The Journal of Applied Psychology editorial team invites prospectus submissions that describe a proposed integrative conceptual review (ICR) manuscript on topic areas relevant to human resource management, industrial and organizational psychology, and organizational behavior.

An ICR article should be designed to synthesize relevant literature, identify significant knowledge gaps, highlight potential synergies between disconnected lines of research, extend theoretical development, and propose new directions for research.

Examples of the type of papers that are of interest include articles published in the Annual Review of Psychology, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, the Journal of Management review issue, the Academy of Management Annals, and top-tier handbooks.

An ICR prospectus can be submitted anytime via the Journal of Applied Psychology submission portal. A prospectus will be evaluated by the editorial team. Following review, the action editor will decide whether to invite a full submission, which will need to be responsive to issues raised during the initial prospectus review. Full papers should be submitted within 6 months of the invitation. The action editor and reviewers involved at inception will constitute the review team for full papers.

The prospectus should consist of: title and abstract (indicate Integrative Conceptual Review Prospectus at the top line of this page), with a transparency and openness statement as an author note on the title page that the TOP guidelines are not applicable to ICR proposals; summary (10 pages maximum, double spaced) that describes the contribution, structure, and coverage of the proposed paper; selected references (2 pages maximum); and tables or figures (2 pages maximum). The prospectus should provide a concise summary of the proposed paper that is sufficiently detailed to allow evaluation and should be prepared for blind review.

Evaluation criteria include: Relevance of the topic (topics should be meaningful and important); Coverage of the synthesis and review (reviews that are broadly integrative vs. narrow are more useful); Theoretical contribution (conceptual advances for building and extending theory are critical); and Research extension and novelty (the paper should clearly outline new lines of inquiry).

Potential topics

• Human resource management
• Industrial and organizational psychology
• Organizational behavior
• Literature synthesis and knowledge gap identification
• Theoretical development and extension
• New research directions

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: ICR prospectus submission deadline
• February 18, 2027: Full paper submission deadline