Journal Policy

The IJCP policy advice the author of manuscript not to submit the same manuscript in two or more journals for concurrent consideration and the same must be stated in cover letter.
IJCP requires the author to reveal any possible conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of the study. They should also describe their role and participation in designing the study; data collection; analysis; interpretation of data; writing of report and / or in decision to submit the report for publication.
The acknowledgment must be furnished in the condition of participation in the study in any form or if the material (picture, tables, or any other data, with permission) has been taken from any other place/source and is part of the study/ manuscript.
The research that is reported in IJCP must be conducted after the approval of the ethical committee and information regarding the same should be furnished in the method section.
Ethical standards must be followed in the treatment of the sample, human or animals, or to describe details of treatment and research must be approved by the ethical committee. Approval letter should be submitted to the Editor.
IJCP (for ethical principles one can visit www.apa.org/ethics). IJCP requires Author/ Authors to transfer copyright to IJCP for accepted manuscripts before publication.
The information published in the journal reflects the views of the author and not of the journal or its editorial board or Association. The author will be solely responsible for the information presented herein and its accuracy or completeness. Journal represents that the information is presented herein is complete and accurate and not responsible for any errors or omission.
Journal publishes Research Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Book Reviews, Brief Communication, and Letters to Editor. The journal encourages articles related to theory-based interventions, studies that investigate mechanisms of change, the effectiveness of treatment in real-world settings. Journal also accepts the articles in the area of Women, Children & Adolescents, and Community Mental Health. Articles related to epidemiology, critical analysis, and meta-analysis of treatment approaches, health care economics, etc. are also accepted.
PLAGIARISM CHECK: The authors are required to strictly perform a plagiarism check before submission to the editorial office.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Open Access (OA) stands for unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse which means making research publications freely available online. It access ensures that your work reaches the widest possible audience and that your fellow researchers can use and share it easily. The mission of the IJCP is to improve the culture of scientific publications by supporting bright minds in science and public engagement.
IJCP open access articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This license lets you retain copyright and others may not use the material for commercial purposes. A commercial use is one primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. If others remix, transform, or build upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material. The main output of research, in general, is new ideas and knowledge, which the IJCP peer-review policy allows to publish as high-quality, peer-reviewed research articles. The IJCP believes that maximizing the distribution of these publications – by providing free, online access – is the most effective way of ensuring that the research we fund can be accessed, read and built upon. In turn, this will foster a richer research culture and cultivate good research ethic as well. The IJCP, therefore, supports unrestricted access to the published materials on its main website as a fundamental part of its mission and a global academic community benefit to be encouraged wherever possible.

Specifically

IJCP supports the principles and objectives of Open Access and Open Science
IJCP expects authors of research papers, and manuscripts to maximize the opportunities to make their results available for free access on its final peer-reviewed paper
All manuscript will be made open access online soon after final stage peer-review finalized.
This policy will be effective from 1st January 2021 and will be reviewed during the first year of operation.
Specific details of how authors of research articles are required to comply with this policy can be found in the Instructions to Authors.

APC

IJCP supports the open access culture and provides all its published papers in all sections for free of charge. IJCP has no Article Processing Charge (APC) and has no Article Submission Charge, as well.

Publication Ethics

Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure high-quality scientific publications, public trust in scientific findings, and that people receive credit for their ideas. It is important to avoid:
Data fabrication and falsification
Data fabrication means the researcher did not actually do the study, but made up data. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but then changed some of the data. Both of these practices make people distrust scientists. If the public is mistrustful of science then it will be less willing to provide funding support.
Plagiarism
Taking the ideas and work of others without giving them credit is unfair and dishonest. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered plagiarism-use your own words instead.
Multiple submissions
It is unethical to submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Doing this wastes the time of editors and peer reviewers, and can damage the reputation of journals if published in more than one.
Redundant publications (or ‘salami’ publications)
This means publishing many very similar manuscripts based on the same experiment. It can make readers less likely to pay attention to your manuscripts.
Animal research
For research conducted on regulated animals (which includes all live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates) appropriate approval must have been obtained, according to international or local laws and regulations. Before conducting the research, approval must have been obtained from the relevant body (in most cases an Institutional Review Board, or Ethics Committee). The authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Methods section detailing full information as to their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers). If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental information file. Research on non-human primates is subject to specific guidelines from the Weatherall (2006) report (The Use of Non-Human Primates in Research).
For research conducted on non-regulated animals, a statement should be made as to why ethical approval was not required.
Experimental animals should have been handled according to the highest standards dictated by the author’s institution.
We strongly encourage all authors to comply with the ‘Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments’ (ARRIVE) guidelines, developed by NC3Rs.
Articles should be specific in descriptions of the organism(s) used in the study. The description should indicate strain names when known.
Publication ethics and malpractice statement
Indian Journal of Clinical Psychology supports high publication standards and takes all possible measures against publication malpractices. Measures are taken to ensure accurate, timely, fair, and ethical publication of scientific papers.
Our Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement are mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE 2011 www.publicationethics.org)

Publishing process

1. Manuscript submission.
2. Editor assignment to the manuscript.
3. The editorial initial decision on the manuscript.
4. Assignment of reviewers.
5. Reviewers’ agreement to peer review the manuscript.
6. Reviewers report submission (manuscript acceptance with or without revisions, or manuscript rejection).
7. Discussion of reviewers’ reports by the editorial team, further communication with the reviewers and authors if required, and making an informed final decision.
8. The editor contacts the author with the decision.
9. Authors can choose to transfer their manuscript to another journal.
Duties and expectations of editors, reviewers, authors, and publishers of the journal are set out below:

Responsibilities of Editors

The editor has to follow strict ethical principles in dealing with the manuscript. Editors make the initial and final decision of accepting a manuscript for publication in the journal. Editors also decide the priority of publication of submitted articles based on the need of readers and authors.
Editors need to ensure that all data are true, and are genuinely owned by the authors. All submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential documents. Information about the manuscript can be given only to the editorial advisers, reviewers, and publisher. Unpublished materials should not be used by the editor without the written permission of the author.
Editors should have no conflict of interest concerning articles they accept or reject. No race, nationality, religion, or gender should influence the editor’s evaluation of the manuscript. The publication of an article is done in a peer-reviewed process and the anonymity of reviewers and authors is preserved (double-blind process).
If a published paper proves inaccurate after a time, authors must collaborate with the editors to reach an appropriate decision. The decision is case-dependent, and it will be usually either withdrawing the paper or writing a clarification.
All publication decisions are made by the journal’s Editors-in-Chief based on the reviewers’ reports. Authors of papers that are not accepted are notified promptly.

Responsibilities of Authors

The authors’ manuscript/work should guarantee full originality, accuracy, objectivity, and reproducibility.
Research data
All data should be represented accurately in the paper, there should be no data fabrication (made up data) and data falsification (changing and manipulating some of the data).
Upon request from the editors and if practicable; raw data must be provided when submitting the manuscript. Also, if practicable, the author should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases).
If authors discover errors or inaccurate data in their manuscript, they should inform the editor and collaborate with them to reach an appropriate decision. Authors also agree to cooperate with any inquiry or investigation initiated by the journal, institution, regulatory agency, and/or funding body into an allegation of research misconduct involving a manuscript.
Multiple publications
Manuscripts that have been published in other journals (multiple submission), or publishing many very similar manuscripts based on the same experiment (redundant publications or ‘salami’ publications), will not be considered for publication in this journal. Elsewhere published or presented work must be stated by the author when submitting the manuscript. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
The authors have the right to present the articles at conferences or congresses, providing that they indicate it in their covering letter to editors. In general, conference proceedings that publish only abstracts are considered acceptable. If the conference publication has published the whole paper, then the authors are required to submit a significant change (about 30% extra information and changes, including the title) of the conference paper.
Authorship of the Paper
Persons who have made a significant contribution to the conception, plan, carrying out, or analysis of the reported study, should be listed as co-authors. Those who have participated in a limited manner should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.
The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors are listed and that they have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Inappropriate authorship credit should be avoided. This includes “ghostwriting” – when a person significantly contributes to the publication for another person who is named as or presumed to be the author, without disclosing this contribution, or not being acknowledged in the publication); and ”guest authorship”, i.e. honorary authorship (the granting of authorship status to individuals who have made little, if any, contribution to the article). Guest authorship is a violation of academic integrity standards, it undermines the credibility and scientific independence of the author.
Human Research
When reporting a study that involves human participants or any form of human data, authors must declare that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975 (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/), revised in 2013. Also, a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study is required, included in the Methods section.
The journal requires that clinical trials are prospectively registered in a database, and clinical trial registration numbers to be included.
All participants should give their informed consent before their inclusion in the study.
Participant’s identity should not be revealed in any way. In exceptional cases were participants’ identity may be entirely or partially revealed should be only after obtaining their informed written consent from the author. If authors think that informed consent is not necessary, they need to justify it. A consent, permission, or release form should include unlimited permission for publication in all formats.
To respect patients’ and any other individual’s privacy, please do not send signed forms, unless deemed necessary by the editors.
Editors reserve the right to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.
Acknowledgment
All work of other authors should be cited or quoted. Financial support when relevant and all due acknowledgments should be stated. Also, any type of conflict of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript should be stated by the author.
Copyright
Articles are published after the authors’ agreement to transfer all copyrights to IJCP.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Papers will be refereed by at least two experts suggested by the editorial board. The journal peer review process is a “double-blind peer review”. Reviewers assist the editor in making editorial decisions, and through the editor assist the author to improve the paper. Additional reviews will be sought when needed, and authors will be informed of it.
The reviewers have to be objective, and all criticism of the paper should be based on a solid argument. Reviewers should have no collaborative, competitive, or other relations or connections with the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
The reviewers must evaluate the manuscript for originality, and to inspect its content from the scientific and the logical point of views, for intact data, strong research methods, reasonable results, and solid arguments in discussing the results.
Reviewers have to identify all forms of similarity in the data and/or writing the manuscript with other published papers. Simultaneous submissions of the same manuscript to different journals will not be tolerated.
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept strictly confidential and not used for personal advantage. In the case of unpublished materials, this should not be used by the reviewer in any way without the written permission of the author. Privileged information or ideas that are obtained through peer review must not be used for competitive gain.
Note: IJCP is a member of CrossRef and CrossRef services, e.g., CrossCheck. All manuscripts submitted will be checked for plagiarism (copying text or results from other sources) and self-plagiarism (duplicating substantial parts of authors’ published work without giving the appropriate references) using the CrossCheck database. Plagiarism is not tolerated.
For more information about CrossCheck/iThenticate, please visit http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck.html.

Responsibilities of Publisher

Once published all versions of the papers will remain available. Papers are posted on the website of the Journal (Archive) within a short period of the paper publication. The Journal has adopted the DOI (digital object identifier) system to enable accurate citation and stable online availability of published articles.