Purview of the Journal

The Journal of Parapsychology (founded in 1937 at Duke University, and indexed in PsycInfo and Scopus) invites submissions relevant to parapsychology and related areas, including anomalous experiences, alterations of consciousness, and the nature of consciousness in general. All relevant disciplines, including psychology, physics, and biology, but also history, anthropology and other social sciences and the humanities are within the purview of the journal. Quality scholarly contributions, whether supporting the psi hypothesis or not, are welcome.

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The Journal of Parapsychology (JP) publishes:
1. Empirical papers, presenting new data and/or analyses, and using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. “Empirical” should be interpreted broadly to refer to systematic inquiry including experimental manipulation of variables as well as single case designs, analysis of collection of cases, phenomenological studies, historical analyses, systematic case studies, field research, and so on.
2. Theoretical papers, discussing new theories or novel implications of theories presented previously.
3. Methodological and analytical papers, offering new or alternative ways of conducting research and/or analyzing data.
4. Book reviews from the international literature, which will be assigned by the editor, John G. Kruth (john.kruth@rhine.org). The JP will not consider unrequested reviews. If you are the author or publisher of a new book in the field contact the editor for information about potentially submitting it for a review as well as review guidelines.
5. Debates and letters about current issues in the field and papers recently published in the JP.

Submission
Manuscripts must be submitted to the JP electronically (as an e-mail attachment) in Word or compatible word processing program to: john.kruth@rhine.org (editor) or publisher@rhine.org (publisher, Parapsychology Press). All submissions must be single column, double-spaced, in Times New Roman size 12. Preparation of the manuscript in all respects must follow the guidelines described in the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA style; of which there are various summaries in the Web) and must be written at a level commensurate with an academic publication in English. If the writing of the authors is not at this level, they should consider using a professional academic editor service before submission. There are various editing services, including John Palmer’s, the former JP Editor at john@rhine.org. American English spelling must be used in the manuscript, other than in quotations. Some other style issues for the journal: a) use “volunteer”, or “participant” instead of “subject”, b) avoid sexist language, c) use “masked” instead of “blind” conditions”, d) unless part of a quotation, do not use verb contractions (e.g., write “is not” instead of “isn’t”), e) include the appropriate diacritical marks in the case of foreign names and words.

Articles must not exceed 10,000 words, including references, unless previously authorized by the editor. They must include an abstract no longer than 200 words in a single paragraph, and up to 6 keywords. Do not include references in the abstract. Research studies must contain the following sections: Objective, Method, Results, and Conclusion. To facilitate the evaluation of research study conditions, the methods section must include, besides the usual information (e.g., participants, measures, procedure, analyses, ethical approval and related considerations such as consent form and what was conveyed to participants about the goals of the study), style of interaction with participants such as friendly, neutral, or peremptory; professional status, such as professor or head researcher, or research assistant), and researchers’ a-priori belief that the psi hypotheses in their study would be supported in their project using the following scale (5 -strong belief -, 4 -moderate belief-, 3 -neutral, 2 -moderate non-belief, 1 -strong non-belief). If authors have a reason to exclude any personal information, their submission should include a brief explanation for the exclusion. An institutional review board, when applicable, must have previously approved all research with human and other sentient beings, and research must be conducted according to generally accepted ethical guidelines. The manuscript must include information on funding and any potential conflict of interest.

Formatting
1. Endnotes are discouraged; use instead, if at all necessary, footnotes.
2. Formatting of references, quotations, tables, etc. must follow precisely APA (American Psychological Association) style. There are various pages online with examples of proper APA formatting. Manuscripts that do not follow this format will be returned without further review.
3. DOIs must be included for all references that have them by checking them through https://doi.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery
4. Before submission the authors must check that all items in the reference list have matching text entries and vice versa.
5. Quotations must be double-checked for accuracy and the page numbers cited in the text.
6. Tables and figures must have a title or caption, be numbered, and follow APA style. Figures and photos must be submitted electronically and they cannot be in color. Resolution should be a minimum of 300 dpi. Vector art (e.g., Adobe Illustrator, encapsulated postscript) is preferable to bitmaps.

Statistical Analyses
1. Statistical values must be checked multiple times for accuracy.
2. Descriptive statistics (e.g., means, standard deviations) must be reported in addition to inferential statistics (e.g., t tests, ANOVAs, non-parametric tests), which should also include the specific p value and measures of effect size (authors might consider consulting the “Statistical Guidelines for Empirical Studies” by Tressoldi and Utts published in the Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century edited by Cardeña, Palmer, and Marcusson-Clavertz, 2015).
3. Following American Statistical Association Guidelines (Wasserstein, R. L. (2016). ASA statement on statistical significance and p-values. The American Statistician, 70, 131-133. doi.org/10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108), authors are strongly discouraged from using p values dichotomically to assess the “significance” and importance of their results. Instead, they should use various numerical and graphical data summaries, interpret results in context independently of the p value, and provide complete reporting of analyses carried out and discuss the logical and quantitative import of their results.
4. The paper must clearly state which hypotheses (and analyses) were confirmatory and which exploratory. Meta-analyses are encouraged when multiple studies have basically used the same variables and a similar design.
5. Although not mandatory, it is strongly recommended that all research, exploratory and even more so confirmatory, be preregistered, for instance through https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/study-registry or a similar data registry, and that data be made available to other potential researchers through a depository such as psi https://data.world or open-data.spr.ac.uk.

Manuscripts will be refereed anonymously and the authors must mask their identities in the manuscript. They should include a page with all identifying information, and the ms without any of that information. Manuscripts accepted for publication are copyedited for grammar and style. Copyedited text will be submitted to the author(s) for any required changes and approval, and a prompt response is required. Substantive revisions are generally not allowed after the manuscript has been accepted.

Articles in the Journal must be original, which means that they cannot have been published previously, either in whole or in part (except for isolated paragraphs or earlier versions in conferences proceedings), in a journal, or the Web.

Copyright
As a condition for publication in the JP, authors of articles must assign copyright of the article to the Parapsychology Press. Permission must be obtained from the Editor before the article can be published or reproduced elsewhere, including on a personal website. However, the authors can retain copyright of their work by paying a fee, payable to Parapsychology Press of 1,400 (institutional) or 700 (personal, non-institutional) USCy. Only in exceptional circumstances might the fee be waived, for which authors will have to write a letter explaining why keeping their copyright is important and why they cannot afford the fee. The Editor will review that statement and determine whether the fee waiver can be granted before actual publication.

 

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The Journal of Parapsychology is a publication of the Rhine Research Center and Parapsychology Press.

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