The Open Journal of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience is a not-for-profit, fully open-access journal for reproducible research reports, theory papers, comments, early reports, and requests for collaborators. Founded by a group of academics who were dissatisfied with the price and process of 21st-century academic publishing, our goals are to promote scientific rigour, support professional development, and minimize publication costs. We aim to support the publication of the best possible version of your science, regardless of your location, status, or career stage.

Principles

The Open Journal of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience has four principles, which guide all our activities:

1. Reproducible science. Others should be able to verify your analysis and attempt to replicate your findings. Empirical studies should be adequately powered, unless clearly identified as an Early Report (see below). Use of third-party preregistration services is encouraged.
2. Rapid, rigorous, supportive peer review. Our goal is to work with you to produce a fair, accurate and succinct account of your research. We will not publish papers that we consider are likely to mislead others. That's about it.
3. Full open access. All articles in OJEPN are immediately and fully open access.
4. Low cost. OJEPN is part of the Nurture Science Publishing Group, an unregistered charity dedicated to minimising the costs of academic publishing. We will never charge more to publish your article than we need to cover our operating costs. Our Author Publishing Charge is currently £300.

Our peer-review process

We favour a two-stage peer-review process, designed to quickly return a decision about the publishability of your work, so we can all then focus on publishing the best version of your science. In our two-stage process, you initially submit just your Method and Results sections, along with up to 500 words contexualising your work. If you would rather submit a complete paper at this first stage, perhaps because you have already written it in full, you are also welcome to do this. Your submission is rapidly assessed by an action editor against a good science checklist of common issues (e.g. no power calculation, concluding from a null, etc.), and you receive one of two outcomes within a couple of weeks:

1. Conditional acceptance. Our intention from this point is to work with you and the reviewers to produce a publishable article. Only in exceptional cases would your paper be rejected after this decision. If your initial submission was Method and Results only, it is at this point that we will need the full manuscript from you.
2. Rejection. Your paper is rejected on the basis of a set of clear stated reasons related to scientific rigour. You are welcome to submit a revised version if you feel you can address the issues raised.

To help maintain the objectivity of the review process, we ask that you do not suggest reviewers. Instead, we will seek suitably expert reviewers you have not published with. You can request that we do not approach certain individuals as reviewers.

Article types

Standard paper. This can be an original study, a replication attempt or a review of a published body of work. There is a 4000 word limit, but we encourage you to aim for less. The word count does not include abstract, references, tables, or figures.

Early Report. Think of an early report somewhat like a conference presentation — you want feedback from the community on a procedure or result, before you’ve totally nailed everything. This encourages dialogue and also establishes precedent. 1500-word limit.

Request for Collaboration. You explain the rationale for a large-scale study requiring partnership. This calls for collaborators and establishes precedent for your work. 1500-word limit.

Commentary. We actively encourage continued dialogue. If you'd like to make substantive comments on an article published in OJEPN, or elsewhere, here's the place to do it. 1000-word limit.