Research in Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences
Guide for Authors
Aims and scope
Research in Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences is a journal in the field of psychology and counseling and is affiliated with the University of Isfahan. The aim of the journal is to publish articles on cognitive and behavioral studies. Accordingly, the journal focuses on cognitive studies such as research related to attention, concentration, memory, intelligence, reasoning, problem solving and cognitive interventions as well as behavioral studies such as research related to communication, vocational, organizational, family behavior and interventions.
Types of contributions
Types of contributions include research articles / original articles.
Ethics
The Journal of Research in Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences is a member of Committee on Publication Ethics and follows its principles.
Acceptance of the articles
The manuscripts must comply with the following rules:
- The manuscript should be drawn from original research in line with aims and scope of the journal.
- The manuscript should not be published before and should not be under review elsewhere.
- The respected authors should not send an article when they have another manuscript under review or are on waiting list for publication.
- If the manuscript was drawn from a MA or PhD thesis, this should be mentioned in the footnote of the abstract page.
- According to the rules of the University of Isfahan, only university or research institutions’ academic staff are allowed to submit manuscripts. The thesis supervisors must be the corresponding author. (In case of student and professors’ collaboration, the academic staff must be the corresponding author).
- The manuscript must be prepared based on the guide for authors.
Review process
The review process has two steps:
- In the first step, the manuscript will proceed to the review process if they are in line with the journal’s aims and scope, have not been published elsewhere and meet the journal quality.
- In the second step, the manuscripts will be accepted if they have met the validity criteria, documented accurately, utilized correct research methodology, answered to an important research gap, and have accepted by at least two reviewers.
- The journal operates a double anonymized peer review process.
- All submitted manuscript will be checked for originality before entering to the review process.
Article Structure
- The manuscript should not exceed 20 pages total (no more than 8500 words), single line spaced with margins of 3 cm from the bottom, 3.5 cm from the top, and 2 cm from the right and left, in one column, and in the Word software.
- Please use Time New Roman font size 10 for the text.
- Manuscript should be 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'.
Submission
- Manuscripts must be submitted through https://cbs.ui.ac.ir/
- Five files including title page with authors’ names, main document, conflict of interest, author copyright agreement and abstract should be uploaded.
- Title page with authors’ names
- Title
- Initial and surname of all authors (the corresponding authors should be identified by *).
- Academic degree/ position, affiliation, contact number and emails in a separate line after the names
- The corresponding authors and academics must use their academic or organizational email.
- The number and order of the authors should be the same in the title page and in the submission website.
Example:
The Role of Prosocial Behavior in Enhancing the University Students’ Psychological Wellbeing
Negin Towsyfyan: Ph.D. Student of Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran.
negin_towsyfyan@yscu.ac.ir
Sayed Ali Marashi: Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran.
sayedalimarashi@scu.ac.ir
Important:
- Please pay attention to the order of the authors in the submission website. According to the University of Isfahan’s rule, there is no possibility of changing the order, or changing affiliations, adding or deleting names of the authors. (University students should check the rules of their university before submission.)
- Please take time to correctly enter the authors’ affiliations in the submission website.
- Main document
Main document should be anonymized and be prepared as follow:
Abstract
Title should be centered with Time New Roman font, size 13 and bold.
Unstructured abstract should contain the following: aims, methodology, results and conclusion. It should be between 200 to 250 words (without headings).
Key words should be capitalized and separated by comma (,).
Main text
Page three should start with Introduction following by Methodology, Results, Discussion and Conclusion.
- First level heading: Time New Roman: 12 bold and centered
- Second level heading: Time New Roman: 11 bold and left alignment
- Third level title: Time New Roman: 10 bold and left alignment
- Forth level title: Time New Roman, 9 and left alignment
Introduction
The introduction should contain problem statement, literature, research gap and importance of the topic.
The aims, hypothesis or research questions may be included in the introduction section in one line.
In-text Reference
- All citations must be referenced in-text using the APA 7 style.
- If there were more than one citation for a sentence, the references should be ordered alphabetically.
- All in-text citations must be included in the reference list and vice versa.
Examples:
- Studies showed that there are no differences between male and females’ anxiety level (Mohammadi, 2019).
- Mohammadi (2019) found that there is no differences between male and females’ anxiety level.
- If there are two authors, both names should be cited throughout the paper.
- Studies showed that optimism could predict adaptability (Mohammadi & Ibrahimi, 2019).
- Mohammadi and Ibrahimi (2019) found that optimism could predict adaptability.
- If there are three or more authors, from the first citation, only the first author should be cited following by el. al., and year.
- Studies showed that emotional intelligence and career identity are correlated with employment status (Rasti et. al., 2019).
- Rasti and colleagues (2019) found that emotional intelligence and career identity are correlated with employment status.
- For organization with abbreviations:
- In the first citation, the full title should be reported.
- It is recommended to use psychological interventions for chronic pain (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020).
- According to American Psychological Association [APA] (2020) psychological interventions may be used for chronic pain.
- In the following citation, only abbreviations can be used.
- It is recommended to use psychological interventions for chronic pain (APA, 2020).
- According to APA (2020) psychological interventions may be used for chronic pain.
Methodology
After introducing the research method, the following headings (second level heading) are necessary: population, sampling and sample; instruments; and analysis.
- Population, sampling and sample section contains the information about sampling method and demographic information.
- Instruments: All qualitative data collection methods and quantitative instruments should be introduced here (third level heading). The name of the instrument, scoring, validity and reliability of them should be reported.
- The instruments’ founder should not be part of the instrument title unless it is reported as such in the original form.
- The procedure and data analysis should be reported after the instrument section.
Results
- The result section contains the findings to respond the research questions.
- Significant level should be reported as small italic p.
- Tables, figures and graphs
- Tables, figures and graphs should be numbered.
- Title of the table should be written on top of the table and, the table should be located after the first paragraph that is mentioned in it.
- Figure’s caption should be written under the figure and it should be located after the first paragraph that is mentioned in it.
- All abbreviations must be introduced under the table/ figure.
Discussion and conclusion
- In this section the results, synthesis of the results with the literature and explaining the findings should be reported.
- Limitations, recommendations and research implications are reported here (without heading).
Acknowledgement (second level heading)
Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship. Funding source should be acknowledged here as well.
References
- APA 7 style should be used for the references.
- Endnote or Mendeley software is recommended.
- The second line in each reference should be hanged.
- Please do not use number, asterisks or bullet points.
Example
Osborne, D., and Weiner, B. (2015). A latent profile analysis of attributions for poverty: Identifying response patterns underlying people’s willingness to help the poor. Personality and Individual Differences, 85, 149–154.
Stebleton, M. J. (2010). Narrative-based career counseling perspectives in times of change: An analysis of strengths and limitations. Journal of Employment Counseling, 47(2), 64–78.
Stefanic, N., Caputi, P., Lane, L., and Iverson, D. C. (2015). Exploring the nature of situational goal-based coping in early-stage breast cancer patients: A contextual approach. European Journal of Oncology Nursing, 19(6), 604–611. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejon.2015.1003.
Kline, R. B. (2011). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. Guilford publications.
- Book (two authors or more)
Brislin, R. W., Lonner, W. J., and Thorndike, R. M. (1973). Cross-cultural research methods. John Wiley & Sons.
DiFonzo, N., & Bordia, P. (2007). Rumor psychology: Social and organizational approaches. American Psychological Association.
Savickas, M. L. (2013). Career construction theory and practice. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (2nd ed., pp.144–186). Wiley.
Sanger, M. (2000). Woman and the new race. http://www.bartleby.com/1013/
Badakhshiyan, S. (2019). The effectiveness of vocational rehabilitation program based on social cognitive theory on psychological capital of people with spinal cord injury. M. A. Thesis. University of Isfahan, Faculty of Education and Counseling.
- Supplementary materials may be added after the reference list.
- If the manuscript is about psychometric variable of an instrument, the instrument should be added as supplementary material.
- Conflict of interest declaration
Authors must report any conflict of interest.
- Copyright agreement
The copyright agreement form can be downloaded from the website. Please complete the form and upload it when submitting the manuscript.