Author Guidelines

Psychotherapy journal publishes full-length articles on psychotherapy THEORY, RESEARCH, and PRACTICE. The contributions published in the journal include a broad spectrum of original research articles, reviews of literature, meta-analyses, case studies, practice reviews, and original contributions to psychotherapy theory. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies are welcome.

In addition, short articles relevant to the psychotherapy discourse (discussions; book reviews; reports from conferences; and short messages like anniversaries and short essays) are published in the Psychotherapy journal.

The Peer-Review Process

All full-length contributions (sections Theory, Research, and Practice) are peer-reviewed. Short sections (Discussion, Conferences, Review, and Short) are reviewed by the editorial office only, they are not sent for an external peer-review. The Editor may reject any submission before the peer-review process due to non-compliance with the Authors Guidelines.

The review process is anonymized. The submissions are reviewed by two independent reviewers, whose comments are sent for consideration to authors with editorial office decision. The peer reviewed papers are published in accord with the standards of the American Psychology Association (APA) Publication Manual (7th ed.).

To permit the anonymity of the review process, the authors upload two versions of the manuscript: a) a version containing all the information required in the Author Guidelines; b) an anonymized version, in which all authors' names, initials, their affiliations, professional information, and contact information must be either deleted or replaced by the word anonymized. This anonymized version must not contain any information which could lead to the identification of its authors by the peer-reviewers. This includes information both at the introductory pages of the manuscript and in the text of the manuscript.

Formal Aspects and Formatting

The editorial office accepts original contributions in Czech, Slovak or English which fit the scope of the journal.

Length of contributions

Please, refer to SECTION POLICIES to view the maximum length and focus of different submissions.

The structure of research articles and their abstracts should be as follows: Problem, Method, Results, Discussion.

The contributions must include

1. Title in Czech (or Slovak) and title in English
2. Key words in Czech (3-5) and key words in English
3. Abstract up to 1000 characters long in Czech and English
4. Description of each author’s role (see “Roles of Authors”)
5. List of references used in the manuscript (see “Instructions for References”)
6. The most important professional information on authors up to 500 characters long

Add author note in English and in Czech to all authors’ names. The following format must be used: Name of the Institution (in the case of academic institution Department name, University name), City, Country and e-mail contact. This information will be published along with your contribution.

Instructions for formal aspects of the contributions

• To emphasize chapter division, two levels can be used (for example 1. Therapeutic approach, 1.1. Previous research).
• All figures, tables and graphs and other supplements must be sent separately; do not format them into the text, only indicate their placement in the text.
• A page consists of 30 lines (spacing 2) per 60 keystrokes and font size 12.
• Use the „enter “key to separate paragraphs only.
• Pages must be numbered.

Roles of Authors

Before the list of references at the end of the article, describe each author’s contributions to the article and possible Conflicts of Interests (e.g., financial support). If there is no conflict of interest, state "no conflict of interest". You can add the Notesat the end of this section (e.g., acknowledgements).

Examples of the Roles of Authors description:

• Research study: The first author and the second author conducted the data collection and analysis and participated in writing the Method and Results chapters. The third author did the literature review and participated in writing the Introduction and Discussion chapters. All authors contributed to the article and agreed with its final version.

• Theoretical or practice study: The first and the second author conducted literature review and participated on writing the chapters 1 (Introduction), 2 (Theoretical Conceptualization), and 5 (Summary). The third author wrote the comments from practice sections (chapters 3 and 4). All authors contributed to the article and agreed with its final version.

Instructions for references

The formatting of sources cited in your text and the References section need to comply with the following requirements:

• The list of bibliography needs to be arranged alphabetically by authors’ last names. 
• Sources in the text need to be referred to by author’s last name and the year of publication; if you use more works by a single author written in one year, distinguish them by lower case letters (2007a, 2007b).
• In case of two authors, state both authors. If the work has three or more authors, only the name of the first author needs to be stated, then the abbreviation “et al.” is used after the first author’s name.
• Sources from the Internet can be referred to; always state the internet address and the date of download (search).
• All references used in the text must be included in the final Bibliography section.
• Do not include books or articles which are not mentioned in the article.

References to books need to use the following format

• Author1, Author2, and Author3. (Publication year). Book title, subtitle. Place of publication: Publisher.

References to journal articles need to use the following format

• Author1, Author2, and Author3. (Publication year). Article title. Journal Title, Volume(Number), pages.

Examples of references in the text

• Reference to work by a single author
  Rogers (1998) claims that… OR it is claimed by existential psychotherapists (Yalom, 2006) OR (compare to Yalom, 2006) OR (see Yalom, 2006)
  
  
• Reference to work by multiple authors
  two authors: Fonagy and Target (2005) deal with...
  three and more authors: Lambert et al. (2001) state that…

• Reference to several sources
  Multiple authors agree on this fact (Polsterová, 2005; Yalom, 2006).

• Direct reference (the page on which the extract is in the original work must be stated)
  It is important to recall that “the founders of gestalt therapy had personal experience… with acting and expressive movement” (Mackewn, 2004, p. 165).

Reference examples in chapter Literature

• Book (state also the subhead)
  Fonagy, P., Target, M. (2005). Psychoanalytické teorie: perspektivy z pohledu vývojové psychopatologie. Praha: Portál.

• An article in a journal
  Libiger, J. (2003). Placebo: klamání nemocného nebo nástroj poznání? Psychiatrie, 7(4), 290–300.
  Seligman, M. (1995). The effectiveness of psychotherapy: The consumer reports study. American Psychologist, 50(12), 965–974.
  Rosenzweig, S. (1936/2002). Some implicit common factors in diverse methods of psychotherapy. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 12(1), 5–9.
  
  State both publication years (e.g., Rosenzweig, 1936/2002) only if it is important to emphasize the year of first publication.
• Book chapter or an article in conference proceedings
  Polsterová, M. (2005). Gestalt terapie: vývoj a využití. In J. Zeig, (Ed.), Umění psychoterapie (pp. 516–533). Praha: Portál.