Emerging Adulthood

Emerging Adulthood is as an interdisciplinary forum covering clinical, developmental and social psychology and other social sciences such as anthropology, psychiatry, public policy, social work, sociology, public health, and post-secondary education.

Article Types

Empirical Article. Most of the manuscripts published in Emerging Adulthood will be empirical articles. An empirical article is a manuscript that presents new data (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods), is theoretically informed, and extends the extant literature. An empirical article should be based on original, rigorous, typically longitudinal, research focused on emerging adults (18-29 year-olds). An empirical article should not exceed 40 pages (including the title page, abstract, main document, references, tables, figures, and appendices). 

Brief Report. A brief report should be used for the rapid communication of cutting-edge, innovative research. The brief report format also may be used for the report of a replication study. A psychometric paper (e.g., describing the development of a new measure or examining the psychometric properties of an existing measure) may be submitted as a brief report as well. While shorter than an empirical article, a brief report still should make a significant contribution to the current knowledge on emerging adult development and adaptation. A brief report should not exceed 15 pages (including the title page, abstract, main document, references, tables, figures, and appendices).

Review Article. A review article should present a systematic synthesis and summary of the extant literature on a topic applicable to emerging adulthood. The review should be scientific (e.g., meta-analysis of prior empirical research). The length of a review article depends on the topic. However, the manuscript should not exceed 60 pages.

Special Issue. The journal will publish special issues on contemporary topics pertinent to emerging adulthood. A special issue should summarize advances in a particular area of emerging adulthood in regard to theory and empirical research. Investigators conducting research in emerging, novel, and/or underrepresented areas of interest will be encouraged to propose special issues. If you intend to organize a special issue, please contact the editor at an early stage to discuss a potential special issue proposal. A proposal for a special issue should be submitted online similar to other manuscript types.

Transparency and Openness

Emerging Adulthood is committed to promoting transparent, open, rigorous research. The journal is a signatory of the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines (Nosek et al., 2015), indicating that it endorses the guidelines and commits to aligning its procedures with them. Accordingly, the following procedures are part of the submission process:

Disclosures. As part of the submission procedures, authors will be asked to confirm the following (even though not all apply to all types of research designs):

1.     You included a clear statement of how the sample size was determined

2.     You included a statement of a priori statistical power based on a reasonable effect size (quantitative studies) or how you ensured saturation of depth and breadth of themes (qualitative studies)

3.     You included a description of all data exclusions (e.g., outliers), how the decisions about exclusions were made, and have conducted all analyses with and without the exclusions

4.     You included a description of all data transformations, how the decisions about transformations were made, and have conducted all analyses with both the transformed and raw data

5.     You included a rationale for including covariates and tested all models with and without covariates included

6.     All measures and questions relevant to the research question contained in the project were included in the manuscript

7.     You included a clear statement of the amount, type, and method of handling missing data

8.     You included effect sizes for all statistical tests

9.     All research questions and hypotheses are clearly and accurately labeled as either exploratory or confirmatory

10.   You included rationale for any deviations from standard scoring procedures of measures

11.   You included, as appendix or supplement, a detailed description of the interview questions asked

12.   You included detailed description of your qualitative coding/analysis process

13.   You included an assessment of coding trustworthiness, either quantitative or qualitative

These items are presented as a checklist in the submission portal, with authors actively confirming adherence to each practice. A separate statement for disclosures is not required but authors can choose to include one in the manuscript if they wish (e.g., the 21-word solution; Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2012).

Transparency and Openness Statement. As part of the submission process authors must include a Transparency and Openness Statement.  This statement will be included as part of the peer review process and will ultimately appear in the Author Note section of accepted manuscripts. The Transparency and Openness Statement must indicate the following:

1. Are the raw data contained in this manuscript openly available for download?
   1. If yes, did you include a DOI or other persistent identifier in the manuscript?
2. For quantitative analyses, is the analysis code/syntax used for the analyses openly available for download?
   1. If yes, did you include a DOI or other persistent identifier in the manuscript?
3. For qualitative analyses, are the list of questions and coding manuals openly available for download?
   1. If yes, did you include a DOI or other persistent identifier in the manuscript?
4. Are all materials used in the study openly available for download?
   1. If yes, did you include a DOI or other persistent identifier in the manuscript?
5. Did this study include a pre-registration plan for data collection and/or analysis?
   1. If yes, did you include a link to the pre-registration plan in the manuscript?
   2. If yes, were deviations from the pre-registration plan clearly indicated in the manuscript?

The statement should appear on a separate page, and all links should direct to active and anonymized web sites. All of the aforementioned questions must be addressed in the statement (1, 2 and/or 3, 4, and 5), whether the answers are yes or no. Additional information may also be provided to explain specific conditions or circumstances. Example statements are as follows:

The analysis code (doi.xxxx) and materials (doi.xxxx) used in this manuscript are openly available. The raw data contained in this manuscript are not openly available due to privacy restrictions set forth by the institutional ethics board, but can be obtained from the corresponding author following the completion of a privacy and fair use agreement. No aspects of the study were pre-registered.

The raw data, analysis code, and materials used in this study are not openly available but are available upon request to the corresponding author. The data collection and analysis were pre-registered (link to URL of pre-registration plan), and all deviations from the pre-registration plan were clearly indicated in the manuscript.

These are just examples, and authors are free to tailor the statements to their particular situation so long as they addressed criteria 1-5 listed above.

The content of the Transparency and Openness Statement will not be used as a basis for acceptance or rejection of your manuscript.

Open Science Badges. Accepted manuscripts that answer in affirmative to #1, #4, or #5 above will be eligible to receive a corresponding Open Science Badge (see https://osf.io/tvyxz/). Open Science Badges will be affixed to the to the final version of the accepted article to signify the use of open and transparent practices. The following badges will be available:

 Open Data – The raw data used in the manuscript are freely available via a DOI or other persistent identifier.

 Open Materials – All study materials used in the manuscript are freely available via a DOI or other persistent identifier.

Pre-registered + analysis – The study design and target analyses were pre-registered and the manuscript contains a link to a permanent, time-stamped, and uneditable pre-registration plan housed on an open science repository. The Open Science Framework (https://osf.io) is the preferred site for housing pre-registration plans, but authors are free to use similar alternatives. Importantly, use of pre-registered analysis plans does not preclude the inclusion of exploratory analyses, but rather formalizes the distinction between confirmatory and exploratory analyses. Emerging Adulthood only issues pre-registration badges for manuscripts that contain pre-registered analyses.

Authors will complete an Open Practices Disclosure Form upon acceptance of their manuscript for publication. Eligible badges will then be affixed to the final type-set version of the article.

Manuscript Submission

Please submit manuscripts electronically at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ead. Authors will be asked to set up an online account in the Sage Track system, powered by ScholarOne.

Manuscript Review

On receipt, the Editor reads each new submission to decide whether it is likely to be competitive for publication. Rejected manuscripts cannot be reconsidered unless resubmission following revision has been invited by the Editor.

Manuscript Preparation and Ethical Issues

Manuscripts should be prepared according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (APA, 2019). All parts of the manuscript must be submitted electronically at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ead, double-spaced, and formatted for 8.5 x 11 paper. Documents should be submitted as MS Word documents (.doc), not converted to PDFs. When submitting a manuscript, authors should remove all identifying information from the body of the manuscript so that peer reviewers will be unable to recognize the authors and their affiliations. Authors are advised to use language that is free from sexist, racist, or ethnic bias; heterosexism; bias toward people with disabilities; ageism; and other kinds of bias. The manuscript should include an abstract on a separate page that contains no more than 150 words, and also a separate title page (designated as Title Page) which includes: 1) title of the article; 2) corresponding author's full name, current position, affiliation, institutional and email address, telephone and fax numbers; 3) co-author(s)' full name(s) and affiliation(s); 4) up to five key words as they should appear if they were to be published. A manuscript will not be considered for submission if it does not include these elements. Tables and/or Figures are to be included when necessary to depict the results.

In regard to manuscript length, an empirical article should not exceed 40 pages (including the title page, abstract, main document, references, tables, figures, and appendices); a brief report should not exceed 15 pages; and a review article should not exceed 60 pages. If a manuscript exceeds the length limit, the authors should justify the manuscript length to the Editor in the cover letter. We recognize that particularly papers presenting qualitative or mixed methods studies may require greater length. Approval of manuscripts exceeding the length limit requires approval of the Editor. There is no specific limit on the total number of tables and/or figures but most manuscripts will have no more than 5 tables and figures total. There should be page breaks between tables, figures, abstracts, and captions and these sections must conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (APA, 2019).

Authors are expected to adhere to the APA Ethical Guidelines in conducting all phases of their investigation and manuscript preparation. In particular, it is important that all ethical issues with regard to treatment of research participants be carefully examined and actions taken in accordance with the APA Ethical Guidelines. Moreover, it is important that every person who contributed to the project is acknowledged in the Author Notes, in accordance with APA policy, or is listed as an author.

In preparing and submitting a manuscript, authors are expected to report data and results that are both honest and accurate. Such practices as submitting a previously published manuscript for review, and submitting the same manuscript to various journals at the same time should not be exercised. Piecemeal or fragmented publications that form a single study are discouraged unless there is a clear benefit to the scientific community. Multiple reports from a large data set must include reference to proper reports and make clear the degree of sample overlap. Upon receipt of a manuscript for review, authors will be asked to sign a form indicating adherence to APA Ethical Guidelines as well as the issues identified above.

Authors submitting a manuscript are protected by common law against the unauthorized use of their unpublished work. Specifically, an unpublished manuscript is considered to be a confidential or privileged paper. Reviewers will be asked to destroy or return the manuscript after their review is completed; in addition, reviewers will be asked not to circulate, quote, cite, or refer to the unpublished work in any way unless specific permission is granted by the author.

Authorship

Upon acceptance of your manuscript you will be required to complete a Statement of Authorship Form, which details how each listed author contributed to the manuscript. An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author one should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) have given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

Orcid

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

Artwork Submissions

High-resolution figures should be uploaded as separate electronic files, with callouts for each in the text. Figure legends should include full explanations of the figures and be typewritten double-spaced with numbers corresponding to those on the figure files themselves. All figures must be specifically referred to in the text and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Acceptable file formats for figures include TIFF, EPS, and JPEG, and PDF Microsoft Application Files are acceptable for vector art (line art). Permission for use of the copyrighted material is the responsibility of the author. All artwork must be camera ready.

Tables

Tables should be numbered consecutively corresponding to in-text citation. Each table should be prepared on a separate page at the end of the text document and preferably should be no larger than a single page. Include a brief descriptive title of the table and a footnote with explanation of any abbreviations. All tables must be specifically referred to in the text and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Elements in tables should be separated by tabs, not cells or lines.

Conflict of Interest

Authors must disclose any commercial, financial, or other associations that could pose a conflict of interest in connection with their submitted article and these must be disclosed on the title page at the time of submission.

Financial Disclosure/Funding

Authors should list all funding sources related to the study and to the article preparation.

Copyright

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be required to complete an electronic copyright transfer form. From Sage Track website “Corresponding Author Center” choose the correct manuscript from “Manuscripts with Decisions” and from the ACTION box on the far right side, choose “Contributor Form.” After reading the form and completing the appropriate boxes, clicking the “I accept” box will confirm appropriate copyright transfer.

Authors are required to submit written permission from the original publisher to reprint copyright-protected material, including quoted material of 300 words or more from a single source (journal article or book). Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in this journal. Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal should not simultaneously submit them to another journal, nor should manuscripts have been published elsewhere in substantially similar contentReference
American Psychological Association (2009). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (APA, 2019). Washington, D. C.: American Psychological Association.

Publish Ahead of Print With OnlineFirst

OnlineFirst is a feature in which completed articles are published online prior to their inclusion in a print issue, offering authors the advantage of making their research accessible to the public in a more timely manner. Only online subscribers can view these PDFs, but abstracts are available to the public to view for free. Each OnlineFirst manuscript is citable by the publication date of the manuscript’s first online posting and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), providing a persistent, permanent way to identify manuscripts published in the online environment. You can cite OnlineFirst articles as follows:

Author’s last name, first initials. Article title. Journal title. Prepublished month day, year; DOI: 10.1177/ 0123456789123456

Once your article has completed the production process and before it is published in a print issue, it will be posted online. You can access EA OnlineFirst articles on journal's website. Once posted online, articles may not be retracted or edited. If your article is not completed prior to its publication date, it will not go on OnlineFirst but will be posted online with the issue in which it is published
 

Sage Choice

If you or your funder wishes your article to be freely available online to nonsubscribers immediately upon publication (gold open access), you can opt for it to be included in Sage Choice, subject to the payment of a publication fee. The manuscript submission and peer review procedure is unchanged. On acceptance of your article, you will be asked to let Sage know directly if you are choosing Sage Choice. To check journal eligibility and the publication fee, please visit Sage Choice. For more information on open access options and compliance at Sage, including self/author archiving deposits (green open access) visit Sage Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.
 

English Language Help

Authors who would like to refine the use of English in their manuscripts can learn more on the Sage Author Services page.

An author's use of these services in no way guarantees that his or her submission will ultimately be accepted. Any arrangement an author enters into will be exclusively between the author and the particular company, and any costs incurred are the sole responsibility of the author.

Direct Submission Questions to:

Christine McCauley Ohannessian, Ph.D.
University of Connecticut School of Medicine
E-mail: ohannessian@uchc.edu