Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

The journal "Psychological Thought" publishes its papers in English or in Bulgarian in all areas of psychology. It is focused on the psychological theory and practice. The papers could be some original research articles, meta-analysis data, clinical reports, case studies, students' essays, and book reviews. This journal is designed for psychologists, researchers, and psychology students.

 

Section Policies

Editorial

Editors
  • Natasha Angelova
  • Stoil Mavrodiev
  • Rumen Stamatov
Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Theoretical Analyses

Editors
  • Natasha Angelova
  • Irina Roncaglia
Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Research Articles

Editors
  • Natasha Angelova
  • Marius Drugas
Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Clinical Cases and Studies

Editors
  • Natasha Angelova
  • Irina Roncaglia
  • George Varvatsoulias
Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Students' Essays

Editors
  • Natasha Angelova
  • Marius Drugas
Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Events, Meetings and Reports

Editors
  • Natasha Angelova
Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Unchecked Peer Reviewed

Book Reviews

Editors
  • Natasha Angelova
Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

Two reviewers per article, closed and blind peer-review.

Every reviewer has to be aware of the process of confidentiality and not to use the given duty to take any advantage of it.

Reviewers are not allowed to discuss unpublished manuscripts with colleagues or use the information in their own work.

The reviewers have to inform immediately the editor or publisher of any actual or potential competing interests that may impair the review process.

If there are any impairs to the author`s anonymity, the reviewers have to notify the editor or publisher. It is not allowed any kind of revealing the author`s anonymity.

All the reviewers have to behave fairly and not judgmental. 

Read more https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers

 

Publication Frequency

Psychological Thought is published twice per year, namely in April and October. Papers’ submission can occur at any time, throughout the year.

 

Call for submissions for special issues:

Vol. 18, i.1 and i.2

Dear  Authors,

From 1st October 2024 until 15th February 2025, you are very welcome to submit your manuscripts on the range of the topic: The new generations: Challenges for School Psychology and Psychological Counseling. The guest editor is Assoc. Prof. Marius Drugas, ph.d.

The 18 volume, issue 1, will be released as usual in April 2025.

For volume 18, issue 2, the guest editor will be Emelina Zaimova-Tsaneva, ph.d. The issue topic is "Perspectives and ethical challenges in contemporary criminal and forensic psychology".

The manuscripts are expected between 1st May and 15th August 2025.
The 18 volume, issue 2, will be released in October 2025.

 

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Psychological Thought also charges no author fee for submission or publication of papers.

 

Archiving

This journal ensures the long-term availability of its contents by partnering with CLOCKSS.

CLOCKSS system has permission to ingest, preserve, and serve this Archival Unit.

 

Preprint Policy

As part of PSYCT's submission process, authors are required to confirm that the submission has not been previously published, nor has been submitted (or will be submitted while under consideration at PSYCT).

A preprint is a draft of a scholarly manuscript made available to the public prior to publication (after passing the whole peer-review process and final acceptance) in a peer-reviewed journal.

Because the journal is a double-blind peer-reviewed, it is not allowed for the authors to reveal their identity in any way.

See also http://blog.psyarxiv.com/2016/09/19/psyarxiv-faq/ and https://psyarxiv.com/

Conference presentations, posters, etc. are considered preprints, provided they do not appear in a published conference proceeding.

After a manuscript has been published in PSYCT we suggest linking to the final article version, using the assigned article DOI in this way: https://doi.org/DOI, e.g.

https://doi.org/10.5964/psyct.v2i1.123

PSYCT uses Crossref for making your research outputs easy to be found and cited. 

Read more at https://www.crossref.org/ 

 

For improving your writing, PSYCT uses a digital editor tool enhanced by artificial intelligence and natural language processing.

Read more at https://www.grammarly.com/premium

 

 

Publication Ethics

  • Responsibility of Authors

All Authors have to ensure a draft of their manuscript is prepared for the blind-review process; additionally, they have to upload to the OJS of Psychological Thought a cover letter and other materials considered relevant to the current manuscript. 

Authors have to submit only works that are entirely original and reflect their own scientific approach to the discussed topic. Some raw data from the reported research have to be available. All the information in the submitted material must be accurately described and reflect the collected data. All mentioned works from other Authors have to be properly quoted and cited as it could be perceived as a case of plagiarism or similarity that is not accepted in Psychological Thought. Manuscripts that describe the same research results in more than one journal are not considered for publication in the journal.

Authors are expected to disclose their financial conflict of interest and declare their competing interests and grants.

  •   Responsibility of Reviewers

Any manuscript is assigned to at least two blind-reviewers, often to more if the previous two have opposite opinions. If any impairs to the Author`s anonymity emerge, the reviewers must immediately notify the editors to take measures accordingly. Reviewers check the clarity of language and stylistic used in information and data description. They evaluate and fill in a review form where assess the paper structure, clarity, and depth of the discussed topic and referenced literature, as well as the appropriativeness of the methodology used, contribution of the author`s research questions to the specific field, conclusion, and the practical implications of the carried study. Reviewers could send additional comments and suggestions to the authors using the OJS of Psychological Thought without revealing their personality.

Reviewers are anonymous for the authors and are not allowed to contact the authors and introduce themselves.

  • Editors` Duties and Responsibilities

The editors and editor-in-chief (EIC) have to decide the manuscript's appropriativeness to the journal`s scope and aims. EIC checks the manuscript for any similarities with other works or plagiarism of research using Turnitin`s product iThenticate. A report of the checked manuscript is to be uploaded to the Author`s account. If any similarities emerged, the Authors are asked to make changes in order to proceed further with the double-blind peer-review process.

Editors and EIC assign manuscripts to independent and anonymous reviewers.

EIC reads the reviewer's evaluations, comments, and suggestions and decides whether or not to publish the manuscript. EIC is responsible when considering a manuscript for publication or not to ensure that there is no discrimination based on race, gender, nationality, religion, sexual or ideological prejudice.

As authors or when contributed to a scholarly work, editors and journal staff have to declare their competing interest and their works undergo a fairly peer-reviewed process as it is for all other manuscript submitters.  


 

Plagiarism Screening

PSYCT uses Turnitin`s product iThenticate for screening and checking plagiarism. Read more at https://www.turnitin.com/products/ithenticate.

Similarity Check, a multi-publisher initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality. Similarity Check uses the iThenticate software, which checks submissions against millions of published research papers (the Similarity Check database), documents on the web, and other relevant sources. These submitted papers are not retained in the Similarity Check system after they have been checked.

Read more at Crossresf's Similarity Check & Reseachers page.

Crossref Similarity Check logo

 

Corrections and Retractions

In accordance with generally accepted standards of scholarly publishing, PSYCT does not alter articles after publication:

“Articles that have been published should remain extant, exact and unaltered to the maximum extent possible” (STM, 2006. Preservation of the objective record of science).

In cases of serious errors or (suspected) misconduct PSYCT publishes corrections and retractions (expressions of concern).

Corrections

In order to better the readability of the texts, corrections might be made only in the following cases: minor layout changes/fixes; typos or grammatical issues that are in the main body of the manuscript and do not affect the content or meaning of a sentence; broken internal links; minor fixes in references as long as the reference stays mainly the same.

Notice: A corrigendum is usually required when the corrections change the meaning or if the typo is in the title, abstract, or in the author`s name.

In cases of serious errors that affect the article in a material way (but do not fully invalidate its results) or significantly impair the reader’s understanding or evaluation of the article, PSYCT publishes a correction note linked to the published article. The published article will be left unchanged.

Retractions (Expressions of Concern)

In accordance with the “Retraction Guidelines” by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) PSYCT will retract a published article if

  • there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation),
  • the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission, or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication),
  • it constitutes plagiarism,
  • it reports unethical research.

An article is retracted by publishing a retraction notice that is linked to or replaces the retracted article. PSYCT will make any effort to clearly identify a retracted article as such.

If an investigation is underway that might result in the retraction of an article, PSYCT may choose to alert readers by publishing an expression of concern.

 

Cookie Policy

A “cookie” is a string of information, often a unique identifier, that is stored on a visitor’s computer and can be used to keep track of a user while interacting with the website.

There are two types of cookie:

  • permanent cookies, which remain on a visitor’s computer for a certain, pre-determined duration (days, months, or even years)
  • session cookies, which are stored temporarily in the computer memory and disappear when the visitor closes the web browser.

On this website, a session cookie is used to store a session ID on your computer. This ID is required to identify logged-in users and give them access to their user pages. No permanent cookies are used.

You can disable the use of cookies in the security settings of your web browser. If you have deactivated cookies you can still view the PSYCT website and read the articles. However, if you want to log in, e.g., to submit a manuscript, you have to enable session cookies to be saved on your computer during your visit to the website.