Instructions to Authors
General considerations
Psihoterapija is a peer-reviewed journal intended for publication of manuscripts from the field of psychotherapy. All manuscripts should be written in Croatian and in English.
All submitted manuscripts undergo the same evaluation process regardless of the country of origin, as long as they satisfy and follow the criteria described in the Author Instructions and are not beyond the scope of the Journal.
The editorial board is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the manuscripts, which are the sole responsibility of the author.
The journal publishes the following types of articles: editorials, original scientific papers, review articles, professional articles, case reports, short communications, commentaries, preliminary communications, conference notes, letters to the editor, and reviews of
books, articles, and events of interest.
All manuscripts must include a special title page with the correct title of the article, the subtitle if present, an author list, the basic bibliographical information about the authors (title, affiliated institution and department, city, country), and the e-mail, residential
address, work place (institution and department), city, and the country of the lead author of the article.
All the authors should also provide the ORCHID ID (please check the following website: https://orcid.org/register). The e-mail address will be published in the final version of the article if it is accepted.
All articles except editorials, letters to the editor, short communications, commentaries, and reviews must provide an abstract on a separate page, no longer than 150 words and written both in Croatian and English.
The same page must list three to five key words in both Croatian and English.
The article may contain an acknowledgment at the end of the text. Rules for writing references, tables, and figures are listed in the Article structure section below
Ethical codex
For all manuscripts published in the journal, it is assumed that the publication has been approved by all co-authors and that no part of the article has been published in other journals or entered the publication process in other journals prior to publication in Psihoterapija. The editorial board reserves the right to reprint previously published texts with the agreement of the authors and publishers. If an article has been published in Psihoterapija, it may not be published elsewhere without the permission of the editorial
board and the publisher.
Conflict of interest
The Psihoterapija Journal encourages all authors and reviewers to report any potential conflict of interests to ensure transparency during the preparation and review of manuscripts. According to the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journals Editors), “A conflict of interest exists if the author’s (or that of the institution in
which the author is employed) financial (employment, stock holdings, fees), academic, intellectual, or personal connections inappropriately influence their decisions” (the complete explanation is available on the ICMJE website: http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/).
Open access
The Psihoterapija Journal is an open-access journal, and its contents are available for free on the journal website.
Publication fees
The submission and publication of articles is free of charge.
Editorial process
Every manuscript submitted to the editorial process of the Psihoterapija Journal is read by the Editor in Chief. If the article does not satisfy the criteria described in the Author Instructions, the Editor in Chief returns the manuscript to the author. The manuscripts that satisfy the criteria are sent for further evaluation. The average time for a decision on a manuscript to be reached is approximately 8 weeks. The time allocated to the authors for manuscript revision is 4 weeks.
Review
Articles that are in the spirit of the contents of the Journal and written according to the Author Instructions are sent for review. The Psihoterapija Journal favours the double-blind form of review, which means that both the reviewer and the author remain unknown to each other. It is the position of the Journal that this form of review ensures objectivity during the manuscript evaluation process. All manuscripts receive at least two reviews.
The Psihoterapija Journal advises the reviewers to adhere to the Reviewer Instructions available on the Journal webpage.
Article formatting
The article should not be longer than 20 A4 pages and must be written in size 11 standard font, with double spacing and 2.5 cm margins. This applies to the text without the references, tables, and figures. If the article has a larger number of pages, the permission of the editor-in-chief is required. The editors reserve the right to introduce necessary changes to the language and style of the text that are required for it to conform to the uniform standard of the journal.
Article structure
When preparing a manuscript for the journal:
- Write the text in Microsoft Word, continuously and in the same font – Using the Normal style without using emphasis in the text, other than bolding and italics as required;
- Write using double spacing (under Format – Paragraph – Line spacing, set the spacing to 1.5 lines) to allow room for editing;
- References to figures or tables should be marked in the text (in parenthesis) to allow them to be inserted in the proper place during journal layout;
- Tables should be formatted within the Word document where they appear in the text, while also citing the reference to the table within the basic text – if the table is submitted as a figure (i.e. it has not been built in Word), the instructions for figures apply;
Figures are submitted separately:
- As photographs, slides or other high-quality images (NOT photocopies!) with a clearly marked ordinal number that is cited in the text, as well as the title of the chapter to which they apply;
- Or in digital form as a .jpg or .tiff document with a minimal resolution of 300 DPI at the desired figure size; - photographs must have enough contrast and if possible be submitted on glossy paper or as high-quality scans (300 DPI/inch and at the desired
size in .tiff or .jpg format); - If the photographs are taken using digital cameras, the picture quality must be adjusted to standard (the most common setting) – such pictures can be submitted as the original files downloaded from the camera (usually in .jpg format);
- Drawings: if they have not been drawn with ink on white drawing or tracing paper, the publisher will draw them on the computer, but the drawing must be clearly visible;
- Photographs or drawings taken from other sources must be submitted along with the permission of the author/publisher.
Literature should be referenced as follows:
Biomedical publications predominantly use the socalled Vancouver system, in which the literature is listed with ordinal numbers in the order it is cited in the text. For articles with more than six authors, list the first six authors and add “et al”.
Examples of the most common literature citations (from the book Citing Medicine that adheres to the standard of the US National Library of Medicine and corresponds to the Vancouver system):
1) Original scientific paper
a) Less than six authors:
Petitti DB, Crooks VC, Buckwalter JG, Chiu V. Bloodpressure levels before dementia. Arch Neurol. 2005 Jan;62(1):112-6.
b) More than six authors:
Hallal AH, Amortegui JD, Jeroukhimov IM, Casillas J, Schulman CI, Manning RJ, et al. Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography accurately detects common bile duct stones in resolving gall stone pancreatitis. J Am CollSurg. 2005 Jun;200(6):869-75.
c) Online journals:
Terauchi Y, Takamoto I, Kubota N. Glucokinase and IRS-2 are required for compensatory beta cell hyperplasia in response to high-fat diet-induced insulin resistance. J Clininvest (internet) 2007;117:246-57. http://www.jci.org/cgi/ciontent/full/117/1/246.
2) Books
a) Authored books
Jenkins PF. Making sense of the chest x-ray: a hands-on guide. New York: Oxford University Press; 2005. pp. 194.
b) Chapter in a book
Whiteside TL, Heberman RB. Effectors of immunity and rationale for immunotherapy. In: Kufe DW, Pollock RE, Weichselbaum RR, Bast RC Jr, Gansler
TS, Holland JF, Frei E 3rd, eds. Cancer medicine 6. Hamilton (ON): BC DeckerInc; 2003. Pp. 221-8.
3) An article in a conference article collection:
a) The collection has been published as a book
Leonard KJ, Winkelman W. Developing electronic patient records: employing interactive methods to ensure patient involvement. In: Ferreira de Oliveira MJ, ed. Accessibility and quality of health services. Proceedings of the 28th Meeting
of the European Working Group on Operational Research Applied to Health Services (ORAHS); 2002 Jul 28-Aug 2; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Frankfurt (Germany): Peter Lang; 2004. Pp. 241-55.
b) Collection with no book title
Rice AS, Farquhar-Smith WP, Bridges D, Brooks JW. Canabinoids and pain. In: Dostorovsky JO, Carr DB, Koltzenburg M, eds. Proceedings of the 10th World
Congress on Pain; 2002 Aug 17-22; San Diego, CA. Seattle (WA): IASP Press; 2003. pp. 437-68
Organizational components of the article
- Editorials should not contain more than 750 words and are submitted without abstract or key words sections;
- Original scientific papers should be structured according to the IMRAD model. The results should be described with the statistical significance shown to three decimal points (e.g. “P = 0.015”). Other values should be shown to two decimal points;
- Short communications are texts limited to 750 words or less;
- Preliminary communications consist of an abstract, methods section, and preliminary results in the IMRAD structure;
- Review articles are overviews of the literature published on a given topic. The structure should contain an introduction, review of the literature, and commentary and conclusion sections;
- Professional articles consist of an introduction, professional problem, discussion, and conclusion;
- Case reports should consist of an introduction, overview of the topic, case report, discussion, and conclusion;
- Conference notes take the form of abstracts no longer than 250 words;
- Letters to the editor should not be longer than 1000 words;
- Reviews of books, articles, and events should not be longer than 1000 words.
If a text is longer than the word count specified above, the editorial boards should be consulted.
Language editing
All texts will undergo language editing to consistently conform to publisher standards and will undergo copy editing after journal layout is complete;
- Entering the changes (language corrections) specified during editing can be performed by either the authors or the publisher;
- Journal layout – the publisher will structure the journal layout in agreement with the professional editor/ /1st author in the agreed-upon book form, and the authors will receive their texts for final viewing (imprimatur) after journal layout is complete;
- The authors may mark small changes on their copy, but the text can no longer be added to or changed significantly, as this may disrupt the journal layout.
