Manuscript submission

New manuscripts are submitted exclusively via the online submission system (the link "Submit a new manuscript" in My Account box on the right). In order to submit an article the author must be a registered user (and signed in to her/his account).

Revisions are also submitted exclusively via the online submission system by clicking on the "Submit revision" link that appears in the table with all of the submitted manuscripts on the page "My submissions" (under the category "Manuscripts with decision").

For a successful submission prepare the following information and files:

Information about all authors of the manuscript: name, surname(s), title, affiliation/name of the institution, the address of the institution, and e-mail.
Manuscript type (e.g., scientific empirical or theoretical manuscript, professional manuscript etc.).
Classification of the manuscript regarding the related fields of psychology (e.g., clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology etc.).
Manuscript title in English and Slovene language* (not more than 170 characters with spaces).
Running head in the language of the manuscript (as short as possible).
Abstract in English and Slovene language* (not more than 1900 characters with spaces).
Keywords in English and Slovene language* (not more than five).
The main manuscript file. Although we have no strict upper limit, our recommendation is that the length of the manuscript should not exceed 45.000 characters with spaces (excluding tables, figures and references). This file should also include the manuscript title, abstract and keywords.
Optional files with tables and/or figures, appendices, individual figures, photos etc.

* The authors who do not speak Slovene and do not have other means for obtaining a quality translation should ask the editor for help. In such cases, enter the English manuscript title, abstract and keywords into the fields, intended for Slovene title, abstract and keywords.

Copyright Agreement

After the manuscript has been accepted for publication, the authors have to fill out and sign the Copyright Agreement. The signed agreement ensures that the publisher has the authors' permission to publish the manuscript and represents an agreement between the authors and the publisher about sharing the copyright to the manuscript. The agreement can be printed and sent to the editor by ordinary mail or scanned and sent to the editor's e-mail.

Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement

Please carefully read the publication ethics and publication malpractice statement before submitting a manuscript.

Manuscript types ▲ To top

Papers should be written either in Slovene or English language. Scientific papers should be written in economic, intelligible, clear, and concise style. An empirical paper should report original research, presenting all the standard elements of scientific investigation: introduction, method (with standard subchapters, i.e., participants, instruments, procedure), results, discussion, and references). A theoretic paper is expected to examine in detail and critically analyze selected models and/or theories, and empirical data are described only if they are directly related to the theory. A review paper is expected to evaluate previously published work and is typically composed of the following sections: problem definition, summary of previous research, explanation of subject matter inter-relations, contradictions, problems, and suggestions for further research. Meta-analytic study is a particular type of article, based on the established meta-analysis methodology, comparing different empirical investigations addressing a common problem.

Manuscript structure ▲ To top

The manuscript must contain the English and Slovenian version of (the authors who do not speak Slovene and do not have other means for obtaining a quality translation should ask the editor for help):

the title (not more than 170 characters with spaces)
abstract (not more than 1900 characters with spaces; recommended length is 150 to 200 words)
keywords (not more than five)

Because all articles undergo a "double-blind" peer review, the submitted files should not contain any information that could be used to identify the authors (e.g., names and surnames, affiliations, addresses etc.). This information should also be removed from the files' metadata (the authors who do not know how to remove such data should include a comment about that in the process of manuscript submission). All such data is provided by the authors during the manuscript submission process.

A typical empirical paper should be written in accordance with the following guidelines:

Introduction should not be too extensive, yet it should provide the necessary conceptual framework.
The problem should be clearly and consistently defined, following logically from the introduction. It should be of sufficient relevance and novelty, whereas the new dilemmas opened should be emphasized.
Research hypotheses and variables of interest should be concisely defined; the observation and measurement procedures should be precisely described. A short but accurate description of psychological instruments applied and methodology in general (research design, selection of participants) is mandatory.
Application of statistical techniques and the results should be described in sufficient detail. The tables and figures may only contain essential information (if necessary, details can be presented separately in appendix).
Discussion and interpretation of the findings should refer to the established concepts and theories, regardless of whether they are supported by the findings or not.
Whenever possible, statements should be supported by citing work and findings of other authors, and the list of references should be included at the end of the paper. For ordinary scientific and professional articles, the number of references must not exceed 50.

In general, we recommend the authors to consult the 7th edition of the APA Manual or numerous online summaries of the APA manuscript preparation guidelines. The manuscripts that will not meet the technical standards as defined by the APA Manual and these instructions will be immediately rejected or reverted to draft.

Manuscript formatting ▲ To top

General instructions

Manuscripts should be prepared in line with the 7th edition of the APA Manual. In some cases the Horizons of Psychology guidelines deviate from the APA ones – all such instances are documented in these instructions.

The manuscript must be prepared in one of the widespread used word processors (such as Microsoft Word) and must be saved in one of the standard file formats (.docx, .doc, or .rtf).
The manuscript must be typeset in Times New Roman font (12pt), aligned to the left and written with a 1.5 lines spacing (single line spacing for tables). Pages must be numbered (bottom of page).
Individual chapters must have clear and unnumbered titles (do not use more than three title levels).
Paragraphs must be indented (with the use of indentation – do not use the tabulator or spaces for creating indents). Do not separate the paragraphs by a blank line. Use a 1 cm left indent for the first line of a paragraph. Insert a blank line before and after (sub)titles.
Do not mark the locations of tables and figures (e.g., Insert Table 1 around here). Each table and figure must have at least one cross-reference in the text.

Title page

There is no need for a title page, because the information that is usually included to the title page is provided by the authors during the manuscript submission process.

Tables and figures

Tables and figures should not be included to the main manuscript file – they should be prepared in a separate file and in such order as they appear in the manuscript. Each table or figure should be on a separate page. All tables and figures must be accompanied by a title, formatted in line with the APA guidelines.

Tables should be self-explanatory. Avoid abbreviations – if used, define them in the notes under the table. Also avoid excess digits and excess ink in general. Where applicable, provide units of measurement for all numbers.
Tables must be prepared in line with the APA guideliness. We allow minor deviations if these deviations do not hinder the readability of the table or if the author's formatting improves the readability compared to the formatting suggested by the APA guidelines.
Single spacing should be used when formatting the tables. Include a title above the table (e.g. Table 1. Correlation matrix ...). The table title should be one sentence without the ending dot. All additional information or specific notes should be provided in the notes under the table.
Figures include graphs, charts, diagrams, photographs and illustrations.
Figures should be made flawlessly and make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork. Since Horizons of Psychology are now an online journal only, we conditionally allow the use of colors. We still do not recommend the use of colors if such use does not add any additional insight or if it does not improve readability. Restrict the use of colors to figures, in which the information provided by colors is necessary (e.g., figures obtained by analyses of fMRI data, heatmaps etc.).
Avoid pie charts, 3-dimensional graphs, and excess ink in general. Make sure that the axes on graphs are labeled, including units of measurement.
If you prepared your graphs in Microsoft Excel, paste the graphs into the word document as an Excel object, so it can be edited – do not paste them as pictures, bitmaps or metafiles. If you prepared your figures in some other program (or the figure is a photograph or a scanned document), submit such figure as a separate file in one of the standard formats (e.g., jpg, png, tiff, pdf).
The figure title (e.g. Figure 1. The results of ...) should be placed above the figure and should be formatted in the same way as table titles (this also applies to comments to the figure/table, which should be placed under the figure/table.
If a table or a figure is reproduced from another source, authors are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder and proof of permission must be uploaded at the time of submission.

Footnotes and endnotes

In general, please avoid the use of footnotes and endnotes. Use them only in cases when the inclusion of a note in the text would substantially disturb the flow of the text.

Some guidelines for reporting results

Use italics for all statistical symbols and algebraic variables for which we do not use Greek letters (e.g., N, M, SD, r, Cohen's d etc.).
The results of statistical tests should be accompanied by appropriate estimates of effect size (and confidence intervals in tables and figures).
Report confidence intervals, rather than standard errors, when possible.
Use the word "trend" when describing a test for trend (usually when you have time series data). Avoid the term "trend" when referring to p-values near but not below 0.05. In such instances, simply report a difference and the confidence interval of the difference (if appropriate) with or without the p-value.
When testing the fit of a certain variable to a normal distribution, please do not rely solely on frequently used statistical tests (e.g., Kolmogorov-Smirnov or Shapiro-Wilk test), but also take other available information into account, such as histograms, P-P or Q-Q plots, skewness and kurtosis measures. When interpreting the results of a test of normality (or any other procedure for hypothesis testing), consider the statistical power of the test.

Citing and references ▲ To top

Citations in the text and the list of references should follow the style used by the American Psychological Association – consult the APA Manual, 7th edition, or numerous online summaries of APA style (e.g. Purdue OWL – APA Style).

Authors do not have to add the DOIs to the references, because they are added by the technical editor in the production phase of the accepted manuscript.

For ordinary scientific and professional articles, the number of references must not exceed 50. More than 50 references are allowed only for scientific review articles.