Types of Papers Encouraged

The North American Journal of Psychology publishes scientific papers that are of general interest to psychologists and other social scientists. Papers may encompass a wide variety of topics, methods, and strategies. Field studies, review papers, meta-analyses, qualitative studies, laboratory experiments, and correlational studies all have a place in NAJP. However, as a general rule, top priority will be given to those papers in which authors have done a good job of ruling out alternative explanations for their conclusions, and in which they have demonstrated relevance and interest to a broad audience.

It is our belief that many good scientific papers are rejected for invalid reasons. Some journals reject up to 90% of their submissions because they don’t have space. Furthermore, studies of the review process strongly suggest that not all of the lucky 10% are better papers than those that get rejected. In our view many of those rejected papers are meritorious with need for only minor revisions.

Papers are welcome within virtually all areas of psychology, and manuscripts that span more than one. Our readers should be able to obtain a “snapshot” of the field of psychology in each issue.

Especially welcome are:

  • Papers with real-world implications
  • Topics that are “unpopular” in other journals
  • Papers on the teaching of psychology
  • Those that bridge the gap between the behavioral sciences
  • Brief reports with preliminary data
  • Psychometric data on psychological measures
  • Well done replications, even if the results are negative