Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
Author Guidelines
About the Journal
Aims and Scope
As the volume of literature in the fields of psychotherapy and psychosomatics continues to grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep abreast of new and important developments, and to have independent, critical views on key clinical issues concerned with assessment and treatment of mental disorders. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics has progressively increased its reputation for independence, originality and methodological rigor. It has anticipated and developed new lines of research concerned with psychosomatic medicine, psychotherapy research and psychopharmacology. The journal features editorials and reviews on current and controversial issues; innovations in assessment and treatment; original investigations; literature updates; and a lively correspondence section. It has become a unique and vital reference to current research and practice, the home of innovative thinking at the interface between medical and behavioral sciences.Article Types
Research Articles
Research Articles report on primary research. They must describe significant and original observations. Consideration for publication is based on the article’s originality, novelty, and scientific soundness, and the appropriateness of its analysis.
Research Articles are reports of original work. Authors are asked to follow the EQUATOR Network for Research Articles.
Prior approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or an Ethics Review Committee is required for all investigations involving human subjects.
More information is available in the downloadable Research Article sample below.
Documents
Clinical Notes (DOC, 47 KB)
Innovations (DOC, 47 KB)
Standard Research Article (DOC, 47 KB)
Authors may wish to submit one of the following Research Articles:
Standard Research Articles: They should represent original research in clinical science and contain a 250-word structured abstract. Online supplementary material (information below) is permitted.
Innovations: Encompass both original investigations breaking new grounds or novel conceptualizations of clinical issues. They should have an abstract up to 250 words. Online supplementary material (information below) is permitted.
Clinical Notes: Abridged reports (no more than 2000 words of text and 3 Tables and/or Figures) on clinical issues. An abstract of no more than 250 words is required. Online supplementary material (information below) is permitted.
Review Articles
Review Articles are considered reviews of research or summary articles. They are state-of-the-art papers covering a current topic by experts in the field. They should give evidence on and provide answers to a well-defined aspect or question in a particular area. Review Articles must include a critical discussion of the reported data and give a clear conclusion with potential impacts on the standard of care.
More information is available in the downloadable Review Article sample below.
Documents
Standard Review Article (DOC, 39.5 KB)
Innovations (DOC, 40 KB)
Authors may wish to submit one of the following Review Articles:
Standard Review Articles: They are considered critical reviews of research or summary articles and should contain a 250-word unstructured abstract. Online supplementary material (information below) is permitted.
Innovations: Encompass both original investigations breaking new grounds or novel conceptualizations of clinical issues. They should have an abstract up to 250 words. Online supplementary material (information below) is permitted.
Systematic Review
Systematic Reviews are literature reviews focused on a research question that synthesizes all high-quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic Reviews should be presented in the Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion format. The subject must be clearly defined. The objective of a Systematic Review should be to arrive at an evidence-based conclusion. The Methods section should give a clear indication of the literature search strategy, data extraction procedure, grading of evidence, and kind of analysis used. We strongly encourage authors to comply with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.
More information is available in the downloadable Systematic Review sample below.
Documents
Systematic Review (DOC, 45 KB)
An abstract of no more than 250 words is required.
Editorials
Editorials are discussions related to a specific article or issue written by an editor or other member of the publication staff.
More information is available in the downloadable Editorial sample below.
Documents
Editorial (DOC, 40 KB)
They are usually invited by the editor and provide comments on specifically selected articles published in 'Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics' or general issues. Unsolicited contributions are also welcome. Please send suggestions to the editor. No abstract is required.
Letters
Letters are encouraged if they directly concern articles recently published in the journal. If accepted, the editors reserve the right to submit such letters to the authors of the articles concerned prior to publication, in order to permit them to respond in the same issue of the journal.
In exceptional cases, Letters may also address data published in another journal or general subjects related to matters discussed in the journal.
More information is available in the downloadable Letter sample below.
Documents
Letter (DOC, 39.5 KB)
Correspondence (DOC, 39.5 KB)
Authors may wish to submit one of the following Letters:
Correspondence: They concern an article in this journal and should not exceed 500 words of text plus a maximum of 10 references.
Letters: They may be concerned with preliminary or pilot findings, case reports, secondary analyses of published trials, novel hypotheses. This type of letter should not exceed 1000 words of text, may only have one table or figure, plus a maximum of 10 references. No abstract is required. Online supplementary material (information below) is permitted.
Contact Information
Should you have any problems with your submission, please contact the editorial office:Fiammetta Cosci, MD, Ph.D.
fiammetta.cosci@unifi.it
or
Elena Tomba, Ph.D.
elena.tomba@unibo.it
Departimento di Psicologia
Università di Bologna
Viale Berti Pichat 5
I–40127 Bologna (Italia)
Conditions
General Conditions
Only papers written in English are considered. The articles should be comprehensible to a reader who is fluent in English and should be edited prior to submission to ensure that standard English grammar and usage are observed. Use of a professional language editing service prior to submission can help avoid delays with the review process.All manuscripts are subject to editorial review.
The presentation of manuscripts should follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Karger journals aim to adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines.
By submitting an article for publication, the authors agree to the transfer of the copyright to the publisher upon acceptance. Accepted papers become the permanent property of the Journal and may not be reproduced by any means, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.
The Submission Statement with original (hand-written) signatures is to be provided upon submitting the paper. If it is not possible to collect all signatures on a single document, individual copies should be provided for each author. Manuscripts may be accompanied by a cover letter in addition to the Submission Statement if additional information is to be communicated to the Editor(s)-in-Chief.
Karger recommends the use of original images and materials whenever possible. If a submitted manuscript contains third-party copyright material(s), it is the authors’ sole responsibility to obtain permission from the relevant copyright holder for reusing the material(s), including any associated licensing fee. The copyright and usage information needs to be checked carefully to avoid copyright infringement.
Most publishers offer a quick and easy way to clear permissions for their content via the built-in website application RightsLink or via https://www.copyright.com/get-permissions/. Another widely used licensing tool is PLSClear. Please check the publishers’ websites for the available options and user instructions.
Statements
All submitted manuscripts must contain a Statement of Ethics and a Disclosure Statement after the main body of the text, but before the reference list.
Statement of Ethics
Published research must comply with internationally-accepted standards for research practice and reporting. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editors believe that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework, and concerns raised after publication may lead to a correction, retraction, or expression of concern in line with COPE guidelines.
Studies involving human subjects (including research on identifiable human material and data) must have been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee and with appropriate participants’ informed consent in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration.
In the manuscript, authors should specify the name of the ethics committee or other relevant authority who approved the study protocol and provide the reference number where appropriate. If ethics approval was not required, or if the study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee who made that decision).
For all research involving human subjects, written informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent/legal guardian where appropriate ) and a statement detailing this should appear in the manuscript. For studies involving vulnerable participants or participants at risk of potential coercion, detailed information regarding the steps taken to ensure informed consent must be provided. If consent was not obtained, please specify why and whether this was approved by the ethics committee.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism, whether intentional or not, is not tolerated in Karger’s journals. Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, copying or reusing text, ideas, images or data from other sources without clear attribution, and goes against the principle of academic publishing. Karger may subject any manuscripts to a plagiarism-detection software and if the software raises any concerns, there will be a follow-up investigation in line with COPE guidelines. At any stage of peer-review, publication, or post-publication, if plagiarism is detected the manuscript may be rejected, corrected or retracted, as appropriate, and we reserve the right to inform the authors' institutions about any plagiarism detected. We expect that our editors and reviewers will inform the journal about any concerns related to plagiarism.Further Conditions
Peer Review
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics is a peer-reviewed journal that uses a single-blind peer review system. Our aim is to provide authors with timely and constructive feedback regarding their submitted manuscript. The Editor(s)-in-Chief and the international editorial board ensure a thorough and fair peer review process and the highest scientific publishing standards. Editors guide the peer review process for papers in their areas of expertise.
During online submission, you may be asked to provide the contact details, including e-mail addresses, of potential reviewers of your paper. Reviewers must have a recent publication record in the area of the submitted paper, must not have published with the authors in the previous three years, and must not be from the same institution as the authors.
The Editor(s)-in-Chief is/are responsible for maintaining a high-quality peer review of papers submitted to the journal. Their decision concerning the acceptance or rejection of submitted manuscripts is final.
Article Preparation
Formatting
The preferred word processing program for manuscripts is Microsoft Word. Page and line numbering should be activated, and the level of subheadings should be indicated clearly.
Footnotes should be avoided. When essential, they should be numbered consecutively and appear at the foot of the appropriate page.
Abbreviations (with the exception of those clearly well established in the field) should be explained when they are first used both in the abstract and in the main text.
Units of measurement should be expressed in SI units wherever possible.
Generic names of drugs (first letter: lowercase) should be used whenever possible. Registered trade names (first letter: uppercase) should be marked with the superscript registration symbol ® or ™ when they are first mentioned.
The manuscript, tables, figures, and Submission Statement must be submitted in separate files.
For further technical specifications, including those regarding tables, figures, and illustrations, please refer to the Karger website.
Further Formatting Instructions
Tables and figures must be numbered (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2) and submitted as separate files. Tables require a heading and figures a legend, which much provide sufficient information for either to stand alone. Each figure and table must be cited in the text numerically. Tables should be in Word format. When possible, group several illustrations in a block for reproduction (max. size 180 x 223 mm). B/w half-tone and color figures must have a final resolution of 300 dpi after scaling to final size, line drawings 1200 dpi. Color figures must be in RGB format. All figures should be in a common format such as PSD, TIF, PNG EPS or WMF. Vector graphics should be in PPT, AI or EPS format.
Manuscript Arrangement
Title Page
The first page should contain a short and concise title plus a running head of no more than 80 characters. Abbreviations should be avoided.
Below the title, list all the authors’ names as outlined in the article sample, which can be downloaded under Article Types. Each listed author must have an affiliation, which comprises the department, university, or organization and its location, city, state/province (if applicable), and country.
Place the full postal address of the corresponding author at the bottom of the first page, including at least one telephone number and e-mail address.
Keywords relevant to the article should be listed below the corresponding author information.
Body
Please refer to the Article Types section of the Guidelines for Authors for information on the relevant article structure, including maximum word counts and downloadable samples.Online Supplementary Material
Online Supplementary Material may be used to enhance a publication and increase its visibility on the Web. Supplementary files (directly relevant but not essential to the conclusions of the paper) will undergo editorial review and should be submitted in a separate file with the original manuscript and with all subsequent submissions. The Editor(s) reserve(s) the right to limit the scope and length of supplementary material. Supplementary material must meet production quality standards for publication without the need for any modification or editing and should not exceed 10 Mb in size. Figures and tables must have titles and legends, and all files must be supplied separately and named clearly. Acceptable files and formats are Word or PDF files, Excel spreadsheets (if the data cannot be converted properly into a PDF file), and multimedia files (MPEG, AVI, or QuickTime formats). All supplementary material should be referred to in the main text. A DOI number will be assigned to supplementary material, and it will be hosted online at https://karger.figshare.com under a CC BY license. Supplementary material may incur a charge. See Cost of Publication for more information.References
In-Text Citation
References in the text should be identified using Arabic numerals [in square brackets].
The reference list should not be alphabetized, but the references should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Material submitted for publication but not yet accepted should be labelled as ‘unpublished’ and may not be included in the reference list. Other pre-published or related materials with a DOI, e.g. preprint manuscripts, datasets, and code, may be included.
Further information and examples can be found in the downloadable article samples in Article Types. If you are using reference management software, we recommend using the Vancouver Referencing Style.
Reference Management Software
The use of EndNote is recommended to facilitate formatting of citations and reference lists. The journal output style can be downloaded from http://endnote.com/downloads/styles.Author Services
Karger Publishers offer a range of services to assist authors with the preparation of their manuscript, including discounts for language editing services offered by third parties.
More information is available on the Author Resources section of the Karger homepage.
When submitting a manuscript, authors can add their ORCID number to their Karger account to ensure that their paper is accredited to them correctly.
Cost of Publication
Page Charges/Article Processing Charges
Online Supplementary Material
Authors will be charged a processing fee of CHF 250.00 / USD 295.00 / EUR 250.00 for hosting supplementary material.Illustration Charges
Author's Choice
Karger Publisher’s Author’s Choice™ service broadens the reach of your article and gives all users worldwide free and full access for reading, downloading, and printing at www.karger.com. The option is available for a one-time fee, which is a permissible cost in grant allocation. More information can be found at www.karger.com/authors_choice. For a fee of CHF 3,000.00 / USD 3,530.00 / EUR 3,000.00, the final, published version of the article may be posted at any time and in any repository or on other websites, in accordance with the relevant Creative Commons license as well as the current Karger self-archiving policy for Open Access articles. Karger supplies all articles to PubMed Central for indexing.Journal Policies
Copyediting and Proofs
Manuscripts accepted for publication by Karger Publishers are subject to copyediting. Karger Publishers’ house style is based on internationally recognized standard manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style.An e-mail containing a link to download the RTF proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. The authors should check the RTF document and respond to any questions that have been raised during proofreading within 48 hours. Only text corrections are required, since layout and typesetting take place at a later stage.
Alterations made to proofs, other than the correction of errors introduced by the Publisher, are charged to the authors and may require editorial approval.
Please note that the revised proofs are not sent to the authors prior to typesetting and online publication unless there are exceptional circumstances. The article layout will be created according to the Karger standard.
DOI Number
A DOI number will be available as a unique identifier on the title page of each article. DOIs are useful for identifying and citing articles published online without volume or issue information (for more information, see www.doi.org).Online First Publication
All articles are published electronically ahead of print with a DOI number and are supplemented later with the definite reference to the printed version. The articles become available immediately after the authors’ approval to print.Licenses and Copyright
The Submission Statement outlines the licensing and copyright terms. A copy of the Submission Statement originally hand signed by all authors must be received by the editorial office. Please print and sign the form, and upload it during submission to make it legally binding. A brief cover letter may also be included if additional information is to be communicated to the Editor(s)-in-Chief.Self-Archiving
Karger permits authors to archive their postprints (i.e., accepted manuscripts after peer review but before production) on their personal home page or institution’s repository, provided that these are not used for commercial purposes, are linked to the publisher’s version, and acknowledge the publisher’s copyright. Preprints may be shared without restriction.
In addition, authors may post their accepted manuscripts in public Open Access repositories and scientific networks no earlier than 12 months following publication of the final version of their article. The posted manuscripts must:
1. Be used for noncommercial purposes only
2. Be linked to the final version on www.karger.com and include the following statement:
"This is the peer-reviewed but unedited manuscript version of the following article: [insert full citation, e.g., Cytogenet Genome Res 2014;142:227–238 (DOI: 10.1159/000361001)]. The final, published version is available at http://www.karger.com/?doi=[insert DOI number]."
It is the authors’ responsibility to fulfill these requirements.
For papers published online first with a DOI number only, full citation details must be added as soon as the paper is published in its final version. This is important to ensure that citations can be credited to the article.
Manuscripts to be archived in PubMed Central due to funding requirements or that have been published under the Author’s Choice™ scheme will be submitted by Karger on the authors’ behalf, as outlined under Funding Organizations.
Funding Organizations
If the authors are affiliated with an organization that has an offsetting agreement with Karger Publishers which may allow them to publish their article free of charge, this should be communicated in a cover letter at the submission stage, so that eligibility can be assessed.NIH-Funded Research
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy mandates that final, peer-reviewed manuscripts are archived in its digital database PubMed Central (PMC) within 12 months of the official publication date. As a service to authors, Karger Publishers submits the accepted, unedited version of NIH-funded manuscripts to PMC upon publication. The final, peer-reviewed article is made available after a 12-month embargo period. Where the authors have chosen to make their paper freely available under Karger’s Author’s Choice™ service, this embargo does not apply.
Other Funding Sources
Karger Publishers also complies with other funders’ requirements (including the Wellcome Trust and RCUK) for submission to PMC. In some cases, doing so requires that authors select Author’s Choice™, which is generally reimbursed by the funder or is a permissible cost in the grant. Authors should include information on their grants in the Funding Sources section of their papers.
More information on funding sources can be found on the Karger website.
Submission
Manuscript Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online via the Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics submission portal.
Before submission, please read the Guidelines for Authors for specific requirements for manuscript preparation.
Submission Statement
A Submission Statement, downloadable below, signed by all authors must be received by the editorial office. Please print and sign the form, and upload it during submission to make it legally binding. A brief cover letter outlining in how far the work is interdisciplinary and what is new in regard to the current literature on the topic may be included, but this is not essential.Documents
Submission Statement PPS (PDF, 191.98 KB)
