The American Psychological Association (APA) has released Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for researchers seeking to publish in scholarly journals. The move is part of the Association's promotion of greater transparency and the assessment of rigor in psychological science.
One set of standards applies to quantitative research and is an expansion of standards first issued in 2008. This set focuses on enhancing reproducibility. The second set applies to qualitative research and is new, created in response to the increasing application of these methodologies. These standards aim to enhance the assessment of methodological integrity. Both are available via open access.
The standards are specific to psychological research and offer guidelines on the information needed in a research article to ensure that the elements included are comprehensible and that the study could be replicated. They were developed by two working groups appointed by APA's Publications and Communications Board. The quantitative group was led by Dr. Mark Appelbaum of the University of California, San Diego, and the qualitative group was led by Dr. Heidi Levitt of the University of Massachusetts Boston.
APA has partnered with the Center for Open Science to advance open science practices in psychological research through open science badges on articles, a data repository for APA published articles and designating the COS' PsyArXiv as the preferred preprint server for APA titles.
In addition to making the APA Style JARS reports available through American Psychologist, APA will release a new website later this year that includes tools to help researchers and authors follow the guidelines.
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