Author Guidelines

SUMMER BREAK: Please note that Cyberpsychology will pause new submissions from June 16 through August 31. We look forward to receiving your work when we reopen in September. More details in this announcement.

1. Aims and Scope

The journal publishes original, high-quality social science research articles, including theoretical articles, systematic literature reviews, and meta-analyses, that advance understanding of how digital technologies, platforms, and digital media practices shape human experience, behavior, and society.

To fall within our journal’s scope, submissions must place digital media or digitally mediated experiences at the center of their theoretical and empirical inquiry. Typical submissions thus fall under the domains of media psychology, communication, and media studies. We also welcome submissions from other fields (e.g., sociology, education, political science), but only when the submitted manuscripts demonstrate clear and substantive relevance to the study of digital media and human experience. 

Submissions that are typically rejected for being out of scope include inquiries in which digital media merely serve as a data source (e.g., an online discussion used for content analysis of research question unrelated to the media), as data collection tool (e.g., an online survey about an offline phenomenon), or as a secondary variable or non-dominant research context (e.g., screentime as a control variable for otherwise non-digital main research question). Submissions whose primary theoretical or empirical contribution pertains to other disciplines (e.g., law, computer science) will also be considered out of scope. We do not accept submissions of essays or non-systematic literature reviews.

As of September 2026, we have increased our requirements regarding adherence to open science principles, rigorous measurement, and ethical research (see Submission requirements and related News post).

2. Submission Requirements

2.1. Open Science Policy

At Cyberpsychology, we are committed to promoting open science principles. To facilitate transparency and reproducibility, we require all submissions of quantitative studies (survey-based, observational, experimental, and meta-analyses) to be accompanied by anonymized data and materials (i.e., codebooks, analytical scripts, outputs, measures, and stimuli) shared via an open repository (e.g., Zenodo).

Data and materials must be shared and documented to an extent that enables full reproducibility. Datasets should be shared in open or accessible formats (e.g., .csv, .tsv, .sav, .RData) and clearly labeled in English via a codebook or data labels. For analyses performed using paid proprietary software (e.g., Mplus, SPSS, Stata), output files must be provided alongside the analytical scripts. During peer review, data and materials must be accessible to editors and reviewers via anonymized links. Upon acceptance, these must be made publicly available via persistent, unblinded links. The information should be presented under the Data Availability Statement in the submission title page(s) (see below).

If sharing data or materials is not possible (e.g., due to ethical or legal constraints), authors must request an exemption from the editorial office prior to submission, providing clear and specific justifications. The editorial office may request supporting documentation.

Preregistration is mandatory for experimental studies and strongly recommended for observational and survey-based studies. Preregistrations must be hosted on an open repository (e.g., AsPredicted, OSF Registries) and specify, at a minimum, the study's hypotheses, design, target sample, measures, and analytical approach. See section 3.5. for more details on what to include in the main text of preregistered studies. The submission may contain unregistered analyses, but these must be labeled as exploratory. Authors may request an exemption from the editorial office prior to submission, providing clear and specific justifications.

To ensure measurement rigor, submissions must report the psychometric properties of all measures used, computed on the current study data. For scales treated as reflective constructs, authors must report confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) fit indices alongside appropriate reliability estimates. For other types of measures, authors must provide clear justifications supporting their validity and reliability.

2.2. Ethical Approval

All submissions reporting studies involving human participants or human data must state that the relevant Research Ethics Committee (REC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved the study. This requirement applies across research designs, including survey-based and observational studies, experiments, and qualitative studies. The requirement does not apply to meta-analyses, systematic literature reviews, theoretical articles, and submissions that do not involve the collection or analysis of new data from human participants.

The full name and institution of the REC/IRB and the approval number must be reported both on the Title page, and a blinded version should be reported in the Methods section of the manuscript.

Example statement for the Title page: This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of XXX University (approval number 123-456).

Where relevant, the Methods section of the manuscript should also state whether informed consent was obtained and describe any other ethical considerations relevant to the study, including how participants' rights, privacy, confidentiality, and welfare were protected. Authors should provide sufficient information in the Methods section to demonstrate that the study was conducted in an ethical and responsible manner.

2.3. Language Requirements

It is the authors' responsibility to have their manuscripts proofread before submission. Submissions can be rejected due to language insufficiencies.

2.4. Requirements Summary

To request an exemption, please email info@cyberpsychology.eu with a clear justification. Use the subject line: "Exemption Request – Open Data / Preregistration". Editors will review your request and either grant the exemption or decline it, in which case the manuscript cannot be submitted.

3. Submissions and Manuscript Preparation

This section summarizes the journal’s requirements regarding the format, structure, and other aspects of the submission. Please go through these instructions carefully. Not adhering to these requirements can lead to a desk rejection of the article without assessing its quality.

3.1. Length

To facilitate the review process and publication clarity, manuscripts should be no longer than necessary. The submissions should be up to 11,000 words, including abstract, references, tables, figures, and footnotes or endnotes (the length does not include appendices).

The length of articles can be exceeded when justified by the authors (e.g., in case of multiple studies, mixed methods, or in a deep qualitative investigation). Journal’s editors will critically review articles exceeding the recommended length. Authors may be asked to shorten the submission before sending it to external reviewers.

3.2. Manuscript structure and citations format
The American Psychological Association (APA) standards is used for publications, both in terms of publication structure (i.e., IMRaD) and citation style. Please follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7ed.). Manuscripts that do not follow the required APA style will be rejected directly by editors.

3.3. Reporting statistics
Follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7ed.) standards for reporting statistics, such as reporting exact p-values to three decimals, or not using a zero before a decimal when the statistic cannot be greater than 1.

3.4. Submission files
The required format for articles is MS Word. Do not submit your article, or its revision, as a pdf file.

Authors should prepare the following documents. All documents must be in English:

3.4.1. Title page(s) with full author information. This document will not be presented to the reviewers, and should include:

• Manuscript’s title
• All authors’ full names, their affiliations and email addresses, identification of the corresponding author and their full address
• Authors’ contributor roles – please use the relevant roles from the CRediT taxonomy (https://credit.niso.org/)
• The disclosure of interests’ statements
• The disclosure of AI usage
• Data availability statement
• Ethical approval statement, including approval number
• Short biographical note for each author
• Acknowledgments

3.4.2. Anonymized main text. See the section “Anonymization of the manuscript” below for information on what to anonymize. The document should include:

• Title page(s). The title page should include the title of the article, the abstract, five to eight keywords, a data availability statement, and the (anonymized) IRB approval, disclosure of interests, and disclosure of AI usage. The title should be concise and accurately depict the manuscript’s content. The abstract should be unstructured (i.e., without subtitles), self-explanatory and reflect the study well. It should not exceed 250 words. The abstract should briefly introduce the study’s focus, design, sample, main findings, and its importance. The disclosure of interest should include any conflicts of interest that the authors might have. Please state these in an anonymized fashion in line with the double-blind review process. If the authors do not have any conflicts of interest, please state so (suggested formulation: “The authors do not have any conflicts of interest to report.”). For information about disclosure of AI usage, see section 4 below.
• The main text. Use Times New Roman font, size 12, with double spacing. The structure of the manuscript should correspond to the APA citation style. The main sections, with Level 1 Heading (bold, centered, title case), are: Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, and References. Level 2 Heading should be bold, left-aligned, and in title case; Level 3 Headings should be bold italic, left-aligned, and in title case; Level 4 headings should be indented, bold, in title case, ending with a period; and Level 5 Headings should be indented, bold italic, in title case, ending with a period. See https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/headings for more details. 
• Tables, figures, and other visual materials. All tables and images should be named and numbered in Arabic numerals. Place all tables and pictures in the text at the position where they should be placed. All common formats of tables, images, sound, and videos are accepted. Permissions for all formerly published figures such as tables and pictures are required. An author of an article should obtain written copyright permissions from their original holders.
• References list. All sources that are cited in the text must be included in the Reference list. The journal uses the APA citation style. See https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples for guidelines and references examples.
• Endnotes. Endnotes are preferred over footnotes. However, please limit the number of endnotes to a minimum.
• Appendices. Appendices are included at the end of the document. They are optional and do not count to the recommended manuscripts’ length. Unless it violates third-party rights, share the full list of items in the Appendix.

3.4.3. Supplementary materials. These materials (e.g., supplementary tables / figures / audio files / video files) are optional and can be included via URL to an anonymized version of the documents on a secure open repository (e.g., Zenodo).

3.5. Preregistered Studies

Make sure that the manuscript containing the preregistered study includes:

• URL to the anonymized version of the preregistration (this could be in the Introduction, Methods, or Results)
• A clear indication of which parts of the study were preregistered (e.g., data collection procedure, hypotheses, measures, tested model)
• A clear indication of which tested hypotheses were preregistered and which (if any) were not
• A clear (but concise) description of the differences between the preregistration and the manuscript (e.g., differences in conceptualization/measurement of a tested construct, in conducted analysis, in data collection), or an explicit statement that preregistered procedures were all followed (please note that detailed description of the changes should be included in 'transparent changes' document as part of OSF documents)

3.6. Anonymization of the Manuscript

3.6.1. Replacing identifying self-citations. “Identifying self-citations” are references from which a reviewer can recognize the authors of the submitted manuscript based on the context in which they are used. For instance, a sentence “In a previous study, we suggested that…. (Smith & Clark, 2010)“ contains an identifying self-citation. On the other hand, a sentence “In a study by Smith and Clark (2010), the authors suggest that…” contains a non-identifying citation, because the reviewer is unable to tell that Smith and Clark are the authors of the submitted manuscript. To ensure the double-blind review, identifying self-citations must be replaced. In-text citations of such identifying self-citations should be replaced by “AUTHOR, 2010” (e.g., “In a previous study, we suggested… (AUTHOR, 2010)”) and the source in the Reference list should be replaced by “AUTHOR (2010). Blinded for review purposes,” and placed at the beginning of the Reference list. Non-identifying self-citations, on the other hand, are not replaced and remain un-anonymized. 

We recommend using non-identifying self-citations where possible because the referred-to work may contain crucial information (e.g., for justification of the conducted study) for the reviewer to properly evaluate the submitted manuscript.

3.6.2. Replacing other identifying information. Other information that might lead reviewers to recognize the authors might include, for instance, the name of the institute or university where the study was conducted/approved, or the project name. Please, replace all such information (e.g., “the project (blinded for the review).”).

3.6.3. Removing author information from the document metadata. The document may keep the information about authorship in its metadata. See the guidelines for the removal in MS Word here.

4. Usage of AI

Cyberpsychology distinguishes two broad uses of AI tools: generative and assistive.

• Generative AI use entails generating content (e.g., text, figures, images, code) typically using large language models (e.g., ChatGPT, MS Copilot, Gemini, Midjourney, DALL-E). Any generative AI use must be disclosed; authors must clearly describe which AI tool was used and how it was used. We strongly recommend authors keep documentation of their AI use as they may be asked for details (e.g., specific prompts) during the review process.
• Assistive AI use typically entails grammar correction, editing enhancements, or code debugging. Common examples include using the integrated grammar-checking tools in MS Word, extensions like Grammarly, or assistive coding tools such as GitHub Copilot. This use of AI tools is common practice and generally does not need to be disclosed. 

In both types of use, authors remain fully responsible for the originality, integrity, and factual accuracy of all parts of the submitted manuscript, including those produced or modified by AI tools. Authors also remain liable for any breach of publication ethics. It is also the responsibility of the authors to ensure that their use of AI tools complies with the respective tools' terms of service.

AI tools cannot be listed as (co-)authors nor cited as authors because they do not meet the requirements for authorship, cannot take responsibility for the generated work, and cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts.

Statement on the Use of AI Services. Please include a section titled “Use of AI Services” on both the no-anonymized title page(s) and the anonymized main text. Place it under the declaration of Conflict of interest. This statement should briefly describe how you used AI services when producing the manuscript. You can use the following sample statements as they are or edit them to accurately describe your use.

Sample Statements:

• "The authors declare they have not used any AI services to generate or edit any part of the manuscript or data."

• "The authors declare they have used AI services, specifically [provide a list here], for grammar correction and minor style refinements. They carefully reviewed all suggestions from these services to ensure the original meaning and factual accuracy were preserved."

• "The authors declare they have used AI services, specifically [provide a list here], to generate or edit parts of our analytical script. They carefully reviewed the script to ensure its correctness."

• The authors declare they have used AI services, specifically [provide a list here], to generate or edit parts of our stimuli. They carefully reviewed the script to ensure its correctness."

5. Manuscript Submission

Log in the journal's system, click on New submission and follow provided instructions.

If you already have a reviewer account, log in, go to „User“ tab, select „Edit profile“, scroll down, and tick the option „Roles: Author".

6. Review Process

Submitted articles are first reviewed internally by editors to assure their baseline quality and relevance for the journal. In the next step, submissions are subjected to a double-blind peer review by at least two external reviewers (authors and reviewers are anonymous to each other). Reviews are forwarded to authors along with the editor's decision. Invited revisions are sent to the original reviewers for their re-evaluation.

The typical review process takes from 3 to 6 months (average 4 months), but can be longer under special circumstances. See this News post for further information about decisions (e.g., desk reject rates, initial decision length). To avoid editorial rejections, please read editorials How to increase probability of manuscript acceptance and How to get your manuscript accepted where we described typical reasons for editorial rejects and the best practices to get your manuscript accepted.

7. Publication of Accepted Manuscripts

All accepted manuscripts are published as open access articles. Publishing in Cyberpsychology is free of charge (no article processing charge or submission fee).

The papers are typically published within 1 to 3 months since acceptance of the paper.

8. Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Cyberpsychology follows the standard for Ethics and Publication Malpractice set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors, reviewers, editors, and publisher are expected to conform to these standards.

To detect possible plagiarism in submitted articles, Cyberpsychology uses the Similarity check by iThenticate.

9. Publisher

The Journal is published by the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Joštova 10
602 00, Brno, Czech Republic, fax: +420 5 4949 1920, e-mail: info@cyberpsychology.eu