AUTHOR GUIDELINES

Updated June 2023

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry is published in online-only format from 2022. This is a positive move towards reducing the environmental impact caused by the production and distribution of printed journal copies and will allow the journal to invest in further innovation, digital development and sustainability measures. Published articles will continue to be disseminated quickly through the journal’s broad network of indexing services, including Web of Science, MEDLINE and Scopus.  Articles will also continue to be discoverable through popular search engines such as Google. 

Sections

1. Submission and Peer Review Process
2. Article Types
3. After Acceptance

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/gps 

For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected]. 

This journal does not charge submission fees. 

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/gps  You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission.wiley.com and clicking the “My Submissions” button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].  

Free Format submission

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.

Before you submit, you will need:

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files—whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. If the figures are not of sufficiently high quality your manuscript may be delayed. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
  • Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
  • Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):
    • data availability statement
    • funding statement
    • conflict of interest disclosure
    • ethics approval statement
    • patient consent statement
    • permission to reproduce material from other sources
    • clinical trial registration

Open Access

 This journal is a subscription journal that offers an Open Access option. You'll have the option to make your article open access after acceptance, which will be subject to an APC unless a waiver applies. Read more about APCs here.

Preprint Policy

Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

Wiley's Preprints Policy statement for subscription/hybrid Open Access journals

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. You may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. You are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

Wiley's Preprints Policy statement for Open Access journals

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. You are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. You may also post the final published version of the article immediately after publication.

Registered Reports

See the Registered Reports Author Guidelines for full details.

Data Sharing and Data Availability

This journal expects data sharing. Review Wiley’s Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission.

Data Citation

Please review Wiley’s Data Citation policy.

Data Protection

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication. Please review Wiley’s Data Protection Policy to learn more.

Funding

You should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. You are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature.

Authorship

All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version. Review editorial standards and scroll down for a description of authorship criteria.

Author Pronouns

Authors may now include their personal pronouns in the author bylines of their published articles and on Wiley Online Library. Authors will never be required to include their pronouns; it will always be optional for the author.  Authors can include their pronouns in their manuscript upon submission and can add, edit, or remove their pronouns at any stage upon request. Submitting/corresponding authors should never add, edit, or remove a coauthor’s pronouns without that coauthor’s consent. Where post-publication changes to pronouns are required, these can be made without a correction notice to the paper, following Wiley’s Name Change Policy to protect the author’s privacy. Terms which fall outside of the scope of personal pronouns (e.g. proper or improper nouns), are currently not supported.

ORCID

This journal requires ORCID. Please refer to Wiley’s resources on ORCID.

Reproduction of Copyright Material

If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is your responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ.

The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce the material "in print and other media" from the publisher of the original source, and for supplying Wiley with that permission upon submission.

Title Page 

The title page should contain: 

1. A brief informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips);
2. A short running title of less than 40 characters;

• The full names of the authors;

1. The author's institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
2. Acknowledgments.

Main Text File

Manuscripts can be uploaded either as a single document (containing the main text, tables and figures), or with figures and tables provided as separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTex (.tex) format.

Your main document file should include:

• A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations;
• The full names of the authors with institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
• Acknowledgments;
• Abstract structured (Objectives, Methods, Results, and Conclusions);
• 3 – 10 keywords;
• Please provide up to 4 key points – there should be listed after the keywords in the main document.
• Main body: formatted as introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, conclusion;
• References;
• Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
• Figure legends: Legends should be supplied as a complete list in the text. Figures should be uploaded as separate files (see below).

A note on language

The journal seeks to ensure that the language used by authors is in line with the preferences of the groups of individuals who the papers seek to describe and serve by research. We have consulted with national and international groups focusing on the voice of these with lived experience of older people’s mental health in general and dementia specifically, including family carers of people with dementia. We advise that positive and inclusive language is used, driven by respect for the person with the condition and their role as research participant.

In this spirit we ask that papers are prepared using the following guidelines:

1. Please use “person with dementia” or “people with dementia” to describe people with dementia, do not abbreviate this to PwD/PWD, our lived experience advisors have informed us that they do not support the use of such abbreviation.
2. Please use “person with dementia” or “people with dementia” rather than “person living with dementia” or people living with dementia”, our lived experience advisors have advised us that this creates confusion in whether it refers to people with dementia alone, or people with dementia and their family carers, co-resident or not.
3. Please use “participant” rather than subject to describe participants in the research described.
4. For people with disorders other than dementia please use the same formulation (ie person with schizophrenia, depression etc) unless specifically a different preference is indicated by the patient community (eg autistic people).
5. In descriptions of research methods please use language that respects the participant as a partner in the research (eg research done ‘with’ participants, not ‘to’ them).
6. Please avoid catastrophic language such as “dementia sufferers” or “people suffering from dementia”.

Reference Style

This journal uses AMA reference style reference style; as the journal offers Free Format submission, however, this is for information only and you do not need to format the references in your article. This will instead be taken care of by the typesetter.

Figures and Supporting Information

Figures, supporting information, and appendices should be supplied as separate files. You should review the basic figure requirements for manuscripts for peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements. View Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Peer Review

The journal operates under a single-anonymized peer review model. On submission papers are initially assessed by the editorial team for suitability for being sent for review. Papers will be sent to review if the team determines that the paper meets appropriate quality and relevance requirements. Manuscripts are sent for peer review to at least two anonymous reviewers. Decisions are made by an Associate Editor with the Editor-in-Chief and are informed by the peer reviews. On occasion a decision may be made with one review in order to expedite processes.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the title, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.

Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Appeals and Complaints

Authors may appeal an editorial decision if they feel that the decision to reject was based on either a significant misunderstanding of a core aspect of the manuscript, a failure to understand how the manuscript advances the literature or concerns regarding the manuscript-handling process. Differences in opinion regarding the novelty or significance of the reported findings are not considered as grounds for appeal. To raise an appeal, please contact the journal by email, quoting your manuscript ID number and explaining your rationale for the appeal. The editor’s decision following an appeal consideration is final.

To raise a complaint regarding editorial staff, policy or process please contact the journal in the first instance. If you believe further support outside the journal’s management is necessary, please refer to Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics.

Refer and Transfer Program

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.

Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles

The journal requires that you include in the manuscript details of IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human and animal research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.

This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

This journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors and Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines.

2. Article Types

** We also welcome qualitative research papers that further understanding of the perspectives, experiences and unmet needs of older people with mental health problems and their supporters. Articles should be methodologically rigorous and have clear applications for treatment, services and support. These types of research papers have a higher word limit of 6,000 words.

3. After Acceptance

First Look

After your paper is accepted, your files will be assessed by the editorial office to ensure they are ready for production. You may be contacted if any updates or final files are required. Otherwise, your paper will be sent to the production team.

Wiley Author Services

When an accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. You will be asked to sign a publication license at this point as well as pay for any applicable APCs.

Copyright & Licensing

WALS + standard CTA/ELA and/or Open Access for hybrid titles

You may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or Open Access under the terms of a Creative Commons License.

Standard re-use and licensing rights vary by journal. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used. This journal uses the CC-BY/CC-BY-NC/CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons License.

Self-Archiving Definitions and Policies: Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions.

Accepted Articles

The journal offers Wiley’s Accepted Articles service for all manuscripts. Manuscripts accepted ‘in press’ are published online shortly after acceptance, prior to copy-editing or typesetting and appear in PDF format only. After the final version article is published (the article of record), the DOI remains valid and can still be used to cite and access the article.

Accepted Articles will be indexed by MEDLINE and so appear in PubMed; submitting authors should carefully check the names and affiliations of all authors provided in the cover page of the manuscript so it is accurate for indexing. The final copyedited and proofed articles will appear in an issue on Wiley Online Library; the link to the article in PubMed will update automatically.

Early View

Upon publication, articles are available as full text HTML or PDF in Early View prior to inclusion in an issue and can be cited as references using their Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number.

Proofs

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email.

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Author Name Change Policy

In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

Correction to Authorship

In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. [Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”]

Appendix

Species Names

Upon its first use in the title, abstract, and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name (genus, species, and authority) in parentheses. For well-known species, however, scientific names may be omitted from article titles. If no common name exists in English, only the scientific name should be used.

Genetic Nomenclature

Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see varnomen.hgvs.org, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided.

Sequence Data

Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL, or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345’. Addresses are as follows:

• DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ): ddbj.nig.ac.jp
• EMBL Nucleotide Archive: ac.uk/ena
• GenBank: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank

Proteins sequence data should be submitted to either of the following repositories:

• Protein Information Resource (PIR): georgetown.edu
• SWISS-PROT: ch/sprot/sprot-top

Structural Data

For papers describing structural data, atomic coordinates and the associated experimental data should be deposited in the appropriate databank (see below). Please note that the data in databanks must be released, at the latest, upon publication of the article. We trust in the cooperation of our authors to ensure that atomic coordinates and experimental data are released on time.

• Organic and organometallic compounds: Crystallographic data should not be sent as Supporting Information, but should be deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) at cam.ac.uk/services/structure%5Fdeposit.
• Inorganic compounds: Fachinformationszentrum Karlsruhe (FIZ; fiz-karlsruhe.de).
• Proteins and nucleic acids: Protein Data Bank (https://www.rcsb.org/).
• NMR spectroscopy data: BioMagResBank (wisc.edu)

Cover Image Submissions

This journal accepts artwork submissions for Cover Images. This is an optional service you can use to help increase article exposure and showcase your research. For more information, including artwork guidelines, pricing, and submission details, please visit the Journal Cover Image page.

Wiley Editing Services offers a professional cover image design service that creates eye-catching images, ready to be showcased on the journal cover.

Additional Guidelines for Cover Pictures, Visual Abstracts, Frontispieces and Table of Contents Graphics

• Concepts illustrated in graphical material must clearly fit with the research discussed in the accompanying text.
• Images featuring depictions or representations of people must not contain any form of objectification, sexualization, stereotyping, or discrimination. We also ask authors to consider community diversity in images containing multiple depictions or representations of people.
• Inappropriate use, representation, or depiction of religious figures or imagery, and iconography should be avoided.
• Use of elements of mythology, legends, and folklore might be acceptable and will be decided on a case-by-case basis. However, these images must comply with the guidelines on human participants when they are present.
• Generally, authors should consider any sensitivities when using images of objects that might have cultural significance or may be inappropriate in the context (for example, religious texts, historical events, and depictions of people).
• Legal requirements:
  • All necessary copyright permission for the reproduction of the graphical elements used in visuals must be obtained prior to publication.
  • Clearance must be obtained from identifiable people before using their image on the cover or the like and such clearance must specify that it will be used on the cover. Use within text does not require such clearance unless it discloses sensitive personal information such as medical information. In all situations involving disclosure of such personal info, specific permission must be obtained. And images of individuals should not be used in a false manner.

Graphics that do not adhere to these guidelines will be recommended for revision or will not be accepted for publication.