Reviewer Guidelines
Psychoanalytic Practice has emerged out of the journal, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in South Africa, a DoE accredited, peer reviewed journal first established in 1992. Psychoanalytic Practice aims to publish papers that are clinically relevant, theoretically informed and suited to be read by a wide range of international professionals and academics in this field.
We aim to publish papers of good quality and also to encourage authors (particularly South African authors) to write. With this in mind, we would value a review that aims both to offer suggestions on improving the quality of the manuscript submitted and to offer constructive criticism. For many authors (experienced or not), the review process can be demoralizing. We therefore ask you to frame your review as constructively as possible and to offer suggestions for improvement. Please take care to avoid unnecessarily negative comments.
Please let the editor know if any conflict of interest exists before conducting your review (or as soon as the conflict of interest is discovered).
Please structure your review in the following manner (the review can be typed directly into this document if you would prefer; please track changes if you also wish to make suggestions on the actual manuscript):
Please highlight one of the following categories:
These will be passed onto the author(s). The editors reserve the right to modify these comments.
You may wish to include comments directed only to the editors. These will not be passed on to the author(s)
| Topic and relevance | The topic should directly concern the theory and/or broad application of psychoanalytic ideas and should be of interest to an audience of psychotherapy practitioners. |
| Contribution to existing literature | The paper should add something to existing literature in the area. It need not be completely original but should at least provide an extension, novel application or new perspective on existing topic literature. |
| Literature review and theory outline | The paper should demonstrate familiarity with and coverage of relevant published papers relating to the topic focus. The theoretical framework of the paper should also be adequately elaborated. |
| Argument and substantiation of assertions | The paper should provide some sort of argument relevant to the focal topic, rather than being a merely descriptive overview of what has already been written. The assertions made in the paper should be logical and adequately substantiated rather than simply assumed to be true. The use of quotations instead of authorial argument should be avoided. |
Illustrative case material |
If the paper has a clinical or intervention focus there should be some sufficiently detailed case material illustrating the central claims of the paper. The relationship between the central argument and the case material should be clearly evident. |
| Structure | The paper should have a logical and coherent structure (introduction, body, conclusion, linking sections) that makes it easy to follow. |
| Style | The paper should be clearly written, comprehensible to an English-speaking audience, and accessible to a broad readership. |
| Overall presentation | The paper should be a finished piece of work, rather than a rough draft or work in progress. It should have been proofread and contain a minimum of spelling/typographic/language errors. It should include an abstract and page numbers. |
| Referencing | The argument and specific theoretical assertions should be referenced (Author, date, page number) in the body of the manuscript and a reference list should be included at the end of the document |