Author Guidelines

Authors are invited to submit original manuscripts relevant to the Focus and Scope of the Journal of Digital Communication Psychology. The journal welcomes scholarly contributions that explore psychological processes in digital communication, social media, online interaction, digital media effects, and related interdisciplinary fields.

All manuscripts must be clearly written, follow academic standards, and comply with the journal’s publication ethics, submission requirements, and peer review policies.

1. General Requirements

  • Manuscripts must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration by another journal.

  • Manuscripts must align with the focus and scope of the Journal of Digital Communication Psychology.

  • All listed authors must have made substantial scholarly contributions to the work and approved the final submitted manuscript.

  • Manuscripts must follow the journal’s prescribed format and official template.

  • Authors are responsible for the accuracy, validity, originality, and integrity of the data, references, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions presented.

  • Any potential conflicts of interest and sources of research funding must be disclosed.

  • Manuscripts must use clear, consistent, and appropriate academic language.

  • The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies must comply with the journal’s Publication and AI Ethics policy.

2. Manuscript Structure

Original research articles should generally include the following sections:

  1. Title: Concise, informative, and representative of the research topic.

  2. Author Names and Affiliations: Full names, institutional affiliations, and relevant details.

  3. Corresponding Author: Name and valid email address of the corresponding author.

  4. Abstract: A concise summary of the research objectives, methods, principal findings, and conclusions.

  5. Keywords: Relevant terms that represent the main concepts of the manuscript.

  6. Introduction: Research background, problem statement, literature review, research gap, and objectives.

  7. Methods: Research design, participants or data sources, instruments, procedures, and analytical techniques.

  8. Results: Presentation of the principal research findings.

  9. Discussion: Interpretation of findings in relation to relevant theories, previous studies, and the psychological dimensions of digital communication.

  10. Conclusion: Summary of the principal findings, implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research, where appropriate.

  11. Acknowledgments: Contributions or assistance that merit acknowledgment, if applicable.

  12. Funding Statement: Information about research funding, if applicable.

  13. Conflict of Interest Statement: Disclosure of any potential competing interests.

  14. Ethics Statement: Ethical approval, informed consent, and participant protection information, where applicable.

  15. References: Complete bibliographic details of all cited sources.

The structure may be adjusted for systematic reviews, theoretical articles, methodological papers, and other accepted manuscript types, subject to the journal’s requirements.

3. Research Ethics

Research involving human participants, psychological assessments, interviews, surveys, online communities, or identifiable personal data must comply with applicable research ethics standards.

Authors must obtain ethical approval or ethical clearance from an appropriate ethics committee when required. Informed consent, participant confidentiality, data protection, and the right to withdraw must be addressed as appropriate to the research design.

For studies involving digital platforms and online communities, authors must carefully consider privacy expectations, potential harm, data sensitivity, and the ethical use of publicly accessible information. Any necessary ethics approval and consent procedures must be reported transparently in the manuscript.

4. References and Citations

Authors must ensure that every source cited in the manuscript appears in the reference list and that every listed reference is cited in the text.

References must be accurate, relevant, current where appropriate, and formatted consistently according to the journal’s prescribed citation style. Authors are encouraged to use credible primary sources, peer-reviewed journal articles, and relevant scholarly literature.

Authors must verify all bibliographic information, including author names, publication years, article titles, journal names, page numbers, and DOI links where available. Fabricated or unverifiable references are not permitted.

5. Originality and Plagiarism

All submitted manuscripts are subject to similarity screening using appropriate plagiarism-detection tools, including Turnitin where applicable.

Authors must ensure that their manuscripts are free from plagiarism, inappropriate self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, data falsification, and other forms of academic misconduct. All ideas, quotations, data, and materials derived from other sources must be properly acknowledged.

Similarity reports are evaluated by the editorial team in context. A similarity score alone does not determine whether plagiarism has occurred.

6. AI Use and Disclosure

Authors who use AI tools or AI-assisted technologies during manuscript preparation must comply with the journal’s Publication and AI Ethics policy.

Where applicable, authors must disclose the tools used and explain their contributions to activities such as language editing, content generation, data analysis, or literature synthesis. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, ethical compliance, and scholarly integrity of the submitted manuscript.

AI tools must not be credited as authors and must not be used to fabricate data, invent references, or misrepresent research findings.

7. Manuscript Formatting

Authors must prepare manuscripts according to the journal’s official template and formatting requirements available on the journal website.

The manuscript should have a clear structure, consistent headings, properly formatted tables and figures, and complete citations and references. Tables and figures must be numbered consecutively, provided with descriptive titles or captions, and cited in the manuscript text.

Authors must ensure that the manuscript file and any supplementary documents comply with the journal’s submission requirements. Specific formatting details, including word limits, font, spacing, abstract length, keyword count, and citation style, are governed by the official journal template and current author instructions.

8. Submission Procedure

Manuscripts must be submitted electronically through the journal’s Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform.

During submission, authors must provide the required metadata, including the manuscript title, abstract, keywords, author information, affiliations, and other requested details. Any required declarations or supplementary files must also be provided.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all submission information is complete and accurate and that all co-authors have approved the submission.

9. Editorial Assessment and Peer Review

All submitted manuscripts undergo an initial editorial assessment to determine their relevance to the journal’s scope, compliance with submission requirements, originality, and general scholarly quality.

Manuscripts that pass the initial assessment proceed to the journal’s Peer Review Process. Editorial decisions may include acceptance, minor revision, major revision, or rejection.

Authors are expected to respond constructively to reviewers’ comments, provide a point-by-point response when revisions are requested, and submit revised manuscripts within the specified timeframe.

10. Copyright and Open Access

Authors must comply with the journal’s Copyright and License and Open Access Statement policies.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce third-party materials when necessary and for providing appropriate attribution. Copyright retention, publication rights, and permitted reuse of published articles are governed by the journal’s stated licensing policy.

11. Author Responsibility

Authors are fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, validity, ethical compliance, and integrity of their submitted work. All authors must approve the final manuscript and agree to its submission.

Submission of a manuscript implies that the authors have read and agreed to the journal’s editorial policies, publication ethics, peer review procedures, and applicable licensing requirements.

Authors are strongly encouraged to review all journal policies and use the official manuscript template before submitting their work to the Journal of Digital Communication Psychology.