The elements of (APA) style: A survey of psychology journal editors: Comment

Comments on the utility of the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (4th ed.) (see record 1994-98118-000). This manual is the style manual most used by writers and students in psychology, the other behavioral and social sciences, nursing, criminology, and personnel areas. The book covers the entire process of publication from organizing, writing, keying, and submitting manuscripts to seeing the accepted manuscript through production and publication. The authors of this comment attempted to identify the most common deviations from APA style in manuscripts submitted for publication and to examine the impact of straying from APA style on editorial decisions. 210 journal editors were surveyed. Results indicate that deviating from APA style has only a modest impact on the disposition of manuscripts submitted for publication. Although APA style was reported to be the predominant writing style followed by psychology journals in the US, the majority of editors surveyed deemed adherence to APA style as relatively unimportant in influencing the outcome of the manuscript review process. The editors emphasized substance over style in weighting the relative importance of manuscript content vs adherence to APA style in evaluating manuscripts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)