About the Journal

Focus and Scope

PINS is one of 3 established Psychology journals in South Africa. It celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2023 and has consistently engaged with debates in critical psychologies. Its core defining feature is that it engages critical theories in its psycho-social analyses.  Critical theories may include feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, cultural theory, post colonial theory, decolonial theory, critical disability theory, critical sustainability theories and other critical theoretical stances pertinent to Psychology.

Author guidelines

1. PINS accepts full-length articles, short discussions (called "briefings"), and debates on previously published material, or on contemporary issues.

2. Authors should use non-sexist and non-discriminatory conventions in their contributions.

3. Articles should not normally exceed  8000 words in length, excluding references. Abstracts should not exceed 150 words.

4. Book reviews, unless they are review articles, should be 800 -1 500 words in length. Book reviews typically focus on psychosocial issues that are core to the focus of the journal and are generally commisioned by the editorial board. If you wish to do a book review, please contact the chief editor at pins@sun.ac.za.

5. Authors are required to submit their work in MS Word format on the PINS website.

6. PINS uses the APA (7th edition) referencing format.

Peer Review Process

PINS operates a double blind or anonymous peer review system.

The process is as follows:

1. An electronic copy of articles are received by the editorial office via the digital system.
2. All articles are checked for plagiarism (including slef-plagiarism) before sending it our for review.
3. The article is then sent anonymously to at least two reviewers.
4. The reviewers will include a PINS editor who takes responsibility for the article, and two external reviewers.
5. The reviewers write a narrative report indicating one of the following four outcomes. They are a) "accepted without revision" (this is rare); b) "accepted with minor changes" which means that revisions should be made before the artilce is resubmitted for publication. Authors should also indicated which revisions were made in a cover letter. Another outcome is " revise and resubmit"  which means that the author should revise the manuscript substantially and resubmit it for review. The final outcome is d) "rejected" which generally means that the manuscript is not suitable for publication at all, given the extensive flaws identified. Only in exceptional cases will such an article be considered for review again.
6. Upon receipt of the reviewers' reports, a PINS editor writes a coordinating report to the author/s indicating what changes are required for publication. The anonymous reviewers’ reports are included in the coordinating report.
7. PINS  tries to have a 4 month turn-around period from the time of receiving manuscripts until the coordinating report is written.

 

Publication Frequency

Journal articles are published collectively online as part of an issue. 

The journal appears twice a year with an additional "special issue and or section" if applicable.

_{Author Fees}

This journal charges the following author fees. The fee covers administrative processes such as copy-editing and design.

Article Publication Fee - R5000 per accepted article.
If your article is accepted for publication, you will be asked to pay an Article Publication Fee to cover publications costs. The administrator will contact you with the invoice for page fees when your article has been accepted for publication. No credit card facilities available.    Page fees will be confirmed annually. 

*Please pay the R5000  fee into the account number reflected on the invoice, and forward the proof of payment to pins@sun.ac.za

Open Access Policy

PINS-Psychology in Society is an Open Access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, as underwritten by the license CC BY NC ND 4.0, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.