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Taylor & Francis

Prepare your manuscript for Journal of Family Communication.

Review the checklist, choose your article type, and turn your draft into a cleaner submission package.

Checked 2026-08-01
Check readiness freePrepare this manuscript

Article types

Review
Clinical Trial
Original Article
Brief Report
Research Article
Editorial
Protocol
Lectio
Registered Report
Case Report
Letter
Systematic Review

Readiness requirements

Review the key details below, or download the complete checklist with every stored source-backed requirement.

Abstract length

  • Provide an author-written abstract of no more than 150 words.
  • Use a unstructured abstract.
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  • Should contain an unstructured abstract of 150 words.
  • Trial registration numbers should be included in the abstract, with full details in the methods section.
  • Your abstract should focus on what your research is about, what methods have been used, and what you found out.
  • The instructions for authors for each journal will give specific guidelines on what’s required here, including whether it should be a structured abstract or graphical abstract, and any word limits.

Keywords

  • Include or confirm the keywords required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Reference style

  • Articlo formats your supplied references to the journal's stored style and checks that citations match the reference list; source validity is not verified.
  • Research Article: Original Research articles are 8000-word articles, excluding references, tables, figures, and appendices. (Authors of Original Research Article submissions that require an additional word allowance should contact the editor prior to submitting the article through the ScholarOne system.).
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  • Where applicable, this should include the hyperlink, DOI or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s).
  • Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text.
  • A declaration must be included within the submission stating: Confirmation the authors take full responsibility for the integrity of the whole content, including accuracy of references.

Figure and table rules

  • Keep every figure and table numbered, captioned, and cited in the manuscript. Keep figures embedded; Articlo also extracts numbered source files for the package.
  • Group figures at the end of the manuscript.
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  • Group tables at the end of the manuscript.
  • Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour, at the correct size).
  • Tables and figures Show clearly in your article text where the tables and figures should appear, for example, by writing [Table 1 near here].
  • Figures should be saved separately from the text.
  • Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text.
  • It’s very important that you have been given permission to use any tables or figures you are reproducing from another source before you submit.
  • Figures should be supplied in one of our preferred file formats: PS, JPEG, TIFF, or Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX) files are acceptable for figures that have been drawn in Word.
  • Check the instructions for authors to see how you should supply tables and figures, whether at the end of the text or in separate files, and follow any guidance given on the submission system.

Funding statement

  • You should declare only the acquired funds and grants that are directly relevant to the work reported in your article; for example, This work was supported by the [Funding Agency #1] under Grant [number xxxx]; [Funding Agency #2] under Grant [number xxxx]; and [Funding Agency #3] under Grant [number xxxx].

Competing interests

  • Include or confirm the competing interests required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Data availability statement

  • Articles need to meet the Open Science Badges criteria in order to earn a badge.

Ethics statement

  • Add or confirm the author-written Ethics statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
  • In settings where ethics approval for non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys) is not required, authors must include a statement to explain this.
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  • Authors should familiarise themselves with our policy on participant/patient privacy and informed consent.
  • Review: All original research papers involving humans, animals, plants, biological material, protected or non-public datasets, collections or sites, must include a written statement in the Methods section, confirming ethical approval has been obtained from the appropriate local ethics committee or Institutional Review Board and that where relevant, informed consent has been obtained.
  • Editorial: Consent All authors are required to follow the ICMJE requirements and Taylor & Francis Editorial Policies on privacy and informed consent from patients and study participants.
  • Authors must include a statement to confirm that any patient, service user, or participant (or that person’s parent or legal guardian) in any type of qualitative or quantitative research, has given informed consent to participate in the research.
  • Case Report: a clinical case report detailing their medical history, identifiable images or media content, etc), authors must include a statement to confirm that they have obtained written informed consent to publish the details from the affected individual (or their parents/guardians if the participant in not an adult or unable to give informed consent; or next of kin if the participant is deceased).
  • Case Report: For submissions where patients or participants can be potentially identified (e.g.

Cover letter

  • Using Third-Party Material You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article.
  • Review: The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission.
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  • If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.

Title page and author information

  • All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript.
  • One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address normally displayed in the article PDF (depending on the journal) and the online article.

Article structure and word limits

  • All submissions should conform to the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2020).
  • A typical paper for this journal should be no more than 8000 words.
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  • Margins Margins should be at least 2.5cm (1 inch).
  • Protocol: A Pre-Registered + Analysis design should include: (1) Theoretical background/rationale that logically concludes with hypotheses and/or research questions, (2) Articulation of precise hypotheses (directional) and/or research questions, (3) Description of the proposed Methodology including research design (e.g., recruitment, inclusion/exclusion criteria, proposed sample size), detailed description of measures, and detailed description of proposed analyses, (4) Inclusion of study materials themselves (e.g., survey instruments, interview protocol, etc.).
  • Review: These instructions will ensure we have everything required so your paper can move through peer review, production and publication smoothly.
  • Your research funder or your institution may require you to publish your article open access.
  • Use our APC finder to view the APC for this journal.
  • Please note, measurement development and validation pieces must focus solely on family communication.
  • Replication articles should: Contain a strong warrant for the replication, including why it is necessary and important to the field.
  • Review / Editorial: Submissions must not be under editorial review at any other journal or have been published elsewhere.
  • Additionally, authors should provide a description of a timeline should the initial submission be accepted.
  • Registered Report: Authors should select the “Pre-Registered Report” option from the dropdown menu when submitting their manuscript.
  • Future tense writing should be changed to present or past tense per APA guidelines.
  • For all NIH/Welcome-funded papers, the grant number(s) must be included in the declaration of interest statement.
  • Clinical Trial: Clinical trials should be registered prospectively – i.e. before participant recruitment.
  • Editorial: Authors of retrospectively registered trials must be prepared to provide further information to the journal editorial office if requested.
  • Clinical Trial: The clinical trial registry should be publicly accessible (at no charge), open to all prospective registrants, and managed by a not-for-profit organization.
  • All research studies on humans (individuals, samples, or data) must have been performed in accordance with the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki.
  • Please include all relevant safety precautions; and cite any accepted standard or code of practice.
  • Before you submit your article, make sure you’ve checked the instructions for authors for your chosen journal, so you are aware of everything required.
  • Most journals create image descriptions during the production process, but a minority may require authors to provide image descriptions.
  • Review: Running heads and received dates These aren’t required when submitting a manuscript for review.
  • A declaration must be included within the submission stating: Originality and accuracy of content has been confirmed by the authors.
  • Authors must provide full methodological details and adhere to relevant reporting guidelines where applicable.
  • Authors must retain the original and revised versions which must be shared upon request.
  • The PLSP guidelines for authors must be followed at all times.
  • If you submit a paper to a participating journal, you will then receive an email upon submission with: Details of the badges offered by the journal.
  • If you submit a paper to a participating journal, you will then receive an email upon submission with: Links to additional information.
  • If you submit a paper to a participating journal, you will then receive an email upon submission with: An open practices disclosure form.
  • If you submit a paper to a participating journal, you will then receive an email upon submission with: The journal editor’s email address.
  • Review: The research report does not require an extensive literature review and is ideal for scholarship that is grounded in or based on content with which JFC readers are highly familiar.
  • If authors find that deviations are necessary in data collection or data analysis due to unforeseen circumstances, they must contact the Editor immediately before proceeding.
  • Please use SI units (non-italicized).
  • Clinical Trial: Clinical Trials Registry In order to be published in a Taylor & Francis journal, all clinical trials must have been registered in a public repository, ideally at the beginning of the research process (prior to participant recruitment).
  • The process of obtaining consent to publish should include sharing the article with the individual (or whoever is consenting on their behalf), so that they are fully aware of the content of the article before it is published.
  • Special characters If you are preparing your manuscript in Microsoft Word and your article contains special characters, accents, or diacritics, we recommend you follow these steps: European accents (Greek, Hebrew, or Cyrillic letters, or phonetic symbols): choose Times New Roman font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.
  • Special characters If you are preparing your manuscript in Microsoft Word and your article contains special characters, accents, or diacritics, we recommend you follow these steps: Asian languages (such as Sanskrit, Korean, Chinese, or Japanese): choose Arial Unicode font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.
  • Such as: The standards on Data, Materials, and Analytical Code Transparency speak to the items generated over the course of the study and how you should preserve or share them.
  • Review / Editorial: All submissions will undergo anonymized peer review by at least two members of the journal’s editorial board.
  • Review: A study submitted for the Pre-Registration + Analysis Plan Badge requires a two-stage review process.
  • Review: The front end of the paper, including literature review, research questions, and/or hypotheses, cannot be modified beyond minor copyediting or stylistic revisions.
  • If you are at the early stage of your research, you may also need to read how to start writing a journal manuscript.
  • Image descriptions are typically used by systems such as pronouncing screen readers to make images accessible to people that cannot read or see the object due to a visual disability.
  • COS currently offers three badges in its program: The Open Materials badge is earned by making publicly available the components of the research methodology needed to reproduce the reported procedure and analysis.

Reporting guidelines

  • Include or confirm the reporting guidelines required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Preprints and prior publication

  • If you have shared an earlier version of your Author’s Original Manuscript on a preprint server, please be aware that anonymity cannot be guaranteed.

Artificial intelligence disclosure

  • Add or confirm the author-written Artificial intelligence statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
  • Please include a statement disclosing whether and how generative AI has been used in the research and manuscript preparation process.
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  • Use of AI tools as part of ethical research studies is permitted.
  • A declaration must be included within the submission stating: The name and version number of the AI tool used.
  • Systematic Review: Use of AI tools as part of ethically conducted literature reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analysis and bibliometrics studies is permitted.
  • Use of AI tool assisted plain language summaries (PLS) of authors own work is permitted.
  • Please read our guidance on using AI tools in your research and manuscript preparation to understand scenarios where their use may be permissible, and the required information that must be disclosed.
  • A declaration must be included within the submission stating: Confirmation the authors have checked terms of use for the specific AI tool used, and therefore confirm suitability for publication.

Authorship and originality

  • Preparing Your Paper All authors submitting to medicine, biomedicine, health sciences, allied and public health journals should conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, prepared by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Article type and manuscript length

  • Please include a word count for your paper.
  • Structure Your paper should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion; acknowledgments; declaration of interest statement; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figures; figure captions (as a list).

Manuscript structure

  • The practical implications section should provide several practical or social contributions or implications for audiences outside academia (e.g., preK-12 instruction, counselors, social service agencies) as a way to apply the study results to “real” families or “real” family situations.
  • The results/findings of all preregistered analyses must be reported in the manuscript.
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  • Review: Original research articles, including articles that focus on measurement development and validation, should adhere to the traditional research study format (i.e., an Introduction that presents a rationale for the study followed by a Literature Review/Theoretical Background, Method, Results, Discussion, and Practical Implications sections).
  • Any post-hoc analyses and findings must include appropriate justification, be reported in a separate “Post-Hoc Analyses” section, and not be used disproportionately, compared to pre-registered analyses results, to support conclusions articulated in the Discussion section.
  • Letter: Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: First-level headings (e.g. Introduction, Conclusion) should be in bold, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.
  • Authors must retain full records of the methods undertaken, including full descriptions and records of the prompts used, which must be shared with the journal upon request.
  • Clinical Trial: However, for clinical trials that have not been registered prospectively, Taylor & Francis journals requires retrospective registration to ensure the transparent and complete dissemination of all clinical trial results which ultimately impact human health.

Language and text style

  • Please use American spelling style consistently throughout your manuscript.
  • Please use double quotation marks, except where “a quotation is ‘within’ a quotation”.
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  • Please note that long quotations should be indented without quotation marks.
  • Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: Fourth-level headings should be in bold italics, at the beginning of a paragraph.
  • Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: Fifth-level headings should be in italics, at the beginning of a paragraph.
  • Letter: Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: Second-level headings should be in bold italics, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.
  • Letter: Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: Third-level headings should be in italics, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.

Study reporting guidelines

  • For animal studies, approval must have been obtained from the local or institutional animal use and care committee.
  • Authors must provide full methodological details and adhere to relevant reporting guidelines where applicable (e.g. CONSORT-AI, STARD-AI, GAMER, TRIPOD-AI, etc).
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What your package checks

Abstract: 150 words
Paper: 8,000 words
Declarations: Ethics, Artificial intelligence
Format: Times New Roman

Source transparency

This preparation guide uses published journal-specific author requirements. Journal instructions can change, so authors should complete a final review before submission.

Open official guideline source