Article Types Accepted

• Regular Article*
• Special Issue Article*
• Special Section Article*

Aims and Scope

Manuscripts will be evaluated primarily based on the degree to which the submitted work advances knowledge broadly in developmental psychopathology and makes a more than incremental contribution to the field. Development and Psychopathology will prioritize manuscripts that focus on aspects and principles of developmental psychopathology including: 1) emphasizing the interplay between normal and abnormal, between adaptation and maladaptation; 2) highlighting multiple pathways and processes, including the consequential concepts of equifinality and multifinality; 3) focusing on lifespan development (i.e., not only samples of children and adolescents); 4) demonstrating that both continuity and change co-exist in lifespan developmental pathways and processes that contribute to adaptation and maladaptation; 5) emphasizing an intentional, truly multidisciplinary domain of inquiry that explicitly focuses on and encourages integration across allied disciplines and fields; and 6) articulating the importance of multiple levels of analysis for understanding both typical and atypical development over the lifespan. The journal will also prioritize manuscripts that are interdisciplinary, cut across multiple levels of analysis, use multiple methods and contain approaches cutting across multiple units of analysis, and ultimately present the best science emanating from developmental and clinical psychology, adjacent social sciences (e.g.,  cognitive psychology, affective psychology, social/personality psychology), and allied fields (e.g., neuroscience, genetics, biology, behavioral neuroscience, social work, sociology, anthropology, etc.).

The Co-Editors-in-Chief of Development and Psychopathology strongly encourage the submission of work: (a) focused on diverse populations that (b) covers the full range of substantive issues in research on development and psychopathology, (c) using a wide variety of methods, and (d) submitted by authors who represent a cross-section of the fields of clinical and developmental science and allied disciplines, including international voices. Additionally, they encourage submission of papers that: (a) ideally consider and include participants sampled and studied across the lifespan in meaningful, developmentally appropriate ways or (b) use experimental methods, such as randomized clinical/controlled trials (RCT) that use interventions as ethical experiments with humans to more strongly investigate potential causality, as well as non-human or cross-species experimental research from other fields (e.g., biology, behavioral neuroscience, etc.)

Article Types Accepted

Development and Psychopathology considers manuscripts in the formats described below. Inquiries concerning alternative formats should be addressed to the Co-Editors-in-Chief prior to submission.

1. Regular Articles comprise the major portion of the journal. To be accepted, empirical articles must be judged as being high in scientific quality and having important theoretical, practical, and/or interdisciplinary implications. Development and Psychopathology does not impose strict cutoffs for the length of submissions of Regular Empirical Articles, though most manuscripts submitted to the journal (see exceptions below) should be no more than approximately 11,000 words in length, inclusive of tables, references, and figures. An abstract (of approximately 150 words and following APA style formatting) is included in this word limit. There is not an explicit limit on the number of tables or figures that can be included in the submission and the Co-EICs encourage extensive use of electronic supplements (e.g., for robustness analyses) that do not count toward the page limit. Cambridge University Press has available dedicated space for these electronic supplements, though Stage 1 Registered Reports and all data, code, materials, and pre-registrations associated with manuscripts should (as applicable; see Preparing your Materials) be published on the Open Science Framework website (e.g., http://openscienceframework.org/). Finally, please contact the Co-EICs if you believe the topic or complexity of your submission merits a significantly longer manuscript.

2. Theoretical and Review Articles focus on past empirical and/or conceptual and theoretical work. These articles are expected to synthesize, analyze, and/or critically evaluate a topic or issue relevant to development and psychopathology, should appeal to a broad audience, and may be followed by a small number of solicited commentaries. We anticipate that a large majority of the reviews that are accepted for publication in Development and Psychopathology will be traditional meta-analyses, individual participant data syntheses, or invited narrative reviews. Please note that quantitative meta-analyses and individual participant data syntheses may be closer to approximately 15,000 words in length to accommodate sample-specific detail and longer reference sections. An abstract (of approximately 150 words) is included in this word limit. There is not an explicit limit on the number of tables or figures that can be included for review articles.

3. Views allows expert authors the space to provide their field-pushing perspectives and opinions. In addition to the main Views piece, other scholars can be invited by the editors to provide commentary and back and forth replies. This new format in Development and Psychopathology enables readers to engage with the vanguard views and perspectives in the field, and such articles and commentaries are intended to inspire others to conduct empirical research that evaluates and tests those new ideas (including in the new Registered Report format now an option at Development and Psychopathology; see Preparing your Materials). Views are peer reviewed and generally brief (about 10 double spaced pages). The Co-EICs encourage authors to contact them before submitting a View. The Editors may also reach out to scholars to invite submission of Views.

4. Registered Reports are an empirical article format in which the conceptualization, methods, and proposed analyses are pre-registered and reviewed prior to data collection and/or analysis being conducted. This format is designed to minimize bias in deductive science, while also allowing flexibility to conduct exploratory (unregistered) analyses and report serendipitous findings. The cornerstone of the Registered Reports format is that the manuscript will be assessed prior to data collection/analysis, with the highest quality submissions accepted in advance. Initial (Stage 1) submissions will include a description of the key research question and background literature, hypotheses, study design and procedures, analysis pipeline, a statistical power analysis or other sample size rationale, and full description of planned confirmatory data analyses. Pilot data (where applicable) may also be included. Should a Stage 1 Registered Report receive an In Principle Acceptance (IPA) at Development and Psychopathology, it must be published and made publicly viewable on the Open Science Framework website (e.g., http://openscienceframework.org/), along with (as applicable and with exceptions noted in Preparing your Materials) relevant data, code, and materials necessary to reproduce the findings.

Special Sections and Special Issues are a format in which papers on a focal topic, written by different authors, are published simultaneously. In some cases, calls for Special Section or Special Issue submissions on particular topics will be disseminated by Cambridge University Press and/or the editors, and submissions will undergo normal editorial review. In some instances, a manuscript (e.g., an Empirical Article or Review) may be selected or invited as a lead article for this format, with invited commentaries providing additional perspectives.