About the Journal
Focus and Scope
The MJCP is a Diamond Open Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal in Clinical Psychology. MJCP accepts research related to innovative and important areas of clinical research: 1. Clinical studies related to Clinical Psychology; 2. Psychopathology and Psychotherapy; 3. Basic studies pertaining to Clinical Psychology field as Experimental Psychology, Psychoneuroendocrinology and Psychoanalysis; 4. Growing application of clinical techniques in Clinical Psychology, Health Psychology, clinical approaches in Projective Methods; 5. Forensic psychology in clinical research; 6. Psychology of Art; 7. Advanced in basic and clinical research methodology including qualitative and quantitative research and new research findings.
Peer Review Process
The review process provides the style Double Blind Peer Review.
Open Access Policy
MJCP | Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
MJCP | Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology does not charge either submission or publication fees nor article-processing expenses.
Publication frequency
The journal ordinarily publishes three volume per year. Once a volume is open, accepted articles are published as soon as they are ready.
Abstracting/Indexing
The Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology (MJCP) is indexed and abstracted in major international databases, ensuring visibility, accessibility, and compliance with recognised standards of scientific quality.
The journal is currently indexed in the following databases:
ANVUR classification - Area 11
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Clarivate Journal Citation Reports(JCR)
Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential model for MJCP.
It is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer and the publisher.
Publication ethics
MJCP is committed to upholding the highest standards of research integrity, transparency, and ethical responsibility in the publication of academic work in Clinical Psychology.
The Journal adheres to the COPE Core Practices, the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and internationally recognized guidelines for ethical research and publication.
All submitted manuscripts involving human participants must comply with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and relevant national and international regulations.
Authors are required to clearly state that the study protocol received approval from an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethics Committee, and that informed consent was obtained from all participants, where applicable.
The Journal maintains a strict policy against scientific misconduct, including plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, duplicate publication, and inappropriate authorship practices.
Submitted manuscripts are screened for originality and are evaluated through a rigorous, impartial, and transparent peer-review process to ensure methodological soundness, clinical relevance, and scientific validity.
Authors must disclose any conflicts of interest, sources of funding, and institutional affiliations that could be perceived as influencing the research.
To promote transparency and reproducibility, authors are strongly encouraged to provide information regarding the availability of data, materials, and analytic procedures, unless ethical or legal constraints apply.
As an open access journal, MJCP supports the principles of open science and encourages the preregistration of study protocols and analysis plans, particularly for clinical trials and confirmatory research. When preregistration is undertaken, authors should provide the relevant registry name and identifier. The Journal operates under a full open access model, ensuring immediate and free availability of all published content.
The Journal reserves the right to issue corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions in accordance with COPE guidelines if breaches of ethical standards or research integrity are identified.
Human Studies and Subjects: In compliance with ethical policies, for all manuscripts including human subjects, the authors must declare an ethical statement. The authors must declare that the studies adhere to international standards according to the Helsinki Declaration. Anonymization is required with reference to subjects’ details, data and images can only be published with the consent of the involved participants. The signature of the informed consent must be declared in the study methods, so that all authors are required to confirm its reception. The authors must declare the receipt of the signed consent. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.
Animal Studies: Authors are required to specify that their practices were ethically adherent to high standards, approved and compliant to guidelines. Thus, authors must declare their adherence to national or international regulations, suggesting their reference context. This information must be declared in the study methods. Authors must refer to the specific master plan, referring to their provenance and institutional affiliation, as in the case of UE, UK and USA.
Publication decisions
The editor of the MJCP is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published.
The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
Fair play
An editor at any time evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
Confidentiality
The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.
- Duties of Reviewers
Contribution to Editorial Decisions
Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
Promptness
Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.
Confidentiality
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Standards of Objectivity
Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Acknowledgement of Sources
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Disclosure and Conflict of Interest
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
Authors participating as involved figures in the Journal must include a statement reporting their role in the official cover letter. All submissions provided by the above-mentioned figures will be assigned to external section editors in order to respect the peer review process.
- Duties of Authors
Reporting standards
Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Data Access and Retention
If applicable, authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.
Originality and Plagiarism
The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.
Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication
An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
Acknowledgement of Sources
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.
Authorship of the Paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.
The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
All authors must disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. Authors are required to disclose any potential conflict of interest. A conflict of interest can be anything potentially interfering, or potentially perceived as interfering with the objective peer review process, editorial decisions or publication process of contributions submitted to MJCP. We expect all authors to disclose any real or possible conflict(s) of interest to readers that may directly relate to the subject matter of their article. This includes any relationship with companies, manufacturers of devices or other corporations whose products or services may be related to the subject matter of the article or who have sponsored the study. Any relationship, interest (financial or not) that could be considered as potentially impacting on authors’ objectivity is meant as a possible conflict of interest.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools
Scope and general principles
Artificial Intelligence (AI)–assisted tools, including large language models and software supporting writing or data analysis, may be used exclusively as supportive tools in the preparation of manuscripts.
The use of AI does not replace authors’ intellectual contribution, clinical expertise, scientific reasoning, or ethical responsibility. Full accountability for the content of the manuscript remains with the human authors.
Authorship and accountability
Artificial Intelligence systems cannot be listed as authors or co-authors, as they do not meet established authorship criteria and cannot assume responsibility for the integrity, accuracy, or ethical standards of scholarly work.
All listed authors must meet the authorship requirements defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and comply with the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct.
Permitted uses of AI
AI-assisted tools may be used solely in a supportive capacity, including but not limited to:
-language editing, grammar correction, and improvement of clarity and readability;
-stylistic refinement and organization of the manuscript;
-assistance in summarizing or rephrasing content originally produced by the authors;
-technical support in data analysis, provided that all analyses, results, and interpretations are independently verified, validated, and interpreted by the authors.
Prohibited uses of AI
The use of AI tools is strictly prohibited for:
-generating, fabricating, falsifying, or manipulating clinical data, results, diagnoses, or outcome measures;
-producing fictitious, inaccurate, or unverifiable references or citations;
-generating clinical interpretations, diagnostic conclusions, or therapeutic recommendations without direct human oversight;
-substituting authors’ theoretical reasoning, clinical judgment, or scientific decision-making;
-processing identifiable or sensitive patient data that are not fully anonymized or for which appropriate informed consent has not been obtained.
Transparency and disclosure
Authors must explicitly disclose any use of AI-assisted tools in the preparation of the manuscript. The disclosure must specify:
-the type of AI tool used;
-the purpose of its use (e.g., language editing, writing support);
-the section(s) of the manuscript in which the tool was applied.
This information should be reported in a dedicated section (e.g., AI Disclosure Statement or Acknowledgments).
Ethics, clinical data, and privacy
Given the clinical nature of the Journal:
-the use of AI tools must comply with the APA Ethical Principles, international standards for research involving human participants, and applicable data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR);
-authors must not input identifiable or sensitive clinical data into AI systems;
-authors remain fully responsible for ensuring informed consent, confidentiality, and the protection of participants’ privacy.
Author responsibility and editorial oversight
Authors retain full responsibility for:
-the scientific accuracy and validity of the manuscript;
-the originality of the content and avoidance of plagiarism;
-the integrity and transparency of data and analyses;
-the appropriateness of clinical interpretations and conclusions;
-compliance with the Journal’s ethical and editorial standards.
The Journal reserves the right to request additional information regarding the use of AI tools and to take editorial action in cases of non-compliance.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
Journal History
MJCP was foundend in 2013 by Professor Salvatore Settineri at the University of Messina, Italy, to report research dedicated to innovative and important areas of Clinical Psychology.
