Over a decade later and Addiction journal is still committed to publishing qualitative research

Addiction has faced persistent challenges in publishing qualitative research. In 2013, members of the then editorial team who handled qualitative papers wrote an editorial that both affirmed the journal's commitment to publishing high-quality qualitative research and highlighted the desire to receive more qualitative manuscripts [1]. Over a decade later, and despite increasing the number of qualitative Associate Editors, few qualitative papers are published in Addiction. This editorial reiterates the journal's desire to publish more qualitative studies and describes one important change and some clarifications to facilitate this.

Being a top journal in the field, Addiction's bar for publication is high and therefore papers need to meet a certain quality threshold. In fact, the acceptance rate for qualitative papers is only marginally lower than for quantitative manuscripts, but there have been a consistently low overall number of qualitative submissions. For example, in 2024, Addiction received only 66 qualitative papers out of approximately 1200 unsolicited submissions. It is likely that scholars see few qualitative papers published, presume Addiction is resistant to accepting qualitative research, and look for alternative journals. If so, a cyclical problem of few qualitative papers submitted and published is created.

Members of the current editorial team who themselves publish qualitative research recently discussed this issue and debated how to increase the number of high-quality qualitative manuscripts both submitted to, and published in, Addiction. Given the different disciplinary backgrounds of those involved (including applied health research, psychology, public health social work, social policy, and sociology), there was no expectation of reaching consensus on all possible topics. However, there were reassuring areas of agreement, and sufficient scope for compromise, such that we have been able to propose, and secure agreement from the Editor-in-Chief on, the following:

Foremost, we are pleased to announce that the journal has extended the word limit for qualitative papers from 4500 to 6000 words. This new limit continues to necessitate economy of prose, but more fully recognizes that the data presented within qualitative papers, whether quotations from interviews or excerpts from ethnographic field notes, add to the word count. Equally, qualitative researchers need space to fully contextualize their participants and study setting. The new word count should enable authors to include quotations (or other qualitative data) and meaningful participant identifiers within the main body of their text rather than, for example, relegating them to a table separated from the narrative.

We also clarify that Addiction is not excessively prescriptive in its use of guidelines for qualitative authors. There is no single way to conduct qualitative research. Alongside the aforementioned editorial [1], we have published two editorial notes on reporting qualitative research [2, 3]. These documents continue to provide useful information on how we prefer qualitative manuscripts to be prepared so that they are most likely to pass our reviewing processes and be accessible to our international readership (who may not be familiar with qualitative research). Nonetheless, they are guidance rather than rules.

Reflecting this flexibility, we do not require authors to submit a reporting checklist for qualitative studies. Although some may find these useful for demonstrating rigor and ensuring that they have included all important information relevant to their work, checklists are not without limitations. Notably, they can stifle originality and innovation, reduce qualitative research to a list of technical procedures, and conflate reporting quality with study quality [4-8]. Crucially, checklists are also not compatible with the critical, non-positivist or interpretivist paradigms often used in qualitative research [8]. Instead, we prefer that authors transparently report how their study was conducted in as much detail as possible.

Although journals (including Addiction) are increasingly requiring authors to pre-register their research, we are not currently asking qualitative researchers to do this. Qualitative research questions often develop through an emergent and iterative, rather than an a priori, process. Furthermore, pre-registration of qualitative protocols may undermine the known strengths of qualitative approaches, including theoretical development grounded in the data and the identification of unanticipated findings and emerging behaviors.

Additionally, we do not insist that authors state their ontology or epistemology or mandate the use of reflexivity. That said, we encourage authors to include these if interesting and meaningful. Equally, qualitative manuscripts published in Addiction do not need to engage with grand theory. However, using principles, concepts or ideas to explain or frame a study's findings is recommended as this generally improves scientific quality by raising the findings of qualitative research beyond local description to enable applicability and transferability to other contexts and settings.

Although there are situations where it may be appropriate to state how many participants reported a particular theme, we generally prefer semi-quantification (i.e., terms such as ‘many’, ‘some’, ‘a few’) as these are less likely to result in inappropriate inferences about prevalence. To be consistent with other manuscript types in Addiction, we also advise authors to save reflections on their findings to the Discussion. However, we would not reject a manuscript only because an author has interspersed reflection and literature throughout their findings.

Addiction welcomes a diversity of techniques and epistemological perspectives, but there are indicators of weak scholarship or poor understanding of qualitative methods that we often see and that seldom succeed in review. These include describing a methodological approach that does not match the analyses presented (‘methodological incongruence’ [8]), descriptive accounts of loosely related themes without a clear conceptual basis, or extensive use of verbatim quotations with little analytical text. To ensure their paper is relevant to Addiction's international audience and to increase the impact of their research, qualitative authors need to engage with, and consider how their findings contribute to, the wider literature encompassing theory, policy or practice.

The editorial team at Addiction includes researchers with strong track records in publishing qualitative research. Please send us your best qualitative papers and we will work to ensure that they receive fair and expert evaluation. The challenges of publishing qualitative research in Addiction are not insurmountable and we remain committed to publishing high-quality qualitative papers that shape the addictions field.

Joanne Neale: Conceptualization (equal); writing—original draft (equal). Brian Kelly: Conceptualization (equal); writing—original draft (equal). Jordan M. Braciszewski: Conceptualization (equal); writing—review and editing (equal). Joanna Kesten: Conceptualization (equal); writing—review and editing (equal). Stephen Lankenau: Conceptualization (equal); writing—review and editing (equal). Paula Mayock: Conceptualization (equal); writing—review and editing (equal). Jennifer Merrill: Conceptualization (equal); writing—review and editing (equal).

In the last 3 years, J.N. has received, through her university, unrelated funding from pharmaceutical companies Mundipharma Research and Camurus AB for research and honoraria from Camurus AB and Indivior for conference presentations. B.K. has no conflicts of interest to declare. J.M.B. has no conflicts of interest to declare. J.K. has no conflicts of interest to declare. In the last 5 years, S.L. has received, through his university, unrelated funding from the cannabis company Verano for research. P.M. has no conflicts of interest to declare. J.M. has no conflicts of interest to declare.