Author Guidelines

1. The Scope of the Journal

Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace is an open-access interdisciplinary journal publishing articles with a focus on social science related to cyberspace. We publish original work by scientists emphasizing psychology, media studies, communication science, sociology, political science, nursing, ICT security, organizational psychology, and also other disciplines with relevance to psychosocial aspects of cyberspace. We accept submissions of all original research articles as well as theoretical studies and research meta-analyses. We do not accept submissions of essays or non-systematic literature reviews.

2. Review Process

Submitted articles are first reviewed internally by editors to assure their baseline quality and relevance for the journal. In the next step, submissions are subjected to a double-blind peer review by at least two external reviewers (authors and reviewers are anonymous to each other). Reviews are forwarded to authors along with the editor's decision. Invited revisions are sent to the original reviewers for their re-evaluation.

The typical review process takes from 3 to 6 months (average 4 months), but can be longer under special circumstances. See this News post for further information about decisions (e.g., desk reject rates, initial decision length). To avoid editorial rejections, please read editorials How to increase probability of manuscript acceptance and How to get your manuscript accepted where we described typical reasons for editorial rejects and the best practices to get your manuscript accepted.

3. Publication of Accepted Manuscripts

All accepted manuscripts are published as open access articles. Publishing in Cyberpsychology is free of charge (no article processing charge or submission fee).

The papers are typically published within 1 to 3 months since acceptance of the paper.

4. Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Cyberpsychology follows the standard for Ethics and Publication Malpractice set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors, reviewers, editors, and publisher are expected to conform to these standards.

To detect possible plagiarism in submitted articles, Cyberpsychology uses the Similarity check by iThenticate.

5. Submissions and Manuscript Preparation

This section summarizes the journal’s requirements regarding the format, structure, and other aspects of the submission. Please go through these instructions carefully. Not adhering to these requirements can lead to a desk rejection of the article without assessing its quality.

5.1. Length
To facilitate the review process and publication clarity, manuscripts should be no longer than necessary. The submissions should be up to 11,000 words, including abstract, references, tables, figures, and footnotes or endnotes (the length does not include appendices).

The length of articles can be exceeded when justified by the authors (e.g., in case of multiple studies, mixed methods, or in a deep qualitative investigation). Journal’s editors will critically review articles exceeding the recommended length. Authors may be asked to shorten the submission before sending it to external reviewers.

5.2. Manuscript structure and citations format
The American Psychological Association (APA) standards is used for publications, both in terms of publication structure (i.e., IMRaD) and citation style. Please follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7ed.). Manuscripts that do not follow the required APA style will be rejected directly by editors.

5.3. Reporting statistics
Follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7ed.) standards for reporting statistics, such as reporting exact p-values to three decimals, or not using a zero before a decimal when the statistic cannot be greater than 1.

5.4. Submission files
The required format for articles is MS Word. Do not submit your article, or its revision, as a pdf file.

Authors should prepare the following documents. All documents must be in English:

5.4.1. Title page(s) with full author information. This document will not be presented to the reviewers, and should include:

• Manuscript’s title
• All authors’ full names, their affiliations and email addresses, identification of the corresponding author and their full address
• Authors’ contributor roles – please use the relevant roles from the CRediT taxonomy (https://credit.niso.org/)
• The disclosure of interests’ statements
• The disclosure of AI usage
• Short biographical note for each author
• Acknowledgments

5.4.2. Anonymized main text. See the section “Anonymization of the manuscript” below for information on what to anonymize. The document should include:

• Title page(s). The title page should include the title of the article, the abstract, five to eight keywords, and the (anonymized) disclosure of interests and disclosure of AI usage. The title should be concise and accurately depict the manuscript’s content. The abstract should be unstructured (i.e., without subtitles), self-explanatory and reflect the study well. It should not exceed 250 words. The abstract should briefly introduce the study’s focus, design, sample, main findings, and its importance. The disclosure of interest should include any conflicts of interest that the authors might have. Please state these in an anonymized fashion in line with the double-blind review process. If the authors do not have any conflicts of interest, please state so (suggested formulation: “The authors do not have any conflicts of interest to report.”). For information about disclosure of AI usage, see section 6 below.
• The main text. Use Times New Roman font, size 12, with double spacing. The structure of the manuscript should correspond to the APA citation style. The main sections, with Level 1 Heading (bold, centered, title case), are: Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, and References. Level 2 Heading should be bold, left-aligned, and in title case; Level 3 Headings should be bold italic, left-aligned, and in title case; Level 4 headings should be indented, bold, in title case, ending with a period; and Level 5 Headings should be indented, bold italic, in title case, ending with a period. See https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/headings for more details. 
• Tables, figures, and other visual materials. All tables and images should be named and numbered in Arabic numerals. Place all tables and pictures in the text at the position where they should be placed. All common formats of tables, images, sound, and videos are accepted. Permissions for all formerly published figures such as tables and pictures are required. An author of an article should obtain written copyright permissions from their original holders.
• References list. All sources that are cited in the text must be included in the Reference list. The journal uses the APA citation style. See https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples for guidelines and references examples.
• Endnotes. Endnotes are preferred over footnotes. However, please limit the number of endnotes to a minimum.
• Appendices. Appendices are included at the end of the document. They are optional and do not count to the recommended manuscripts’ length. Unless it violates third-party rights, share the full list of items in the Appendix.

5.4.3. Supplementary materials. These materials are optional and can be included either via URL to an anonymized version of the documents on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io) or other platforms or as a separate supplementary document(s) in our system. We strongly encourage authors to share dataset(s), analyses scripts, supplementary tables / figures / audio files / video files, detailed methodology descriptions (e.g., experimental protocol), and other supplementary material that help transparency and replicability of their research. When sharing data and analysis scripts, we recommend using relative paths and TIER Protocol 4.0 (https://www.projecttier.org/tier-protocol/protocol-4-0).

5.5. Preregistered Studies

Make sure that the manuscript containing the preregistered study includes:

• URL to the anonymized version of the preregistration (this could be in the Introduction, Methods, or Results)
• A clear indication of which parts of the study were preregistered (e.g., data collection procedure, hypotheses, measures, tested model)
• A clear indication of which tested hypotheses were preregistered and which (if any) were not
• A clear (but concise) description of the differences between the preregistration and the manuscript (e.g., differences in conceptualization/measurement of a tested construct, in conducted analysis, in data collection), or an explicit statement that preregistered procedures were all followed (please note that detailed description of the changes should be included in 'transparent changes' document as part of OSF documents)

5.6. Anonymization of the Manuscript

5.6.1. Replacing identifying self-citations. “Identifying self-citations” are references from which a reviewer can recognize the authors of the submitted manuscript based on the context in which they are used. For instance, a sentence “In a previous study, we suggested that…. (Smith & Clark, 2010)“ contains an identifying self-citation. On the other hand, a sentence “In a study by Smith and Clark (2010), the authors suggest that…” contains a non-identifying citation, because the reviewer is unable to tell that Smith and Clark are the authors of the submitted manuscript. To ensure the double-blind review, identifying self-citations must be replaced. In-text citations of such identifying self-citations should be replaced by “AUTHOR, 2010” (e.g., “In a previous study, we suggested… (AUTHOR, 2010)”) and the source in the Reference list should be replaced by “AUTHOR (2010). Blinded for review purposes,” and placed at the beginning of the Reference list. Non-identifying self-citations, on the other hand, are not replaced and remain un-anonymized. 

We recommend using non-identifying self-citations where possible because the referred-to work may contain crucial information (e.g., for justification of the conducted study) for the reviewer to properly evaluate the submitted manuscript.

5.6.2. Replacing other identifying information. Other information that might lead reviewers to recognize the authors might include, for instance, the name of the institute or university where the study was conducted/approved, or the project name. Please, replace all such information (e.g., “the project (blinded for the review).”).

5.6.3. Removing author information from the document metadata. The document may keep the information about authorship in its metadata. See the guidelines for the removal in MS Word here.

6. Usage of AI

Cyberpsychology distinguishes two broad uses of AI tools: generative and assistive.

• Generative AI use entails generating content (e.g., text, figures, images, code) typically using large language models (e.g., ChatGPT, MS Copilot, Gemini, Midjourney, DALL-E). Any generative AI use must be disclosed; authors must clearly describe which AI tool was used and how it was used. We strongly recommend authors keep documentation of their AI use as they may be asked for details (e.g., specific prompts) during the review process.
• Assistive AI use typically entails grammar correction, editing enhancements, or code debugging. Common examples include using the integrated grammar-checking tools in MS Word, extensions like Grammarly, or assistive coding tools such as GitHub Copilot. This use of AI tools is common practice and generally does not need to be disclosed. 

In both types of use, authors remain fully responsible for the originality, integrity, and factual accuracy of all parts of the submitted manuscript, including those produced or modified by AI tools. Authors also remain liable for any breach of publication ethics. It is also the responsibility of the authors to ensure that their use of AI tools complies with the respective tools' terms of service.

AI tools cannot be listed as (co-)authors nor cited as authors because they do not meet the requirements for authorship, cannot take responsibility for the generated work, and cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts.

Statement on the Use of AI Services. Please include a section titled “Use of AI Services” on both the no-anonymized title page(s) and the anonymized main text. Place it under the declaration of Conflict of interest. This statement should briefly describe how you used AI services when producing the manuscript. You can use the following sample statements as they are or edit them to accurately describe your use.

Sample Statements:

• "We have not used any AI services to generate or edit any part of the manuscript or data."
• "We have used AI services, specifically [provide a list here], for grammar correction and minor style refinements. We carefully reviewed all suggestions from these services to ensure the original meaning and factual accuracy were preserved."
• "We have used AI services, specifically [provide a list here], to generate or edit parts of our analytical script. We carefully reviewed the script to ensure its correctness."
• „We have used AI services, specifically [provide a list here], to generate or edit parts of our stimuli. We carefully reviewed the script to ensure its correctness."

7. Language Requirements
It is the authors' responsibility to have their manuscripts proofread before submission. Submissions can be rejected due to language insufficiencies.

8. Manuscript Submission
Log in the journal's system, click on New submission and follow provided instructions.

If you already have a reviewer account, log in, go to „User“ tab, select „Edit profile“, scroll down, and tick the option „Roles: Author".

9. Publisher
The Journal is published by the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Joštova 10
602 00, Brno, Czech Republic, fax: +420 5 4949 1920, e-mail: info@cyberpsychology.eu