that includes assessments of replication must have a clearly articulated framework that supports the replication criteria (e.g., Lebel et al., 2019, Verhagen & Wagenmakers, 2014) and stated criteria for how successful replication was determined.

 

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Types of Articles

PCI Psychology will review all of the types of articles described below. However, all PCI-friendly journals (category 1 or category 2) will indicate which article types they are willing to consider, and thus not all journals will accept all types. Please refer to this table and each journal's own editorial policies for details.

The following list of article types should not be considered exhaustive. In principle, PCI Psychology is open to considering any form of scholarly communication. We encourage those with questions about the suitability of their manuscript to contact the Managing Board at contact@psych.peercommunityin.org. 

Although PCI Psychology does not enforce any article length requirements (and Peer Community Journal does not have length requirements), suggested word count is provided for each type. These suggestions are provided to help authors keep their manuscripts as concise as possible and to ensure flexibility for authors seeking to publish their recommended preprint in a traditional journal, many of which have strict length requirements. Authors are highly encouraged to consult the requirements of any journals to which they may want to submit their submission if it receives a recommendation from PCI Psychology. All length recommendations are for the main body text, excluding references, tables, figures, etc. 

Empirical Reports

• High quality, rigorous research using empirical methods 
• Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and simulation studies are all accepted
• Provides a meaningful contribution to the scientific literature based on the conceptualization and study design; studies presenting null or negative findings are welcome.
• Replication studies are encouraged. 
• Recommended maximum length: 6,000 words of main body text for single quantitative studies; 10,000 for multiple studies or qualitative/mixed methods. 

Exploratory Reports

• Empirical submissions that tend to address relatively open research questions, without strong a priori predictions or hypotheses. Heavy focus on description and visualization, and may include little or no inferential tests. See here for more details. 
• Recommended maximum length: 6,000 words of main body text for single quantitative studies; 10,000 for multiple studies or qualitative/mixed methods.

Theoretical Papers

• Introduces a new theory and/or expands on existing theories
• Recommended maximum length: 12,000 words of main body text

Reviews, Systematic Maps, and Meta-analyses

• Any approach to reviews and evidence synthesis will be considered, including narrative reviews, systematic reviews, realist reviews, systematic maps, scoping reviews, and meta-analyses.
• Recommended maximum length: 12,000 words of main body text

Perspectives, Commentaries, and Opinions

• May include data or not (e.g., study reproductions or reanalyses may be submitted as commentaries)
• Recommended maximum length: 2,000 words of main body text.

Data or Software Papers

• Introduces and describes a dataset, software, tools, or platforms relevant to psychology researchers (e.g, statistical tools or packages, survey platforms)
• May include a tutorial
• Recommended maximum length: 4,000 words of main body text

Tutorials and Methodological Articles

• Paper describing how to use new or existing software, tools, or techniques of interest to psychology researchers.
• Introduces a new statistical/methodological technique in psychology or to a subdomain of psychology (which could include simulations and/or applications to example data).
• Recommended maximum length: 5,000 words of main body text

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Thematic Fields

PCI Psychology Thematic Fields serve as “tags” which are attached to submitted preprints, and used for matching submissions with recommenders and reviewers. Authors can submit up to three thematic fields for their submissions. Recommenders and reviewers can select as many as they wish. 

PCI Psychology thematic fields match the 3-tiered categorization used by PsyArXiv, which is based on the Digital Commons Three-Tiered List of Academic Disciplines. See here for the PCI Psychology Thematic Fields & PsyArXiv Tags Correspondence Table.

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PCI-friendly journals and the Peer Community Journal

The goal of PCI Psychology is to evaluate and recommend preprints, converting them into valid, citable final articles. In this case, PCI-recommended preprints would remain on preprint servers, and the PCI recommendation would be linked to the preprint. However, for various reasons, the authors of PCI-recommended preprints may prefer to seek publication in a more traditional journal. In this case, there are several potential routes, including:

• Submitting the preprint to a Category 1 or Category 2 PCI-friendly journal
• Submitting the preprint to the Peer Community Journal (published as is, free of charge)
• Submitting the preprint to another journal

 

 

In the case of PCI submissions being recommended and eligible for multiple journals, the authors will make the final decision as to where the manuscript should be published. The journal chosen may be any PCI-friendly journal, other journals, or no journal if the authors prefer the article to be hosted solely on their preferred preprint server. In all cases, the reviews and decision letters for recommended submissions will be published on the PCI platform.

PCI-friendly journals 

PCI-friendly journals make two types of commitment concerning PCI assessments:

Category 1: Journals committed to accepting PCI-recommended articles without further peer review

Category 1 journals endorse the PCI review criteria and agree to accept, without further peer review, any manuscript obtaining a positive final recommendation from PCI which fall in the journal's scope. Category 1 journals may still require recommended preprints to meet additional procedural requirements that do not require further scientific evaluation by these journals.

These journals agree to accept PCI recommended articles for publication even if the reviews performed by PCI are anonymous. Similarly, these journals will not relitigate any scientific elements of the study that PCI has already approved. These journals agree to display clearly, on the homepage of the article, a note indicating that the evaluation process was carried out by PCI Psychology.

Example note:

Editor's note: This article has been reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Psychology: Jane Smith (2025) Title of the recommendation. Peer Community in Psychology, 1070703. https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.psych.1070703

 

Category 2: Journals committed to providing authors with a fast response

Category 2 journals do not automatically accept PCI-recommended articles, but have agreed to the following commitment: once the article is submitted by the authors, the journal agrees to provide the authors with one of the following three responses, within a specified short turnaround time (e.g. 5 days):

1. Acceptance with minor modifications and with no further peer-review, 
2. Need for further peer-review or other checks before decision,
3. Not interested.

In case of acceptance, these journals agree to display clearly on the homepage of the article a note indicating that the evaluation process was carried out entirely or partly by PCI Psychology, of the following type: 

Editors' note: A previous version of this article was reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Psychology: Jane Smith (2025) Title of the recommendation. Peer Community in Psychology, 1070703. https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.psych.1070703

 

The Peer Community Journal

Once an article is recommended by a PCI, the authors can opt to publish their article in the Peer Community journal.

The Peer Community Journal is

• Unique = a single journal for all PCIs
• Free = diamond open access (free for authors and for readers).
• Exclusive = Publishes only preprints recommended by PCI 
• Unconditional = can publish all PCI recommended articles without further modification 
• Opt-in = only if the authors wish to publish in it
• Immediate = no delay between submission and publication 

This journal, created and funded by the PCI organization, is hosted by a not-for-profit publisher.

The Peer Community Journal does not provide of copyediting or typesetting services.

The Peer Community Journal is currently being evaluated by an international scientific database for indexing.