The scientific journal Psihologija has been published since the 1970’s and since 2009 it has been included in the SCI list. The New Editorial Board is eager to do their best to ensure good scientific rating of Psihologija. Your participation in this work is highly valued.
We strongly believe in the significance of the scientific peer-review process in ensuring the high quality of scientific journal production. Therefore, the Journal’s Editor and Editorial Board kindly invite you as a scientist whose expertise is beyond doubt to be a reviewer for Psihologija.
General information
Double-blind procedure. To ensure quality, each manuscript is assigned to two or three independent reviewers in the so-called double-blind procedure, where all reviewers are unaware of the authors’ identity and authors are unaware of the reviewers’ identity.
Conflict of interest. It is very important to notify the Editor if you have any conflict of interest when reviewing a manuscript. You are in conflict of interest if you have any financial or professional connection with the author(s), or if you have already worked on this particular research/paper. Also, sometimes it happens that the paper/author belongs to a psychological school/theoretical orientation which is opposite of your own. In a situation as such, you should decide if you are able to evaluate the text objectively. When you agree to review a paper, it is assumed that there is no conflict of interest.
Adhering to deadlines. Each reviewer has 4 weeks for a manuscript. The decision about publication cannot be made until all reviews are received. Therefore, each delay in reviewing halts the entire editorial process. If for some reason you are not in a position to meet the deadline, you should notify the Editor immediately. In such cases we would appreciate if you can recommend an alternative reviewer.
Maintaining confidentiality of the studies. It is very important that a reviewer maintains the confidentiality of the studies under revision. The content or the results may not be revealed to a third party. Also, information from the reviewed manuscript may not be used (in conferences, talks, classes, publications, etc.) until the paper is published.
Specific aspects to be covered
There are certain features of the research and manuscript that we would particularly like you to comment on during the review process.
Standards. Manuscripts should adhere to the Journal’s standards, both in form and topic. Psihologija welcomes a broad range of topics from the entire discipline of psychology as well as from neighbouring disciplines, as long as the research question is scientifically important. As a rule we publish only empirical papers. In rare circumstances, the Editor might invite a different type of publication from particular authors (the Editor will inform the reviewers in such cases).
Originality. There are several aspects in which the submitted paper may be original: novel findings, new view or interpretation of existing findings, new empirical methods, statistical analysis, theoretical approach, modelling of data, etc. Any of the above is welcome, as long as it is carried out within the limits of the requested scientific rigor. It is advisable to perform a literature search on each of the stated aspects. Should you find any unaccounted-for references, please inform the Editor.
Topic. Not only does the topic need to be scientifically important, but it must also be handled substantively and accurately, with an appropriate scope and in sufficient detail. We have a preference towards specific topics that can be appropriately handled within 5000 words. Finally, in order to be published a paper should offer enough novel work on the topic and investigated problems to be interesting and valuable to the scientific community.
Structure. Manuscripts should have the typical structure of a scientific paper with all the key elements present: title, abstract, keywords, introduction, methodology, results, conclusion, and references. Within this structure, it is particularly important that the logic of the research question is clearly described, that the research method is clearly laid out and that the conclusions clearly follow from the theory given in the Introduction and the findings stated in the Results.
Legal issues. Though specific software compares every manuscript against published academic literature, the reviewers are invited to report any form of plagiarism they notice (especially those that software cannot detect, like plagiarism of ideas). This principle also includes figures and graphs that are already published elsewhere. In such cases permission for reprint is required. The tests and psychological instruments used to gather data must be obtained in a legal manner by at least one of the authors or affiliated institutions. The same is the case for the various software used either for data collection or data analysis.
Literature. The manuscript, its research questions, methods and conclusions, should be built upon previous models, theories and research. If any important work has been omitted, inappropriately or inaccurately referenced, the Editor should be informed. Also, please note whether or not you find the cited literature appropriate and up to date.
Language. We do not expect our reviewers to correct poorly written papers, misspelled words or grammatical errors. However, we would appreciate if you can advise the Editor if the quality of the language is poor.
Comments to the editor
In addition to the standard form of a review, please help us by including an additional important section for the Editor. This section should consist of the following:
I Summary of the strong and weak points of the manuscript.
II General comments on the manuscript’s quality.
III List of your suggestions: (a) changes that the author should make in the text; (b) changes that would improve the text, but do not have to be done by the author.
IV Decision on publishing. List one of the categories the Editor will likely use when classifying the manuscript:
- Accept without revision
- Accept but needs minor revision
- Accept but the manuscript needs to be reviewed again (please indicate whether or not you would be able to review it again)
- Reject (poor quality, needs complete rewriting or out of scope).
V Additional comments to the Editor.
- Ethical Issues. As a reviewer you are an expert in a certain area of literature and for the phenomena under scrutiny, so you should inform the Editor of any ethical concerns you might have about the manuscript (e.g. plagiarism, most common of all). Should you come across such a case, please report it to the Editor (with relevant references and citations). Also report any suspicion of fraud (although this is very difficult to detect), e.g. reporting data or results suspected to be untrue. Please include an explanation of the particular problem you found with the presented data.
- Any other comments, additional explanations or concerns which might emerge during the revision should also be reported to the Editor.
The “Psihologija“ Journal uses a registration system e-Ur (The Electronic Journal Editing) for all users involved in the editorial and publishing process: authors, editors and reviewers.
Registration should be made at the following web-address: