JRA Notice to Contributors

Manuscripts must be submitted via the JRA ScholarOne portal. Please see below for information regarding publication standards, editorial scope, the review process and more.

Page Limit & Style Requirements

Page limit: 40 pages double-spaced (including references, tables and figures). Papers longer than 40 pages will be asked to revise for length to meet this limit. Authors are also strongly encouraged to submit concise and focused papers in the 25-30 page range.

Journal Style Rules:
Manuscript is organized in the following order:

  1. Title page (blinded for peer-review)
  2. Abstract
  3. Body Text
  4. Appendices
  5. References
  6. Tables
  7. Figures

Key Information:

  • A running head is supplied
  • Abstract is 120 words or fewer
  • Method section contains demographic information about participants, particularly age information
  • NO footnotes or endnotes are used
  • NO underlining in the body text
  • All uses of slash (/) in abstract and body text are removed or edited per APA style (does not apply to references, tables or figures)
  • Statistics appear in APA style
  • Please update your references to include articles from the last five years. We encourage you to look at papers that appear in the early view sections of journals online to find up-to-date research.

Editorial Scope & Audience

Editorial Scope
JRA seeks to publish innovative and rigorous research that advances understanding of adolescent development. The journal considers manuscripts from a wide range of topics relevant to adolescent development, using rigorous quantitative or qualitative methodologies, and considering samples during the second decade of life (though samples of university students aged about 18-20 years need a strong justification that the sample is not one of convenience). Manuscripts should advance understanding of adolescent development, rather than merely study a phenomenon with an adolescent sample, and should therefore be grounded in developmental theory and prior developmental research. There are no exclusions of particular methodologies, though studies including a diverse and representative sample, with valid and multiple information sources, and/or with best practice quantitative or qualitative analysis strategies are preferred. Manuscripts should clearly articulate the advances in understanding adolescent development and the applications for improving the lives of adolescents.

Audience
Scientists, educators, and practitioners interested in adolescent development, including clinical, social, and developmental psychologists, sociologists, social workers, and those specializing in human development and family studies.

Online publication from 2016
Effective with the 2016 volume, the Journal of Research on Adolescence will be published in an online-only format. This transition will reduce the environmental impact caused by the production and distribution of printed journal copies and will allow the journal to expand the number of journal pages, include color images, and reach out to a broader scientific and lay audience. Published articles will continue to be disseminated quickly through the journal’s broad network of indexing services and discoverable through popular search engines such as Google. All color images will now be reproduced digitally and published free of charge. Print subscription and single issue sales are available from Wiley’s Print-on-Demand Partner. To order online, click through to the ordering portal from the journal’s subscribe and renew page on WOL.

Manuscript Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jra. Full instructions and support are available on the site and a user ID and password can be obtained on the first visit. Support can be contacted by phone (888-503-1050), or via the red Get Help Now link in the upper right-hand corner of the login screen. If you cannot submit online, please contact the Editorial Office by e-mail ([email protected]).

Types of Manuscripts
The Journal of Research on Adolescence considers only original manuscripts in formats described below. Inquiries concerning alternative formats should be addressed to the Editor prior to submission. All submissions are expected to be no more than 40 manuscript pages, including tables, references, and figures (but excluding appendices). Authors are strongly encouraged to submit concise and focused papers in the 25-30 page range. All manuscripts must be written in English and strictly adhere to APA Style (6th edition).

Empirical Articles
Empirical articles comprise the majority of works appearing in the journal. To be accepted, empirical articles must be judged as being high in scientific quality, contributing to the empirical base of adolescent development, and having important theoretical, practical, and/or interdisciplinary implications.

Brief Reports
Brief reports are reserved for short cutting-edge empirical papers that are no longer than 4000 words in length (approximately 15 pages, including ALL text, tables, footnotes, appendices). Manuscripts in this format should advance understanding in an area through noteworthy but concisely reported findings, new methodologies, extensions of prior research across populations, or informative replication efforts. For manuscripts that require longer descriptions of methods and results, authors should use the empirical article format.

Reviews
Reviews focus on synthesizing existing knowledge on adolescent development in ways that solidify and advance understanding. Meta-analyses of previous empirical research are especially encouraged, but narrative reviews of research, theoretical syntheses, historic reviews, or other types of reviews are welcome.

Special Issues & Special Sections
To submit a manuscript for an existing Special Issue or Special Section, use the submission portal (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jra) and indicate it as a manuscript for a special issue or section.

Special sections will be considered. Before preparing a submission for a special section, submitters should email the editor for initial discussion of the idea and further instructions for submission.

Permissions

Authors are responsible for all statements made in their work and for obtaining permission from copyright owners to reprint or adapt a table or figure or to reprint a quotation of 500 words or more. Authors should write to original author(s) and publisher to request nonexclusive world rights in all languages to use the material in the article and in future editions. Provide copies of all permissions and credit lines obtained.

Permissions for JRA articles are handled by our publishers, Wiley-Blackwell. Please see their permission information page.

Submission Declaration

Only original manuscripts, written in English, are considered. The corresponding author for a manuscript must, in an accompanying cover letter, warrant that the study was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association or a similar set of ethical standards. The letter should also specifically address the following:

  • Uniqueness of publication: Please state if any other manuscripts have been published, accepted, or submitted for publication using the same dataset. If any other manuscripts exist from the same dataset, state the ways that the current submission represents a unique contribution from those manuscripts and upload those manuscripts as supplemental files. To maintain masked review, please do not cite the author names of this previous manuscript within the manuscripts until the manuscript is accepted for publication. For widely used secondary databases, please describe and upload manuscript co-authored by any of the submitting authors using that database.
  • Authorship and order: Please indicate that all authors agree to the authorship order and content of the manuscript. If there are any changes in authorship (order or authors listed), please briefly justify this change in the cover letter.
  • Funding source(s): Please state any funding sources for the research. Specify the role, if any, of the funding source in study design, analysis of data, interpretation of results, or writing of the report.
  • Conflict of interest: Please state whether there exist and actual or perceived conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of research (e.g., financial interests in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research).
  • Human subjects ethical statement: For submissions involving human subjects, authors must certify that they have complied with APA ethical standards, or another set of ethical standards, in the treatment of their sample. Authors should specify whether data were collected with approval from an oversight agency (e.g., institutional review board) within the cover letter (please do not state a specific university or other institutional review board within the masked manuscript). Because most manuscripts study individuals under the age to consent to participation in many studies, the cover letter and the manuscript should state whether parent / guardian consent was obtained, and justify if consent was not obtained.
  • Animal protection: Manuscripts submitted to this journal typically do not include animal samples. If a submission does, authors should state that they have complied with APA or another set of ethical standards, and describe the ethical treatment of animals in the cover letter and manuscript.

Manuscript Review

The Journal of Research on Adolescence has an editorial team that is vested with control over manuscript review and publication. Manuscripts are reviewed by the Editor in Chief and one of the Associate Editors. Members of this editorial team then invite reviewers with special competence in the area represented by the manuscript. Articles and reviews must be judged to be of substantial importance to the broad, multidisciplinary readership of the journal as well as meet a high level of scientific acceptability. The first level of review determines the importance and appropriateness of submissions to the journal readership at large in conjunction with scientific merit; on this basis, the Editor in Chief and Associate Editors decide whether the manuscript will be reviewed further.

A system of masked reviewing is used. It is the author’s responsibility to remove information about the identity of the author(s) and affiliation(s) from the manuscript; such information should appear on the cover letter. The cover letter will not be included when a manuscript is sent out for review (note: a masked version listing revisions to a manuscript invited for resubmission is provided to reviewers). The action editor (Editor in Chief or Associate Editor) responsible for a manuscript will have the discretion to integrate solicited review with the member’s own opinions and recommendations into a determinative response. The editorial team retains the right to reject manuscripts that do not meet established ethical standards. The Publications Officer regrets that, in case of rejection, manuscripts cannot be returned.

There is no charge for publication in the Journal of Research on Adolescence unless tabular or graphic materials exceed 10% of the total number of pages. Charges are also levied for changes in proof other than correction of printer’s errors. Any inquiries relating to business matters (including reprint orders) should be addressed to the publisher:

Wiley
Journal of Research on Adolescence
Production Coordinator
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148
(781) 388-8200

Publication Process

The first author of an accepted manuscript will receive instructions for final manuscript preparation guidelines as well as a licensing form that must be returned to the JRA editorial office before publication. All accepted manuscripts are exclusively licensed for publication by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Society for Research on Adolescence. Authors retain certain limited rights for re-using an accepted article that are outlined on the form itself.

JRA uses our publisher Wiley-Blackwell’s Early View online publication program, in which a manuscript is fully published online (and is considered fully citable) prior to its print publication. Authors can reasonably expect be published to Early View within 3-4 months from the date of acceptance. As of March 2012 there is a roughly 8-month lag from acceptance to print publication.

There is no charge for publication in the Journal of Research on Adolescence.

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

For authors signing the copyright transfer agreement
If the OnlineOpen option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs & CTA Terms and Conditions below:

For authors choosing OnlineOpen
If the OnlineOpen option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):

  • Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA
  • Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA

To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs and Copyright Liscense hosted on Wiley Author Services and visit.

If you select the OnlineOpen option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please click here.

For RCUK and Wellcome Trust authors click on the link below to preview the terms and conditions of this license:

  • Creative Commons Attribution License OAA

To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs and Copyright License hosted on Wiley Author Services and visit.

OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen, the author, the author’s funding agency, or the author’s institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency’s preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, click here.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form.

Prior to acceptance, there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal’s standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Early View
Articles in JRA are now routinely published online through Early View in advance of their appearance in an issue. Click here to view the full announcement.

Online production tracking is available for your article through Wiley’s Author Services
Author Services enables authors to track their article — once it has been accepted — through the production process to publication online. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Upon publication, corresponding authors can collect a gratis PDF offprint of their article from Author Services. View more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission, and more.

Note To NIH Grantees

Pursuant to NIH mandate, The Society (through Wiley-Blackwell) will post the accepted version of Contributions authored by NIH grant-holders to PubMed Central upon acceptance. This accepted version will be made publicly available 12 months after publication. For further information, see http://www.wiley.com/go/nihmandate.