PsychOpen GOLD Publishing Standards

PsychOpen GOLD offers a high-quality publication platform for primary publications in psychology. All journals and periodicals published at ZPID's PsychOpen GOLD platform have to comply with the publishing standards outlined in the following document:

Journals and periodicals applying for inclusion in PsychOpen GOLD are reviewed carefully and competitively against these standards, both at the time of application and on an ongoing basis. Compliance with these standards is a basic prerequisite for acceptance and continuous support for journals and periodicals published at PsychOpen GOLD. Particular emphasis is placed on publication standards, which support open, transparent, and replicable psychological research.

The most important publishing standards and general policies for PsychOpen GOLD journals are presented below.

General Publishing Standards

Journal editors agree to the mission of PsychOpen GOLD by supporting high quality scholarly communication in psychology and related fields, making original research freely available to the scientific community and the public, achieving high standards in reporting research outcomes, and adhering to best practices in ethical publishing.

• Publication Ethics

PsychOpen journals require that all manuscripts comply with PsychOpen's Guidelines on Publication Ethics. The journals implements clear editorial policies for ethical publishing, ensuring fair, unbiased, and swift reviewing, handling possible conflicts of interest (of authors, reviewers, and editors), preventing research misconduct (including fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism), and promoting research transparency.

• Permanency of Content

In accordance with generally accepted standards of scholarly publishing PsychOpen GOLD does not alter articles after publication: "Articles that have been published should remain extant, exact and unaltered to the maximum extent possible" (STM, 2006. Preservation of the objective record of science). In cases of serious errors or (suspected) misconduct EJOP publishes corrections, expressions of concern and retractions (see below).

PsychOpen GOLD participates in the CrossMark scheme, a multi-publisher initiative that has developed a standard way for readers to locate the current version of an article. By applying the CrossMark policies, PsychOpen GOLD is committed to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur. Clicking on the CrossMark logo (at the top of an PsychOpen GOLD article or the article landing page) will give readers the current status of an article and direct them to the latest published version; it may also give readers additional information such as new supplementary materials.

In order to maintain the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record, the following policies will be applied when published content needs to be corrected.

Corrections

In cases of serious errors that affect the article in a material way (but do not fully invalidate its results) or significantly impair the reader's understanding or evaluation of the article PsychOpen GOLD publishes a correction note that is linked to the published article. The published article will be left unchanged.

Retractions (Expressions of Concern)

In accordance with the "Retraction Guidelines" by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) PsychOpen GOLD will retract a published article if

• there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation),
• the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication),
• it constitutes plagiarism,
• it reports unethical research.

An article is retracted by publishing a retraction notice that is linked to or replaces the retracted article. PsychOpen GOLD will make any effort to clearly identify a retracted article as such. If an investigation is underway that might result in the retraction of an article PsychOpen GOLD may choose to alert readers by publishing an expression of concern.

• Reporting Standards

The journal takes appropriate measures to assure compliance of its publications to established community standards and best-practices in reporting research outcomes, including methodological and statistical standards (e.g., JARS, CONSORT, PRISMA), as well as formal (e.g., APA style), and linguistic (sufficient language level) standards/best-practices. In addition, all published research articles include author contact information, date of submission, acceptance, and publication, and license/copyright information.

Open Science Standards

Journal editors agree to the mission of PsychOpen GOLD to foster transparency and reproducibility of research by implementing principles and practices of open science.

• Open Access and Open Licensing

The journal agrees to the principle of open access. Journal content is accessible at no charge, without requiring registration or other access barriers to users. In addition, the journal does not charge author fees. All content on PsychOpen GOLD are subject to the Creative Commons License (CC-BY). Thus, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their work, but grant others permission to use it provided that the original work is properly cited.

• Open Science Policy

The journal establishes and implements an open science policy (e.g., the  TOP Guidelines), directing authors, reviewers, and editors in reasonable steps toward more transparency and openness in scientific communication.

• Open Data

Empirical articles have a "data availability statement," stating whether data are available (and, if so, where they are accessible) and if not, why. In general, publication of data is expected

• Open Scripts, Materials, Measures, Methods, and Workflows

Authors are requested and guided to share “Supporting Information” like scripts, materials, measures, methods, workflows, and other resources required to replicate their research

• Article Formats Enhancing Openness in Research

The journal supports article formats enhancing openness and transparency in research, replicability, and early publishing.

• The journal accepts the submission of Registered Reports (RR). To ensure protocol transparency, accepted Registered Reports (protocols) are registered at ZPID’s repository PsychArchives.
• The journal accepts the publication of carefully conducted replications as well as meta-analytical approaches to foster cumulative research and research syntheses.
• The journal supports the publication of preprints (i.e., non peer-reviewed draft versions). Publication of preprints prior to submission is accepted.

• Open Science Infrastructure

To facilitate consistency in standards, the development and improvement of PsychOpen services, and monitoring of open science practices, the journal agrees to use the products and services offered by ZPID to implement open science practices outlined above. “Supporting Information” published with an article (e.g., data, scripts, materials, measures, methods, workflows), study protocols for Registered Reports, etc. are deposited (non-exclusively) at ZPID’s repository PsychArchives. Persistent identifiers (usually DOIs) provided by PsychArchives are used within articles to refer to these resources.