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Editorial Statement
Preparing Your Manuscript
Article Types
Style Guide
Seeking permission for copyrighted material
Supplementary material (online only)
Reporting Standards
Suggested Reviewers
Data Availability
Use of Inclusive Language
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
Author Affiliations
ORCID

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Editorial Statement

Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy is an international multidisciplinary journal for the publication of original research of an experimental, or clinical nature that contributes to the theory, practice and evaluation of cognitive and behavioural therapies. As such the scope of the journal is very broad, and articles relevant to most areas of human behaviour and human experience which would be of interest to members of the helping and teaching professions will be considered for publication.

As an applied science the concepts, methodology and techniques of behavioural psychotherapy continue to change. The journal seeks both to reflect and to influence those changes. While the emphasis is placed on empirical research, articles concerned with important theoretical and methodological issues as well as evaluative reviews of the behavioural literature are also published. In addition, given the emphasis of behaviour therapy on the experimental investigation of the single case, the journal from time to time publishes case studies using single case experimental designs.

For the majority of designs this should include a baseline period with repeated measures; in all instances the nature of the quantitative data and the intervention must be clearly specified. Other types of case report can be submitted for the Brief Clinical Reports section.

Articles should concern original material that is neither published nor under consideration for publication elsewhere. This applies also to articles in languages other than English.

Preparing Your Manuscript

Articles must be under 5,000 words at the point of submission, excluding references, tables and figures. Manuscripts describing more than one study may exceed no more than 6000 words but please make this clear in your cover letter.

Brief Clinical Reports should be no more than 1800 words (see more information below).

Please note that we currently do not usually accept studies carried out on student samples unless there is a clear indication of generalisability to clinical populations.

The journal strongly encourages blind review. Authors who want a blind review should indicate this at the point of submission of their article, omitting details of authorship and other identifying information from the main manuscript. Authors who do not omit this information will be assumed as submitting a non-blinded manuscript.

All submissions should be submitted via this portal: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/babcp

Research Transparency
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy believes in the importance of transparent and reproducible research. We therefore strongly encourage authors to make their evidence, data and other materials that underpin their findings openly available to readers which is outlined in our Research Transparency Policy. Authors will be asked on submission to include in their cover letter to the Editor whether they have made their data publicly available and confirm the inclusion of the Data Availability Statement. If the authors are not making their data publicly available, we ask them to state the reason why in their cover letter.

Article Types

Main*
Reports of original research employing experimental or correlational methods and using within or between subject designs. Review or discussion articles that are based on empirical data and that have important new theoretical, conceptual or applied implications.

Empirically Grounded Clinical Interventions*
This section is intended for reviews of the present status of treatment approaches for specific psychological problems. It is intended that such articles will draw upon a combination of treatment trials, experimental evidence and other research, and be firmly founded in phenomenology. It should take account of, but also go beyond, treatment outcome data.

Brief Clinical Reports*
Material suitable for this section includes unusual case reports and accounts of potentially important techniques, phenomena or observations; for example, descriptions of previously unreported techniques, outlines of available treatment manuals, descriptions of innovative variations of existing procedures, details of self-help or training packages, and accounts of the application of existing techniques in novel settings. The BCR section is intended to extend the scope of the clinical section. Submissions to this section should be no longer than 1800 words and should include no more than six references, one table or figure, and an extended report that contains fuller details. There are no restrictions on the size or format of the extended report as it will be published online only. It may, for instance, be a treatment manual, a fully detailed case report, or a therapy transcript. If a submission is accepted for publication as a Brief Clinical Report, the author(s) must be prepared to send the fuller document to those requesting it, free of charge. The extended document will also be mounted on the journal’s website as a PDF format (the document will not be copyedited).

Study Protocols*
Protocols of proposed and ongoing trials in behavioural and cognitive therapies will be considered. Please note that we will not normally consider pilot or feasibility trials. Your study must be registered and have ethical approval, and proof of this will be required. The abstract should be structured under the following four headings; Background, Aims, Method, Discussion.

Please use the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trail (SPIRIT) checklist for protocols of randomised controlled trials (see the reporting standards section below). Manuscripts should be under 2000 words at the point of first submission, and include no more than 15 references, and no more than three tables/figures in total. A PDF with additional, unlimited text, figures and tables may be included designated for online only publication.

* These article types may be eligible for APC waivers or discounts under one of the agreements Cambridge University Press has made to support open access.

The journal also occasionally publishes Editorials and Obituaries, however these are published by invitation only and should not be submitted unsolicited.

Style Guide

The following should be included in all manuscripts:

Title page
This should be a separate file to the main text to ensure blind review.

The title should phrase concisely the major issues. Author(s) to be given with departmental affiliations and addresses, grouped appropriately. A running head of no more than 40 characters should be indicated.

The following statements should be included on the title page:

Acknowledgements
You may acknowledge individuals or organizations that provided advice, support (non-financial).

Conflict of Interest
Authors should include a Conflicts of Interest declaration in their title page. This statement will be published in the final article. Conflicts of Interest are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on an author’s presentation of their work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations. Conflicts of Interest do not necessarily mean that an author’s work has been compromised. Authors should declare any real or perceived Conflicts of Interest in order to be transparent about the context of their work. If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting the title page must include Conflicts of Interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. For further information about Conflicts of Interest please see: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/author-responsibilities--conflicts-of-interest.html.

Example wording for your Conflicts of Interest declaration is as follows: “Conflicts of Interest: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no Conflicts of Interest exist, your declaration should state “Conflicts of Interest: None”.

If the study you are submitting focuses on a commercially available product (such as online CBT tools or APPS) or is funded by a commercial company, you should ensure that your Conflict of Interest statement covers the following:

• What the relationship is between the authors and the company. If authors had access to all study data and if they have entered into any agreement with the company that may limit their independence in analysis and interpretation of the data, preparation of the manuscript and choosing where to publish it.
• What the role of the sponsoring company has been in the following areas: design of the study; data collection, analysis and interpretation; writing the manuscript; approving the manuscript for publication and deciding where to publish.
• Authors should also state that they have not been encouraged or asked to repress, withhold, or modify any data, results, or conclusions by the sponsoring company.
• What influence the connection with the company could be perceived to have and how the authors have mitigated this.
• A statement may also be added by the Editorial Office to clarify what steps the Editors have taken to rule out any bias that may arise from any potential Conflict of Interest.
• Please note internal ethical approval by a commercial company would not be acceptable, it would need to be from an independent institution.
• Any authors with questions regarding this policy are welcome to contact the Editorial Office prior to submission to discuss further.

Data Availability Statement
This is a brief statement about whether the authors of an article have made the evidence supporting their findings available, and if so, where readers may access it. More information on Data Availability Statements and example statements can be found here. Please note that if you are not making your data publicly available, we ask you to state the reason why in your cover letter to the Editor.

Financial support
Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. For example, "This work was supported by the Medical research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)". Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with "and" before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors’ initials. For example, "This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)". Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."

Main Text (anonymised with no author information)
This should be uploaded as a .doc file with the following running order. The following format is based on APA style which should be followed throughout: http://www.apastyle.org/

Abstract
Should consist of no more than 250 words and structured under the following five headings: Background, Aims, Method, Results, and Conclusions. Include up to six key words that describes the article.

Main Text
This should contain the sections Introduction (including overview and theoretical background), Method (participants, design, data analyses and Ethical Statement- see below), Results (described in detail with summary figures and tables), Discussion (including conclusions and limitations).

Ethical statements
All papers should include a statement indicating that authors have abided by the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct as set out by the BABCP and BPS. If preferred, authors based outside of the UK may state research has conformed to the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors should also confirm if ethical approval was needed, by which organisation, and provide the relevant reference number. If no ethical approval was obtained, the authors should state what governance arrangements were in place (e.g. audit committee approval). We also expect authors to respect human participants’ right to privacy, and to gain any necessary informed consent to publish before submitting to us and include a statement in their manuscript that consent has been obtained. Where case reports are detailed in a submission, the author must state that the person described has seen the submission in full and agreed to it going forward for publication.

References
Please use APA style for the in-text citations and references. In the reference list there is an additional requirement that author names be listed in bold face. For example:

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm000...

Authors are encouraged to make use of referencing software packages (e.g. Endnote, Mendeley, Reference Manager etc.) to assist with formatting - extensions for APA formatting are easily accessible. Authors are also reminded to use bold face for author names in the reference list.

Tables and Figures
Manuscripts should usually not include more than five tables and/or figures. These should not be included in the body of the manuscript text but uploaded as individual files.

Use text anchors to show their intended position within the paper within the manuscript.

Numbered figure captions should be provided.

Tables should be provided in editable Word format. They should be numbered and given explanatory titles

Figures
Colour figures are free of charge for online published articles but if authors wish figures to be published in colour in the print version the cost is £200.

Numbered figure captions should be provided.

All artwork should be submitted as separate TIFF format files.

Please follow this link for further guidance on artwork.

Seeking permission for copyrighted material

If your article contains any material in which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse that material. As the author it is your responsibility to obtain this permission and pay any related fees, and you will need to send us a copy of each permission statement at acceptance.

Usually the publisher of the original work holds the copyright, unless explicitly stated otherwise. Most publishers have forms on their websites that can be completed electronically, or use automated electronic permissions services like Rightslink® to grant permissions automatically online. See here for more information on when you need to seek permission and how to request this.

Supplementary Information – Online only

Where unpublished material e.g. behaviour rating scales or therapy manuals are referred to in an article, copies should be submitted as an additional document (where copyright allows) to facilitate review. Supplementary files can be used to convey supporting or extra information to your study, however, the main manuscript should be able to ‘stand-alone’. Supporting documents are reviewed but not copyedited on acceptance of the article. They can therefore be submitted in PDF format, and include figures and tables within the text. There is no word limit for supporting online information.

Supplementary materials will be published with the same metadata as your parent article, and are considered a formal part of the academic record, so cannot be retracted or modified other than via our article correction processes. Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please make sure you are familiar with our detailed guidance on supplementary materials prior to submission.

Reporting Standards

Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy supports standardised reporting practices, consult the following table to ensure your submission meets the reporting standards for your manuscript type. Please include the relevant supporting information (such as diagrams and checklists) with your submission files. See http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/ for more information on manuscript types not described below.

The journal also encourages clarity in describing interventions sufficient to allow their replication through the use of the Template for Intervention Description and Replication Checklist (TIDieR).

Randomised Controlled Trial	CONSORT	http://www.consort-statement.org/
Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis	PRISMA	http://www.prisma-statement.org/
Study Protocols	SPIRIT	http://www.spirit-statement.org/

Suggested Reviewers

During the submission process, you will be asked to indicate your preferred and non-preferred reviewers, and the reasons for your choices.

Preferred reviewers:

• Should not have a conflict of interest (such as a recent or current close working relationship, or from the same institution)
• At least half of the list should be international to yourself
• Please consider early career researchers as well as field leaders
• Please suggest both niche experts and those with wider knowledge of the subject

Non-preferred reviewers:

• May have personal or subjective bias to your work which disregards the scientific merit
• May have seen or commented on the submitted manuscript, or prior versions.

Data Availability

Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy believes in the importance of transparent and reproducible research. We therefore strongly encourage all submissions to include a Data Availability Statement to describe whether the materials that underpin the findings of the manuscript have been made available to readers, and if so, where. This policy will be encouraged from August 2020 and made mandatory by January 2022. For more information on including a data availability statement and making data available please see the information on the Research Transparency page.

Use of Inclusive Language

BCP reminds authors to use inclusive language (see these C4DISC guideines for further information) which are in line with the BABCP values of opposing discrimination of any kind and continually working to improve our recognition of, and take an active stance against discrimination and inequality.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We recognise that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in research publications is increasing. However, we do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be used in any part of the writing of manuscripts, including editing and referencing. Nor should these tools be listed as an author on any submitted content.

We will permit the use of AI tools for spelling and grammar checking to improve the readability and language of a manuscript. This must be done with human oversight and authors should carefully review the output before submission. Any use of generative AI tools must be disclosed by the authors in the Acknowledgements section in the title page of their manuscript. This should include the tool used and its version, the date it was used and reason for its use along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper and that the paper adheres to the journal’s authorship policy. Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors, AI tools and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper.