Health Psychology Open
Health Psychology Open (HPO) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access, online-only journal providing rapid publication. HPO is dedicated to publishing cutting-edge research in health psychology from around the world. Please see the Aims and Scopes tab for further information.
Why publish in Health Psychology Open?
- Rapid, rigorous peer review
- Authors retain copyright under a Creative Commons license
- Inclusion in SCOPUS
- Inclusion in PubMed Central
- Inclusion in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)
- No word limit
Open access article processing charge (APC) information
The article processing charge (APC) for this journal is currently 2000 USD.
The APC is only payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Please see further details here.
Submission information
Submit your manuscript today at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hpo
Please see the Submission Guidelines tab for more information on how to submit an article to the journal.
Contact
Please direct any queries to HPOEditor@gmail.com
Health Psychology Open (HPO) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access, online-only journal providing rapid publication. HPO is dedicated to publishing cutting-edge research in health psychology from around the world.
HPO seeks to provide a platform for both traditional empirical analyses and more qualitative and/or critically oriented approaches to health psychology. All areas of health psychology are covered, but these topics are of particular interest:
- Clinical health psychology
- Critical health psychology
- Community health psychology
- Health psychology practice
- Health psychology through a social, cultural or regional lens
The journal particularly favours papers that focus on health psychology in practice, including submissions concerning community and/or clinical applications and interventions. Review articles are also welcomed.
There is no fixed limit to the length of manuscripts, which is normally strictly limited in other journals, for example HPO’s sister journal, Journal of Health Psychology (JHP).
Studies published in this journal are required to obtain ethical approval from an Institutional Review Board. Such approval must include informed, signed consent by all research participants. Any manuscript not containing an explicit statement concerning ethical approval and informed consent will not be considered.
| David F. Marks | Arles, France |
| Lindsey Burns | Glasgow Caledonian University, UK |
| Joanna McParland | Glasgow Caledonian University, UK |
| Ronan Conroy | Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Ireland |
| Seth Kalichman | University of Connecticut, USA |
| Carla Willig | City University, London, UK |
| Nancy E Adler | University of California, San Francisco, USA |
| Suzanne Bennett Johnson | University of Florida, Gainesville, USA |
| Glynis M. Breakwell | University of Bath, UK |
| Catherine Campbell | London School of Economics, London, UK |
| Kerry Chamberlain | Massey University, Albany, New Zealand |
| Sabrina Cipoletta | University of Padova, Italy |
| Cecilia G. Conaco | University of the Phillipines, Phillipines, Philippines |
| Emee Vida Estacio | Athens, Greece |
| Brian Evans | Middlesex University, UK |
| Uwe Flick | Freie Universtität Berlin, Germany |
| Paul Flowers | University of Strathclyde, UK |
| Keith Geraghty | University of Manchester, UK |
| M. Graça Pereira | University of Minho, Portugal |
| Charlotte Hilton | Hilton Health Consultancy, UK, University of Derby, UK and University of Florida, USA |
| Stevan E Hobfoll | Rush Medical College, USA |
| Cheryl L. Holt | University of Maryland, USA |
| David Ingledew | Bangor University, UK |
| Leonard A. Jason | DePaul University, USA |
| Ashraf Kagee | Stellenbosch University, South Africa |
| Elizabeth A. Klonoff | University of Central Florida, USA |
| Feng Kong | Shaanxi Normal University, China |
| Gary L Kreps | George Mason University, USA |
| Christina Liossi | University of Southampton, UK |
| Luo Lu | National Taiwan University, Taiwan |
| Aleksandra Luszczynska | University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland and University of Colorado, USA |
| Antonia C. Lyons | University of Auckland, New Zealand |
| Kareena McAloney-Kocaman | Glasgow Caledonian University, UK |
| Chris McManus | University College London, UK |
| Michael Murray | University of Keele, UK |
| Paul Nussbaum | University of Pittsburgh, USA |
| Doug Oman | University of California, Berkeley, USA |
| Chandra Y. Osborn | Vanderbilt University, USA |
| James O. Prochaska | University of Rhode Island, Kingston, USA |
| Tina Rochelle | City University of Hong Kong, China |
| Jesus Rodriguez-Marin | Miguel Hernandez University, Alicante, Spain |
| Jason Seacat | Western New England College, USA |
| Jonathan Smith | Birkbeck College, London, UK |
| Mark R. Somerfield | Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA |
| Mary-Jane Paris Spink | Pontificia Catholic University, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Wendy Stainton-Rogers | The Open University, UK |
| Penny Standen | University Hospital, Nottingham, UK |
| Christine Stephens | Massey University, New Zealand |
| Stephen Sutton | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Catherine Marie Sykes | City University London, UK |
| Catherine S-K Tang | National University of Singapore, Singapore |
| Carl E. Thoresen | Stanford University, USA |
| Claudia Unikel-Santoncini | National Institute of Psychiatry, Mexico |
| Jan Vinck | Hasselt University, Belgium |
| Stephen M Weiss | University of Miami, USA |
| Jelte M. Wicherts | Tilburg University, Netherlands |
| Richard A Winett | Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, USA |
| Xiaofei Xie | Peking University, China |
- Open Access
- Article processing charge (APC)
- Article Types
- Editorial policies
4.1 Peer Review Policy
4.2 Authorship
4.3 Acknowledgements
4.4 Funding
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
4.7 Clinical Trials
4.8 Data - Publishing policies
5.1 Publication ethics
5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement - Preparing your manuscript
6.1 Word processing formats
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
6.3 Title, keywords and abstracts: helping readers find your article online
6.4 Word length of manuscripts
6.5 Units of measurement
6.6 Nomenclature
6.7 Standard abbreviations and symbols
6.8 Supplemental material
6.9 Reference style
6.10 Statistical Analysis
6.11 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
7.1 ORCID
7.2 Information required for completing your submission
7.3 Corresponding author contact details
7.4 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
8.1 Sage Production
8.2 Continuous publication
8.3 Promoting your article - Further information
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hpo to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the Aims and Scope of Health Psychology Open will be reviewed.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Health Psychology Open may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
Health Psychology Open is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of article processing charges which are paid by the funder, institution or author of each manuscript upon acceptance. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.
For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.
2. Article processing charge (APC)
If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons licence.
The current article processing charge (APC) is $2,000.
The APC is only payable if your article is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Tax-exempt status can be indicated by providing appropriate registration numbers when payment is requested. Please see further details here.
(a) Reports of empirical studies likely to further our understanding of health psychology
(b) Critical reviews of the literature
(c) Theoretical contributions and commentaries
(d) Intervention studies
(e) Brief reports
Registered Reports, Pre-Data or Post-Data: There are two types of Registered Reports:
- Registered Reports – Pre-Data, i.e., before any data have been gathered
- Registered Reports – Post-Data, i.e., before already existing data have been examined and analysed.
These submissions are reviewed in two stages. In Stage 1, a study proposal is considered for publication prior to data collection and/or analysis. Stage 1 submissions should include a complete Introduction, Methods, and Proposed Analyses. High-quality proposals will be accepted in principle before data collection and/or data analysis commences. Once the study is completed, the author will finish the article including Results and Discussion sections (Stage 2). Publication of the Stage 2 submission is guaranteed as long as the approved Stage 1 protocol is followed and the conclusions are appropriate. Full details can be found here. The Journal’s manuscript requirements should be adhered to for the stage 2 submission.
Following a preliminary triage to eliminate submissions unsuitable for Health Psychology Open all papers are sent out for review. The covering letter is important. To help the Editor in his preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the paper suitable for publication. If your paper should be considered for fast-track publication, please explain why. The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. Health Psychology Open utilizes a double-anonymize peer review process in which the reviewer and author’s names and information are withheld from the other. Reviewers may at their own discretion opt to reveal their names to the author in their review but our standard policy practice is for their identities to remain concealed. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision.
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors,. This includes paid or unpaid medical/commercial writers (‘ghost writers’).
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
If medical/commercial writers are to be involved in the preparation of manuscripts then they must co-author with a clinician (or other medical professional) and their name and full affiliation must appear on the article.
The work of any medical/commercial writer must not be passed off as that of a clinician or other medical professional.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section.
Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on 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.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
4.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
4.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.
It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
Health Psychology Open requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of Health Psychology Open to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript and on the title page, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.
For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.
Please see the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest for more information about what items should be referenced in a Conflict of Interest statement.
4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.
Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.
For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.
Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.
Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants
The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline.
Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
5.1.1 Plagiarism
Health Psychology Open and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
5.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Health Psychology Open publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page
Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request.
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.
6.3 Title, keywords and abstracts: helping readers find your article online
The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting Sage’s Journal Author Gateway Guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Keywords: 5-10 to accompany the abstract. They should, if possible, be drawn from the MeSH list of Index Medicus and be chosen with a view to useful cross-indexing of the article.
Abstract: The abstract should accurately and concisely reflect the content of the article, and should be limited to 150 words. Please avoid reference citations and undefined abbreviations in the abstract.
6.4 Word length of manuscripts
Articles of any word length will be considered. Tables and Figures count nominally as 500 words each in lieu of text. Supplemental files will be published online together with the paper, subject to peer review.
Units of measurement should be expressed in SI and metric units; older conventional units may be added in parentheses.
Use the generic or chemical name of any drug, in lower case; the specific trade name (capitalized) may be given in parentheses after the first text reference.
6.7 Standard abbreviations and symbols
Standard Abbreviations and symbols should be used, then defined in full in the first instance unless they are standard units of measurement. Avoid any use of abbreviations in the article title and abstract.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files
Health Psychology Open adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. Please review the guidelines on Sage Harvard to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard output file here.
6.10 Statistical analyses
Where statistical analyses have been carried out please ensure that the methodology has been accurately described. In comparative studies power calculations are required. In research papers requiring complex statistics the advice of an expert statistician should be sought at the design/implementation stage of the study.
6.11 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Health Psychology Open is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hpo to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
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.
7.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
7.3 Corresponding author contact details
Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
8. On acceptance and publication
If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been check for Sage Production, the corresponding author will be asked to pay the article processing charge (APC) via a payment link. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 30 days. Please note that no production work will occur on your paper until the APC has been received.
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Health Psychology Open editorial office as follows:
For questions on the Sage-based submission system: Megha.Bisht@sagepub.in
For any other queries: HPOEditor@gmail.com