All submitted papers (except for editorials and invited contributions) shall be accepted for publishing after double-blind expert review. Selection of reviewers is a discretionary right of the editor. Reviewers have to be competent in the subject matter of the manuscript. A reviewer should not have any conflict of interest with authors or sponsors of the study. If there is a conflict of interest, the reviewer is required to notify the editor accordingly without delay. A reviewer that finds him/herself incompetent for the subject matter of the paper is required to notify the editor accordingly without delay. Any review has to be unbiased. Comments relating to authors’ personality are deemed inappropriate. Reviewer’s opinion has to be clearly formulated and substantiated by argumentation. Under normal circumstances, the review process takes up to four weeks, and only exceptionally up to three months. The total period from the submission of a manuscript until its publication takes an average of 90 days. Reviewers shall not be paid for their service.

A review has to be submitted 30 days after receipt of the manuscript at the latest. Reviewer’s comments and objections are forwarded to the author for correction.

After the author has corrected the manuscript the paper is re-submitted to reviewers in case of major correction, and after approval of the reviewer the final Proof is sent. At this stage (Proof) only the typos and other minor errors may be corrected. Any corrections have to be made within 2 days; otherwise, it shall be deemed that the author has no objections.

Manuscripts sent to reviewers shall be treated as confidential documents.

During the whole process, reviewers shall be independent of each other. A reviewer shall not know the name of the other reviewer of the same manuscript.

The entire review process takes place under the supervision of the Editor-in-Chief in an online environment, within the SCIndeks Assistant, a system based on the OJS platform. The system also allows authors to track the entire process of reviewing the manuscript.

If the opinions of reviewers differ (accept/reject), the editor-in-chief may ask for opinion of other reviewers.

The Editorial Board is obliged to provide solid control of the quality of review. In case authors have substantiated objections to the review, the Editorial Board shall check whether the review was objective / unbiased and whether it met academic standards. If objectivity or quality of review are questionable, the editor shall ask for opinion of other reviewers.

The final decision on the acceptance of the manuscript for publication rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Authors warrant that their manuscripts are their original works, that they have not been published before, and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes a misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from further consideration. The work that has already been published elsewhere cannot be reprinted in the Psihijatrija danas.

Authors must make sure that their author team listed in the manuscript includes all and only those authors who have significantly contributed to the submitted manuscript. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgments section.

It is the responsibility of the authors to specify the title and code label of the research project within which the work was created, as well as the full title of the funding institution. In case a submitted manuscript has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the conference shall be provided in the same place.

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Parts of the manuscript, including text, equations, pictures and tables that are taken verbatim from other works must be clearly marked, e.g. by quotation marks accompanied by their location in the original document (page number), or, if more extensive, given in a separate paragraph. Full references of each quotation (in-text citation) must be listed in the separate section (Literature or References) in a uniform manner, according to the citation style used by the journal. References section should list only quoted/cited, and not all sources used for the preparation of a manuscript.

Authors shall be fully accountable for the content of the submitted manuscripts, as well as validity of experimental results, and have to submit authorization for data publishing by all parties involved in the study. Authors who want to include figures or parts of text that have already been published elsewhere should obtain previous approval of the copyright holders and submit the proof of such approval with the submitted manuscript. Any material without such proof shall be treated as an original contribution of the author. Authors are also required to guarantee that the manuscript does not contain any unsubstantiated or illegal claims and does not violate rights of others.

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation.

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Editorial Policies of Psihijatrija danas.

The Psihijatrija danas Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision on which papers will be published. In the decision making process the Editor-in-Chief is led by the editorial policy abiding by the legal regulations governing libel, breach of copyrights and plagiarism. The Editor should not have any conflict of interest relating to the submitted papers. If there is such conflict of interest, the Editorial Board shall decide on the appointment of reviewers and fate of the manuscript. If identity of the author and/or reviewers remains unknown to the other party, the Editor shall guarantee such anonymity. The Editor should judge the manuscript on the basis of its content, without any racial, gender-based, religious, ethnic or political prejudices. The Editor should not use unpublished material from the submitted manuscripts for his/her own research without written approval of the author.

Reviewers are required to provide the qualified and timely assessment of the scholarly merits of the manuscript. The reviewer takes special care of the real contribution and originality of the manuscript. The review must be fully objective. The judgment of the reviewers must be clear and substantiated by arguments.

The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus. The review has a standard format. It is submitted through the online journal management system where it is stored permanently.

The reviewer must not be in a conflict of interest with the authors or funders of research. If such a conflict exists, the reviewer is obliged to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief. The reviewer shall not accept for reviewing papers beyond the field of his/her full competence.

Reviewers should alert the Editor-in-Chief to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been considered in the manuscript. They may recommend specific references for citation, but shall not require to cite papers published in Psihijatrija danas, or their own papers, unless it is justified.

The reviewers are expected to improve the quality of the manuscript through their suggestions. If they recommend correction of the manuscript prior to publication, they are obliged to specify the manner in which this can be achieved.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors.

In papers reporting on human studies it should be highlighted that the procedure was conducted in compliance with ethical standards of the Committee on Human Studies or Helsinki Declaration. Approval of the competent ethics committee is mandatory. Names, initials or hospital file numbers should not be mentioned, particularly if the material is illustrated. Examples of ethics related statements:

• All conducted procedures in the studies involving human subjects were fully complaint with institutional and/or ethical standards of the national research board and with provisions of 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its subsequent amendments or similar ethical standards. / Statement of Human Wellbeing
• Formal consent is not required for this type of studies. / Retrospective studies
• This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.; / Statement if the paper does not involve human or animal subjects.

Anyone may inform the Editor-in-Chief / Editorial Board at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary credible information/evidence to start an investigation.

• Editor-in-Chief makes the decision regarding the initiation of an investigation.
• During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in the process.
• The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
• If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

Minor misconduct (with no influence on the integrity of the paper and the journal, for example, when it comes to misunderstanding or wrong application of publishing standards) will be dealt directly with authors and reviewers without involving any other parties. Outcomes include:

• Sending a warning letter to authors and/or reviewers.
• Publishing correction of a paper, e.g. when sources properly quoted in the text are omitted from the reference list.
• Publishing an erratum, e.g. if the error was made by editorial staff.

In the case of major misconduct the Editor-in-Chief / Editorial Board may adopt different measures:

• Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
• Informing officially the author's/reviewer's affiliating institution.
• The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy.
• A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
• Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

The above actions may be taken separately or jointly. If necessary, in the process of resolving the case relevant expert organizations, bodies, or individuals may be consulted.

When dealing with unethical behaviour, the Editorial Board will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Authors are required to abide by ethical standards relating to scientific research; therefore contributions must not include any plagiarism.

Plagirism includes the following:

• Literal or almost literal taking or intentional paraphrasing (in order to cover up the plagiarism) parts of text of other authors without clearly quoting the source or marking the copied fragments (e.g. by using the inverted comas);
• Copies of equations, figures or tables from papers by other authors without proper quoting the source and/or author’s permission or approval of the copyright owner to use them.

Plagiarism implies taking somebody else’s ideas, words or other forms of creative expression and passing them as one’s own.

It represents major violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also include violation of copyrights, which is punishable under the law. Manuscripts with clear indications of plagiarism will be rejected by default. If it is established that a paper published in Psihijatrija danas is a case of plagiarism, the author will be required to send a written apology to the authors of the original paper.

Any manuscript which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected. In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described under Retraction policy.

To prevent plagiarism the manuscripts are submitted to a plagiarism detection process using iThenticate/CrossRef within SCIndeks Assistant. The results obtained are verified by the Editorial Board in accordance with the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of an article.

Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct numerous serious errors, which cannot be covered by publishing corrections. A retraction may be published by the Editor-in-Chief / Editorial Board, the author(s), or both parties consensually.

The retraction takes the form of a separate item listed in the contents and labeled as "Retraction". In SCIndeks, as the journals' primary full-text database, a two-way communication (HTML link) between the original work and the retraction is established. The original article is retained unchanged, except for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted”.

Retractions are published according to the requirements of COPE operationalized by CEON/CEES as the journal indexer and aggregator.

Journal Psihijatrija danas is published under an Open Access licence. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

The right to use content without consent does not release the users from the obligation to give the credit to the journal and its content in a manner described under Licensing.

In accordance with law, digital copies of all published volumes are archived in the legal deposit library of the National Library of Serbia and concurrently in the Repository of SCIndeks - The Serbian Citation Index as the primary full text database.

Journal Psihijatrija danas does not charge authors or any third party for publication. Both manuscript submission and processing services, and article publishing services are free of charge. There are no hidden costs whatsoever.

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media.

Authors will not be paid for the publication of their papers. The manuscripts and appendices will not be returned.

The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial 4.0 International license. It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for non-commercial purposes, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided, it is indicated if changes were made.

Users are required to provide full bibliographic description of the original publication (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages), as well as its DOI code. In electronic publishing, users are also required to link the content with both the original article published in Psihijatrija danas and the licence used.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted to deposit author’s pre-print, author’s post-print (accepted version) and publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based repository, author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website at any time after publication.

Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and the Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.