Aims & Scope
Open-access journal publishing robust, editorially-selected, and peer-reviewed advances in psychology.
Communications Psychology is an open-access journal from Nature Portfolio publishing high-quality research, reviews and commentary. The scope of the journal includes all of the psychological sciences. We also consider submissions from adjacent research fields where the central advance of the study is of interest to psychologists, for example, meta-science in the domain of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioural economics. Communications Psychology aims to provide a community forum for issues of importance to all psychologists, regardless of the sub-discipline.
Communications Psychology is committed to promoting open science, championing initiatives such as Registered Reports and transparent peer review. We encourage preregistration and preprint deposition, welcome replication studies and meta-analyses, and will work closely with the community to identify publishing innovations that serve the field.
Primary research published in Communications Psychology advances scientific understanding of a research question in specialized area of psychology. Articles are expected to provide new insights or offer an evidence-based advance over previous conflicting results. We welcome new experimental approaches, secondary data analysis and innovative computational analysis. Direct and extended replication studies of influential work are encouraged, including direct and extended replications of work published in Communications Psychology. Empirical research can be submitted as Research Articles or Registered Reports. Methodological advances in the form of data or code, especially with the potential for substantial reuse, may be submitted for peer review as a Resource.
The submission and review process is managed by our in-house professional editors supported by our Editorial Board Members, who provide technical expertise across the breadth of the psychological sciences. We are committed to rapid dissemination of important research results. Articles are published on a continuous basis with minimal time from acceptance to publication.
Criteria for publication
To be published in Communications Psychology a research paper should meet several general criteria:
The article presents an original study; new analysis; new model; or alternatively, direct or extended replication of previous work
The data and analysis are technically sound and appropriate for the research question
The paper provides strong evidence for its conclusions
The study question is important to scientists in the specific sub-field of psychology
In general, to be acceptable, a paper should represent an advance in understanding which may influence thinking in the field.
