What You Actually Get When You Submit to Journal Of General Psychology
The Journal Of General Psychology publishes empirical and theoretical work in all areas of psychology. It's been around since 1932, published by Taylor & Francis. The scope is broad, which means the editorial team gets a lot of submissions that don't fit the journal's actual priorities. I've seen this play out across dozens of desk rejections and revision cycles, and there are a few things that aren't obvious from the author guidelines alone. The submission process runs through Taylor & Francis's online portal. You create an account, upload your manuscript as a single PDF, and fill in the required metadata fields. The metadata section is where most people cut corners. Your cover letter should not be a summary of your abstract. Editors can read. Use the cover letter to explain why this particular manuscript belongs in this particular journal right now, not in another one. A concrete connection to recent issues of the journal helps. If you can cite two or three articles from the past two years that your work extends or challenges, do it. That signals you actually follow what's happening in the publication. Article types accepted include original research articles, brief reports, review articles, and theoretical pieces. Original research articles typically run between 4,000 and 8,000 words including references. Brief reports have a stricter limit and are meant for preliminary or negative findings. Review articles need to be comprehensive enough to serve as a starting point for someone entering the subfield. The journal doesn't publish commentaries or reply pieces as standalone submissions, so don't format those separately.
Formatting requirements are straightforward but non-negotiable. Use APA 7th edition throughout. Double-spaced manuscript with 1-inch margins on all sides. Figures and tables go at the end, not embedded in the text. The reference list must be complete and verified before submission. I spent three weeks once tracking down a citation error in my own reference list where a volume number didn't match the DOI. The editor flagged it during the first review pass and it added unnecessary friction to an already slow process. Verify everything before you hit submit.
The Peer Review Reality
Peer review for this journal typically takes 6 to 12 weeks from submission to first decision. That's on the slower side compared to specialty journals in your area, and the breadth of the journal's scope is partly to blame. Reviewers come from different subfields, so methodological critiques from one reviewer might miss nuances that another reviewer catches, and the editor has to reconcile those differences. I've had manuscripts where one reviewer wanted more statistical rigor and another wanted less because it would make the paper inaccessible to a general psychology audience. The editor ended up asking for a compromise that required a full supplementary materials section with all the advanced analyses. Common reasons for rejection at the first round include: the study doesn't address a general psychology question but rather a narrow applied problem, the literature review is too specialized and misses foundational work outside the subfield, or the methodology has a flaw that the authors treat as resolved when it isn't. A flawed measure isn't resolved by citing one validation study from 1987. Address it head-on or don't use it. One specific edge case I ran into involved a mediation analysis where the sample size was borderline for the complexity of the model. The reviewers pushed back hard on power, and I initially wanted to add more participants. That wasn't feasible. Instead, I ran a post-hoc power analysis using Monte Carlo simulation in R, reported the observed power for each path, and added a limitations section that directly addressed the concern without being defensive. The editor accepted this approach. It wasn't perfect, but it was honest and methodologically sound, which matters more than having a larger N that still wouldn't have been ideal.
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Practical Considerations Most Authors Miss
The journal uses a single-blind review process, meaning reviewers know who you are but you don't know who reviews your paper. This affects how you write your methods section. Don't anonymize your procedures or hide identifying details from the methods. It's unnecessary and wastes space. Do remove identifying information from the title page and any cover materials. Some authors over-anonymize and accidentally make their methods section unreadable, which just slows down the review process for everyone. Open data and open materials policies are encouraged but not strictly enforced at the time of submission. However, mentioning where your data and materials are available in the manuscript significantly improves reviewer perception. AOSF (Open Science Framework) link is standard. If you can't share raw data due to privacy restrictions, state that clearly and provide de-identified codebooks instead. Reviewers appreciate the transparency even when the full dataset isn't available. Word count limits are sometimes flexible for strong manuscripts, but don't test that assumption. If your paper is 9,000 words and could be 7,000, trim it before submission. Lengthy introductions that review every related study in the field are the most common target for cuts. Keep the introduction focused on the specific research gap your study addresses. Save the comprehensive literature review for a separate paper if you need it.
After Acceptance
Once accepted, you'll receive proof galley proofs within 2 to 3 weeks. Correcting these is usually quick if you caught the errors early. The bigger time sink is agreeing to the open access option. Journal Of General Psychology offers a subscription-based route at no cost to the author and an open access route that requires an article processing charge. The APC is in the range of $2,500 to $3,500 depending on current pricing. If your institution has a transformative agreement with Taylor & Francis, check whether it covers this journal before selecting open access. It might cost you nothing. Citation impact for the journal sits around a 1.5 to 2.0 impact factor range in recent years. It's a respectable general psychology journal but not a high-impact venue. Choose it based on fit, not prestige. Publishing here is meaningful for reaching a broad psychology audience, but if your goal is citation count or career advancement metrics, you'd be better served by a specialized journal in your subfield with a higher impact factor. The journal is indexed in PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed. That coverage is adequate for most academic purposes. If you need indexing in additional databases for institutional requirements, check your university's list before submitting, because some institutions have specific requirements that go beyond the standard indexes.
