Instructions for Authors

Aim and Fields of Interests

Providing and disseminating high-quality original articles and reviews in Poland and abroad by recognized, experience do researchers involved in theoretical analysis and research in many subdisciplines of psychology, including human development, education, socialpsychology, management psychology, health and illness, neuropsychology, psychological research methodology, and others. Creating opportunities for young, talented scientists, including students, to publish research results and improve their scientifics kills through expert reviewer opinions. Polish Psychological Forum is open to interdisciplinary discussion. We entourage researchers of different nationalities and international teams to publish in order to increase scientific cooperation and eliminate boundaries in science.

Languages

Polskie Forum Psychologiczne/Polish Psychological Forum published articles in Polishor in English.

Application

The process of submitting the application and preparing the text for printing is carried out electronically. The Authors Are Requested to create an account PFP and read the instructions concerning the use of the control panel for the application procedure, reviewing, and monitoring of the manuscript by the Authors. After the Application, all Co-Authors Will be informed by email to the indicated e-mail address – failure to respond to the e-mail will be treated as confirmation of the lack of a conflict of interest.
The journal does not charge fees for processing, reviewing, and publishing papers.

The initial assessment of an article and the decision to send it for review are made within 14 days on average. The average time for preparing a review is 30 days, and the average time to publication is 90 days.

Reviews

Submitted Papers are peer-reviewed by two Reviewers (in special cases, a third Reviewer is called) and are qualified for publication individually. In the reviewing process, a rule of ‘double blind’ review has been adopted; however, both the Authors and/or Reviewers can deviate from this rule based on a written statement. In case the Authors’ names are disclosed, the Reviewers are obliged to declare in an email sent to pfp@ukw.edu.pl that there is no conflict of interest with the Author (e.g., personal relationship, subordination, current collaboration, etc.). The list of cooperating Reviewers is published annually on the magazine's website under the “Scientific Board” tab. The review form is available from the journal website under the “Instructions for Authors” tab.

Publication Policy 

On submitting materials to the Editors, the Authors declare that the work has not been published elsewhere and that the application for publication is not being considered in other magazines. Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’). A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals to one journal overtime (e.g.‘salami publishing’). Manuscripts are checked by an anti-plagiarism system. In the event of using someone else's works in the text (e.g., illustrations or photographs), the authors of the articles are solely responsible for observing the copyright in relation to the submitted illustration material.

PFP provides Readers with easy, permanent, and free access to scientific publications along with their metadata. Using the content posted on the journal's website does not require creating an account. Articles are delivered as PDF files.

Copyrights and Sharing

Articles on the PFP websites are published under an open-access model, which means they are available free of charge to anyone interested, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license. 
According to the author's agreement, the authors of the texts grant the Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz a non-exclusive and royalty-free license, allowing the use of the Creative Commons license (CC BY), which permits copying and distribution of the work in any medium and format, provided that the authorship is properly acknowledged. The authors thus retain the right to further and freely dispose of their work.
Papers published in the journal until the end of 2024 are available under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND) (attribution - non-commercial - no derivative works).
More information about the license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en. License content: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode.
Authors retain the copyright to their works.
Every article posted on the PFP website also receives a free DOI identifier.

Ethical Principles

Polish Psychological Forum is committed to upholding standards of ethical behaviour at all stages of the publication process. We closely follow the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the American Psychological Association (APA), which set standards and provide guidelines for best practices to meet these requirements. All articles should present clearly and concisely the matter related to the research subject. The Editors will reject work containing openly discriminatory and unethical content, as well as promoting unprofessional practices. Also manuscripts, which are not corresponding to “Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct” (APA), will not be published at Polskie Forum Psychologiczne/ Polish Psychological Forum. 

 Manuscript requirements

  1. The length of an empirical, theoretical, or review article should not exceed one publishing sheet (40,000 characters including spaces), including footnotes, references, tables, figures, and appendices. The editorial board may make exceptions to this rule, e.g., in the case of articles covering a series of studies. Reports, reviews, commentaries, and polemics should not exceed 10,000 characters, including spaces.



  1. Texts should be prepared in MS Word, using a 12-point font with double line spacing. Pages should be numbered and include a header containing the title or a key part of it.



  1. An abstract/abstracts of the article must be included in a separate file. For articles in Polish, abstracts should be provided in both Polish and English (maximum 300 words each), along with keywords in both languages (maximum five keywords). For articles in English, an abstract in English (max. 300 words) and keywords in English (max. five keywords) are required. Abstracts of empirical articles should include essential information regarding the presented study, indicating the aim, sample, research tools, main results, and conclusions. This structure is not required for theoretical, review, or polemical articles.



  1. The article's structure should be organized using headings and subheadings. The structure of the different types of articles is contained in the templates available for download on the page of the Polish Psychological Forum in the “Guidelines for authors” section. Please use these templates, i.e., submit manuscripts written in the appropriate templates.

  1. Tables and figures, formatted according to APA 7th edition standards, should be included in the appropriate place within the text (not as separate attachments).



  1. When presenting the results of statistical analyses, the names of the statistical tests used and the significance level should be provided, along with all necessary parameters (depending on the technique applied).

Exact p-values should be reported to three decimal places; for values less than 0.001, use p < .001.

(Additional note: In English-language texts (a) use periods, not commas, as decimal separators; (b) use a leading zero before the decimal point only if the number could exceed 1. In Polish: (a) commas are used instead of periods in decimals, (b) a leading zero is used even when the number cannot exceed 1.)

Correlations, proportions, and inferential test statistics such as t, F, and χ² should be rounded to two decimal places. Group means and standard deviations from total scales (with a fixed range, e.g., 1–5, as in most questionnaires) should be rounded to one decimal place. Other means and standard deviations (e.g., reaction times in ms, physiological measurements) should be reported to two decimal places. Population parameters should be denoted using Greek letters, and estimators using Latin letters in italics.



  1. Use formatting standards commonly accepted in the psychological literature as defined by the current edition of the American Psychological Association (APA) Manual. From 2025, manuscripts must comply with APA 7th edition. These standards are used in prestigious psychological journals and textbooks. We recommend using the freely available guide at the website https://apastyle.apa.org/ or using a reference generator.

In-text citations should include the author(s)’ surname(s), year of publication, and page number(s) in the case of direct quotations, e.g., (Smith, Jankowski, 2006, p. 16).

References should be listed in alphabetical order. For publications with three or more authors, use the abbreviated form: (Stevenson et al., 2009). The reference list at the end of the text should follow a consistent format and include all cited sources. Examples:

  • Oleszkowicz, A., & Senejko, A. (2011). Dorastanie [Adolescence]. In J. Trempała (Ed.), Psychologia rozwoju człowieka [Psychology of human development] (pp. 259–286). Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

  • Cheng, J., Zhao, Y. Y., Wang, J., & Sun, Y. H. (2019). Academic burnout and depression of Chinese medical students in the pre-clinical years: The buffering hypothesis of resilience and social support. Psychology Health & Medicine, 25(9), 1094–1105. https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2019.1709651

  • Rostowska, T. (2008). Małżeństwo, rodzina, praca a jakość życia [Marriage, family, work and the quality of life]. Oficyna Wydawnicza Impuls.

  • Zeigler-Hill, V., & Marcus, D. K. (Eds.). (2016). The dark side of personality: Science and practice in social, personality, and clinical psychology. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14854-000

The reference list must be complete and consistent with the required format.



  1. A separate file with author notes must include the full names and affiliations of the authors (without academic degrees or titles), their email addresses, author contribution notes, and ORCID numbers for each author.



The author notes should disclose the percentage and substantive contribution of each author to the publication (e.g., who was responsible for the concept, assumptions, research methods, data collection, analysis, etc.). Acknowledgments should also indicate sources of funding and assistance from any specialized entities (individuals or institutions).

This file should also include a signed statement by the first/corresponding author.



If the manuscript does not meet the submission requirements, it will be returned for revision.

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