Regular Research Articles*: Regular Research Articles are original papers demonstrating the results of scientific studies, based on empirical data. The text of the article should contain no more than 5,000 words, in addition to an abstract of 250 words and up to 60 references. This word count includes only the main body of text (i.e., not abstract, references, tables, or figures).

Brief Reports: This category allows for articles that are shorter than original research but have the same style and may be used to report new and innovative research and/or significant (hot topics). Brief reports are also peer reviewed. They should be of 2,000 words or less and include no more than two figures or tables, no more than 10 references, and have an abstract of no more than 250 words, without structured sub-headings.

Reviews of the Literature: Authors intending to submit a literature review should check recent issues of International Psychogeriatrics to ensure that no review of the topic they propose to discuss has been published in the journal in recent times. Review articles should be of 6,000 words or less, have an abstract of up to 250 words, and may have up to 80 relevant references. Authors contemplating the submission of a literature review article are welcome to contact the editor to discuss the appropriateness of the topic prior to submission (ipaj-ed@cambridge.org). Literature reviews should have an abstract.

Letters to the Editor: Reader's letters will be considered for publication. Letters should be no longer than 750 words, with no more than 1 table or figure, and no more than 10 references. No abstract is required.

Guest Editorials and Invited Commentaries are commissioned by the editor.

*These articles types may be covered under one of the transformative agreements that Cambridge University Press has made to support open access. If funding is unavailable for the other article types, waivers are available.

Organization and style of manuscripts

Title page and corresponding author: Each article must have a title page with the title of the article, a list of all authors and their titles, affiliations and addresses. Each author must select only ONE country as their location. Author qualifications should not be listed as these are not published in the journal. The title page should explicitly identify the author to whom correspondence about the study should be addressed and that author’s email address, telephone number, fax number and postal address must be clearly stated.

Abstract (Structured): Abstracts for original research and reviews should be structured and incorporate the following headings: Objectives, Design, Setting, Participants, Intervention (if any), Measurements, Results, and Conclusions. Abstracts should communicate the primary findings and significance of the research. They should not exceed 250 words in length. Abstracts for brief reports should not exceed 250 words and should not be structured with sub-headings.

Keywords: Under this heading and beneath the abstract, please list up to 8 words for the purpose of indexing.

Running title: This should contain no more than 50 characters including spaces.

Introduction: Briefly state the relevant background to the study to provide the necessary information and context to enable non-specialists to appreciate the objectives and significance of the paper. Most introductions to articles received for review are too long.

Methods: Materials and procedures should be described in sufficient detail to enable replication. Any statistical procedures used should be outlined and their use should be justified here. Results should not be included in the Method(s) section. If statistical procedures are used, they should be described here in adequate detail. Choice of statistical technique should be justified including some indication of the appropriateness of the data for the technique chosen. Adequacy of the sample size for the statistical technique(s) used must be addressed. If appropriate, a description of the statistical power of the study should be provided. If multiple univariate significant tests are used, probability values (p-values) should be adjusted for multiple comparisons, or alternatively a multivariate test should be considered. Significance results (p values) must be presented with accompanying statistics.

Further advice about statistics and International Psychogeriatrics can be found in the following article: Chibnall, J. (2000) Some basic issues for clinicians concerning things statistical. International Psychogeriatrics, 12, 3-7. The following article may also be of assistance to intending contributors: Chibnall J.T. (2004). Statistical audit of original research articles in International Psychogeriatrics for the year 2003. International Psychogeriatrics 16, 389-396. Both of these are available at the International Psychogeriatrics website by following the above links.

Results: This section may contain subheadings. Authors should avoid mixing discussion with the results. Sample sizes should be delineated clearly for all analyses. Some indicator of variability or sampling error should be incorporated into the reporting of statistical results (e.g. standard deviation). Wherever possible an indicator of effect size (e.g. Cohens d, η², Cramers V, 95% confidence interval) should be reported in addition to p values. If multiple univariate statistical tests are used p values should be adjusted for multiple comparisons or alternatively a multivariate test should be used. Obtained statistical values for tests should be reported with degrees of freedom (e.g. t, F, χ²). Terms such as prevalence, population, or control group, should be used appropriately in the scientific sense.

Discussion: Interpretation of the results with respect to the hypothesis(es) and their significance to the field should be discussed here. Results should be interpreted in the light of the size of the effect found and the power of the study to detect differences. Any methodological and other weaknesses of the study should be outlined, including limitations imposed by sample size. Careful consideration of the conclusion(s) for accuracy and alternative interpretation, and possible conflicts or resolution of conflicts in the field is encouraged. Limited speculation and directions for future research can be included. 

Acknowledgements: Any acknowledgements other than conflict of interest declarations in regard to sponsorship should be listed briefly here. Acknowledgements imply that the person/s mentioned have approved the citation of their name/s in the paper.

References: For review papers, no more than 75 articles that have been published or are in press should be cited; for regular research articles no more than 60 references, for brief reports no more than 10 references, for commentaries and editorials no more than 10 references, and for letters no more than 10 references. Unpublished data, personal communications, and manuscripts submitted for publication should be cited in the text and the supporting material submitted with the manuscript. International Psychogeriatrics uses the Harvard referencing system. Within the text of each paper journal articles should be cited in the style (Smith and Jones, 1999). Where an article quoted in the body of the text has more than two authors the term "et al." should be employed, i.e., (Smith et al., 1999). Text citations of multiple articles should be separated by semicolons, i.e., (Smith and Jones, 1999; Smith et al., 1999). At the end of each paper, all cited references should be listed alphabetically in the style indicated below. If the Digital Object Identifier (doi) is known, it should be added to the reference.

Reference examples:

For a journal article: Smith, J., Jones, W. I. and Doe, J. T. (1996). Psychogeriatrics for pleasure and profit: an expanding field. International Journal of Unreproducible Results, 3, 240–242. doi:12.3456/S123456789.

For a book: Smith, J.A., Brown, P.Q., Jones, H.A. and Robinson, D.V. (2001). Acute Confusional States. New York: Cambridge University Press. For a book chapter. Park, K., Tiger, B. and Runn, F. (1999). Psychogeriatrics in context. In G.Verdi and A. Boito, (Eds.) New Medical Specialties (pp. 240–260). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Where an article or book chapter has more than six authors only the first author’s name should be given followed by the words "et al.".

For further examples of reference style see papers in recent issues of International Psychogeriatrics.

Figures/Tables: The manuscript should contain no more than five figures or tables (no more than two figures or tables for brief reports). The copies submitted with the manuscript must be of sufficient quality to enable reviewers to evaluate the data. The journal has a small budget to permit some color to be printed in come issues but authors wishing to publish figures requiring color to communicate the data may be required to pay some or all the additional cost.

Figure/Table legends: Each caption should begin with a brief description of the conclusion or observation provided in the figure. These should be submitted as a separate section after the References.

Supplementary material: International Psychogeriatrics has the facility to include supplementary materials (figures, tables, appendices, any non-English sections, and other material not suitable for inclusion in the print version of the journal) with the electronic version of individual papers at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-psychogeriatrics. This renders such supplementary material accessible without clogging the journal with materials that will be of interest to only a small minority of readers.

If submitting such supplementary material please follow the instructions below. If referring to supplementary material in a paper the following form of words should be used "see table S1/figure S1/appendix A1 published as supplementary material online attached to the electronic version of this paper at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-psychogeriatrics".

There will normally be one of the following reasons for you to be supplying supplementary material to accompany the online version of your article:

• You wish to link to additional information which due to its nature does not lend itself to print media (examples- full data sets, movie or sounds files etc.)
• The Editor of the Journal has requested that you extract certain information from the original article in order to allow for space constraints of the print version.
• You have requested additional material to be available to accompany an article that does not normally allow such material to be included (examples – sections not written in the English language, tables to accompany a correspondence article).

N.B. Please note that no copyediting or quality assurance measures will be undertaken on supplementary material (other than to ensure that the file is intact). The authors therefore warrant that the supplementary material that they submit is in a suitable format for publication in this manner. The material shall be published online in exactly the form that it is supplied.

Submitting Supplementary Material

Please follow these instructions to submit supplementary material:

• Each supplementary file must be supplied as a separate file. Do not supply this material as part of the file destined for publication in the print journal.
• Each supplementary file must have a clear title (for example, Supplementary Figure 1).
• Provide a text summary for each file of no more than 50 words. The summary should describe the contents of the file. Descriptions of individual figures or tables should be provided if these items are submitted as separate files. If a group of figures is submitted together in one file, the description should indicate how many figures are contained within the file and provide a general description of what the figures collectively show.
• The file type and file size in parentheses.
• Ensure that each piece of supplementary material is clearly referred to at least once in the print version of the paper at an appropriate point in the text, and is also listed at the end of the paper before the reference section.

Word limits: The text of Review articles should not exceed 6,000 words, Regular research articles 5,000 words, brief reports 2000 words, and letters to the editor 750 words. The text excludes title page, abstract, acknowledgements, references, tables, and figures.  Articles may contain supplementary material which is published online only.    

Format and file size:  File sizes should be as small as possible in order to ensure that users can download them quickly.

Images should be a maximum size of 640 x 480 pixels at a resolution of 72 pixels per inch.