The journal abides by the COPE Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing) and the American Psychological Association (APA) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (https://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index).

Original contribution. The journal will only publish original pieces that have not been previously published by another journal and are not under consideration for publication at other outlets, but publishing a preprint on platforms such as OSF, ArXiv, bioRxiv, psyArXiv, SocArXiv is acceptable. Authors should state in their cover letter whether the data presented have been described in other publications and explain any overlap or lack thereof with previous publications from the same dataset. 

Authorship and recognition of contribution. Only authors who have made significant intellectual contributions should be included in the author list, and all who contributed significantly should be included. All authors should approve the final draft of the paper before submission. Each manuscript should include a CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) statement that briefly describes the contributions of each author, and the corresponding author should ensure that all authors agree with the CRediT statement. The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted if a clear and justifiable explanation for the change is provided to the editorial team and publisher, and if all existing authors agree with the change to the author list.

We follow the ICMJE criteria for authorship. Authors must have:

1)    “Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2)    Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND

3)    Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4)    Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”

Research misconduct. Plagiarism, data fabrication, duplicate publication, and other forms of research misconduct may be reported to relevant university bodies affiliated with each author, and the manuscript will be rejected or retracted if there is any evidence of misconduct.

Privacy and confidentiality. Manuscripts may not publish identifying data or average data on subgroups with fewer than 10 participants, which may lead to potentially identifiable information.

Conflicts of interest. Manuscripts should end with a statement disclosing any potential conflicts of interest by any of the authors, financial or otherwise. Reviewers who have a conflict of interest with an author are required to decline the review. The journal uses NIH criteria for defining conflicts of interest: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/NIH_Conflict_of_Interest_Rules.pdf. Reviewers who suspect they may have a conflict of interest with an anonymized manuscript should disclose their potential conflict of interest to the Editor-in-Chief.

Funding. Authors are required to acknowledge any funding that supported the work at the end of the article, in the Acknowledgements section.

Informed consent and ethics approval. Authors must specify in their submission whether they received Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval for the research presented in the work, and list the name of the institution(s) that approved it, as well as the IRB or REC approval number. Authors will also be required to specify in the Methods section of the manuscripts how informed consent and assent were obtained and documented from participants, and which IRB or REC approved the research. International research should specify the review and approval process for the data collection sites/countries and the institutions involved in analyzing and publishing the data.

Clinical trials must be registered. Details about registration should be provided in the body of the manuscript and should include CONSORT diagrams.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should follow PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines from the most recent PRISMA publication. The PRISMA-ScR guidelines can be used for scoping reviews. The PRISMA guidelines can also be followed to enhance the rigor of narrative reviews by documenting details about the literature search strategy.

Use of Generative AI/Large Language Models. GenAI cannot be listed as an author, and papers written substantially with AI will not be considered for publication. If authors use GenAI tools in their research process, they should disclose the tools they used and detail all the ways in which they were used. Authors should consult the COPE guidelines on authorship and AI tools for further guidance: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/cope-position/authorship-and-ai-tools.

Complaints and appeals. If an author has submitted work to Psychology Across Development and wishes to appeal an editorial decision, they should first contact the handling Associate Editor. Appeals are possible if a reviewer or the handling editor has made a fundamental error in evaluating the work, or if there is a concern about a conflict of interest. Any such requests should clearly detail the reason for the appeal. Upon receipt of such a request, the handling editor will inform the Editor-in-Chief. Together, the handling editor, the Editor-in-Chief, and another Associate Editor will review the request and make a decision.

Following this review, the handling editor will inform the author of the outcome. If the decision reverses a manuscript rejection, the author will be invited to resubmit the manuscript with appropriate revisions. If the original decision is affirmed, the author will be informed, and no further appeals will be considered. In a typical case, the outcome of the appeal will be decided within a month. If the process requires more time, the author will be informed.

Complaints concerning the time to decision and other aspects of the review should be directed first to the handling editor and then to the Editor-in-Chief. The issue will be investigated, and the author will be informed about its resolution.

[We thank Drs. Fernanda Ferreira, Brian Dillon, and Florian Schwarz for providing permission to re-use some of the text for these policies from policies of the journal Glossa Psycholinguistics.]