BAP Journal of Psychopharmacology

Journal of Psychopharmacology

Aims and Scope

The Journal of Psychopharmacology is a fully peer-reviewed, international journal that publishes original research and review articles on preclinical and clinical aspects of psychopharmacology.The journal provides an essential forum for researchers and practising clinicians on the effects of drugs on animal and human behavior, and the mechanisms underlying these effects.

The Journal of Psychopharmacology (ISSN: 0269-8811) is published eight times a year (in January - March - May - June - July - August - September - November) by SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi).

Annual subscription (2007, 8 issues): Institutional Rate: £754/$1320; Personal Rate: £76/$133

Student discounts, single issue rates and advertising details are available from SAGE Publications Ltd email: subscription@sagepub.co.uk; website: www.sagepub.co.uk [link opens in new window].

Journal of Psychopharmacology is abstracted in Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS database, Chemical Abstracts, e-Psych PsychINFO, Psychological Abstracts and WISE for medicine.
It is indexed in Excerpta Medica, Embase, Elsevier BIOBASE/Current Awareness in Biological Sciences, Current Contents/Life Sciences, Focus on: Psychopharmacology, Index Medicus/ MEDLINE, IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences), Medical Documentation Research, Neuro-science Citation Index, Reference Update, Research Alert, Science Citation Index and SciSearch.

Copyright © 2008 British Association for Psycho-pharmacology.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Copyright owner.

Contributors and advertisers are responsible for the scientific content and the views expressed, which are not necessarily those of the Editors nor the British Association for Psychopharmacology.

Periodicals Postage Paid at Rahway, NJ. POSTMASTER, send address corrections to Journal of Psychopharmacology, c/o Mercury Airfreight International Ltd, 365 Blair Road, Avenel, New Jersey 07001, USA.

Typeset by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne on Wear, UK.
Printed in the UK on acid-free paper by The University Press,
Cambridge.

Information for contributors is to be found on the inside back cover. Publishers: send books for review to the Editorial Manager.

Publication statement

Papers submitted to this Journal for publication are considered on condition that they have been neither submitted elsewhere, nor published elsewhere other than in abstract form. The Editors do not enter into correspondence about papers considered unsuitable for publication; their decision is final.

Copyright. The author must assign copyright to the British Association for Psychopharmacology on acceptance of the paper for publication. All authors of a multi-authored paper are required to sign the assignment of copyright form. Those who are unable to assign their copyright will be sent an appropriate version of the assignment form. The author(s)' freedom to re-use their material in other works they are writing or editing is not impeded by the assignment of their copyright.

Submission of manuscripts

Submit your article online to the Journal of Psychopharmacology with SAGETRACK at:
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jop [link opens in new window]

Please log onto the website. If you are a new user, you will first need to create an account. This is a 3-step system that takes a matter of minutes to set up. Log-in information is sent via email immediately upon completion. Full instructions for uploading the manuscript are provided on the website. If you have already created an account but have forgotten your details type your email address in the 'Password Help' to receive an emailed reminder.

Submissions should be made via the Author Center and the 'Click here to Submit a New Manuscript' option. For questions and a user guide, please use the 'Get Help Now' button at the top right of every screen. Further help is available through ScholarOne's® Manuscript CentralTM customer support at +1 434-817-2040 x 167. If you would like to discuss your paper prior to submission, please contact the Editor at following email address: j-psychopharm@bristol.ac.uk

Please ensure that your Microsoft Word or RTF document does NOT include a title page, an abstract, or page numbers; the JSPR SAGETRACK system will generate them for you, and then convert your manuscript to PDF for peer review. Furthermore, it is imperative that authors remove from their submissions any information that will identify them or their affiliations to reviewers.
All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revisions, will be by e-mail.

Revisions

Authors submitting revised manuscripts should follow the instructions above to submit through the SAGETRACK system. However, if the first versions were submitted prior to SAGETRACK, the system will not know automatically about the previous version. In such cases, authors should check the 'Has this manuscript been submitted previously?' box and give the previous manuscript number in the space below. (If the previous version was submitted through the SAGETRACK system, following the instructions to submit a revised manuscript will automatically associate your revised version with the original submission) Authors of all revised submissions should when prompted provide information explaining the changes in your manuscript. As this will be provided to reviewers it is important that authors do not identify themselves in these responses.

Publication categories

The Journal considers the following kinds of article for publication:

Research Reports, describing new experimental findings;
Review Articles. The Editors wish to encourage the following types of review, but request that authors contact them in advance:
1. general reviews that provide a synthesis of an area of psychopharmacology;
2. perspectives - brief overviews, which are 4-6 printed pages in length including references, that address important new areas of general interest;
3. critiques - focused and provocative reviews that are followed by a number of invited commentaries, with a concluding reply from the main author;
4. 'state of the art' reports of significant meetings in which new findings or ideas are reported.
These are designed to keep the Journal's readership abreast of the latest findings prior to their publication.
Letters to the Editors. Readers' letters should address issues raised by published articles or should report significant new findings that merit rapid dissemination. The decision to publish is made by the Editors, in order to ensure a timely appearance in print.
Book Reviews. A list of up-to-date books for review is available from the Journal's Editorial Manager.

Manuscript presentation

Journal of Psychopharmacology subscribes predominantly to the editorial preferences expressed in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

Articles submitted for publication in Journal of Psychopharmacology should be typed on one side of the sheet only, in double spacing throughout (this includes notes and references).

Elements within the Manuscript

Covering letter. Please attach to every submission a letter confirming that all authors have agreed to the submission and that the article is not currently being considered for publication by any other print or electronic journal.

Abstract. Provide an abstract of 150-250 words. The abstract should state the purposes of the study or investigation, basic procedures, main findings and the principal conclusions. Emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations.

Key words, or key word phrases, to accompany the abstract should not exceed 10. They should, if possible, be drawn from the MeSH list of Index Medicus and be chosen with a view to useful cross-indexing of the article.

Text. Subdivide your article with appropriate headings. Use no more than three levels of subdivision. For observational and experimental articles the first level will usually consist of the standard heads: Introduction, Methods and Materials, Results and Discussion. Other types of articles will benefit from less formulaic formats.

Acknowledgements. Between the end of the text and the start of the References section, please acknowledge sources of financial and material support, and those who have contributed intellectually, with their consent.

References. Authors should be cited using the name and date convention, in date order: (Prewett and Green, 1989; Becker, 1992; Marlowe et al., 1994, Table 2).
List authors up to two; for three or more use the name of the first author plus et al.
References should have been checked against the original documents, and must be carefully cross-checked to ensure the text citation matches that in the reference list.

Style of presentation in the reference list should follow the Harvard Style of referencing.
Journal abbreviations should conform with the style adopted in the Cumulated Index Medicus

Journal references:
Rickels K, Schweizer E, Clary C, Fox I, Weise C (1994) Nefazdone and imipramine in major depression: a placebo-controlled trial, Br J Psychiatry 164: 802-805

Book references:
Eysenck M W (1992) The nature of anxiety. In Gale A, Eysenck M W (eds), Handbook of individual differences: biological perspectives. John Wiley, Chichester

Maxwell S, Delaney H (1990) Designing experiments and analysing data: a model comparison perspective. Wadsworth, Belmont, CA

Tables should be typed on separate sheets. They must all be cited in the text, carry brief but complete titles, and be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. Keep rules (horizontal only) to a minimum.

Figures should be used with discretion to clarify (not duplicate) the text. They should be cited in the text, using Arabic numerals, and their approximate location in the paper clearly indicated [Figure 1 near here]. They should, for preference, be supplied at reproduction size (single- or double-column width), and lettering should be no smaller than 8 pt type. Computer-generated artwork must be submitted as laser printed output at a resolution of 600 dots per inch. Avoid the use of computer-generated tints; substitute hatching in their place. Photographs should be supplied as sharp b/w glossy prints, not laser output photos.

Legends should be explanatory but succinct. They should carry the Arabic numerals applicable to the figures, and be provided as a separate typed (double-spaced) list at the end of the paper, along with the figures themselves.

Elements of Overall Manuscript Style

Units of measurement. Express these in SI and metric units; older conventional units may be added in parentheses. Nomenclature. Use the generic or chemical name of any drug, in lower case; the specific trade name (capitalized) may be given in parentheses after the first text reference.

Abbreviations and symbols. Use standard abbreviations, and define them in full in the first instance unless they are standard units of measurement. Avoid any use of abbreviations in the article title and abstract.

Ethics. When reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) or with the Declaration of Helsinki 1975, revised Hong Kong 1989. Do not use patients' names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. When reporting
experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution's or the National Research Council's guide for, or any national law on, the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

Permissions. Authors must obtain written permission from the copyright holder (original author or publisher) to include in their paper any previously published material. Credit should follow the style and location requested by the copyright holder.

On Publication

Access to 25 free e-prints will be provided; the corresponding author will receive one complimentary copy of the journal for each contributor.

Online First Instructions

OnlineFirst articles are the definitive final version, and are fully searchable and citable using their DOI. When you cite an Online first article, give the paper's DOI at the end of the citation. For example,
Author(s) J Psychopharmacol OnlineFirst, day month year (doi:10.1177/0269881106066333).

After print publication, you should give the DOI as well as the print citation, to enable readers to find the paper in print as well as online.