Research Policies and Guidelines

Author Center > Research Policies and Guidelines

 

Scientific Misconduct and Breaches of Publication Ethics

 

  • Scientific misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism by the authors.
  • Breaches of publication ethics include failure to reveal financial conflicts of interest; omitting a deserving author or adding a non-contributing author; misrepresenting publication status in the reference list (erroneously claiming that a paper is "in-press"); self-plagiarism without attribution; and duplicate or redundant publication.
  • Editorial action should be expected in breaches of publication ethics, cases of scientific misconduct, and embargo violations (see Embargo Policy).The Neurology Journals are members of, and subscribe to the principles of, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Any and all authors submitting a manuscript agree to adhere to the ethical guidelines contained in the Information for Authors, and acknowledges that they are aware of the consequences that may result following breaches of publication ethics. Consequences include notification of the breach in the Journal, retraction of published articles, notification of institutional authorities, subsequent institutional investigation, and loss of privileges of publishing in the Journal.
  • Redundant or duplicate publication is publication of data, tables, figures, or any other content that substantially overlaps with other material published previously or to be published in the future. This includes work published by others or any author of the manuscript submitted to the Journal. When submitting a paper, the Corresponding Author must make a full statement to the Editor-in-Chief in the cover letter about all submissions and previous reports (in any language) that could be regarded as redundant or duplicate publication of the same or very similar work. The corresponding author is also responsible for alerting the Editor-in-Chief if the work includes subjects about which a previous report has been published or about a manuscript that is under review by, submitted to, in press at, or to be submitted to or published in another journal in the future. Any such work must be referred to and referenced in the new paper and a copy of the material should be included with the submission as a supplemental file. Abstracts presented at scientific meetings (with no press releases and not discussed in detail at a symposium) and data provided as required to clinical trial registries are not considered pre-published material. 
  • Effective July 1, 2018, Neurology  Journals will consider articles that are published on preprint servers (e.g., bioRxiv).  See Preprints section below.
  • Plagiarism is the use of others’ ideas or words without properly crediting the source. If authors include one or more sentences verbatim from another source, the original source must be cited and the sentence(s) put in quotation marks to avoid plagiarism. Authors must not use materials of others (text, figures, images, tables) without permission and attribution, including their own published work. See Miguel Roig, Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing".
  • Overlap detection technology has been implemented in the form of iThenticate, a software tool created by CrossRef to check for overlap in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate detects possible plagiarism in text using an extensive database of published materials. Manuscripts with excessive duplication will be rejected. (Wording adapted from Baskin PK and Gross RA, Neurology 2013;80:2-4.)
  • Editorial action should be expected in cases of scientific misconduct, breaches of publication ethics, and embargo violations (see Embargo Policy). Editorial actions that may be taken include notification of the breach in the Journal, retraction of published articles, notification of institutional authorities, and loss of privileges of publishing in the Journal.

Preprints

Neurology Journals will consider articles that are published on preprint servers (e.g., bioRxiv).  Publication on a preprint server must be disclosed in the cover letter of the submission.  Authors will also be prompted on upload to include this information. For example, please list “bioRxiv: doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/307788125”. If the manuscript is ultimately published, copyright is assigned to the American Academy of Neurology. The copyright licenses assigned to the pre-print and the published version will be mutually independent, so authors should review our Open Access policies related to available license types and potential Article Processing Charges. Finally, if published, the corresponding author is responsible for reporting the publication details to the preprint server administrators.

Full Data Access

Neurology requires clear statements of author participation in industry-sponsored research and corporate activities for evaluation of a manuscript. For industry-sponsored and all other research, Neurology now requires the Principal Author or Guarantor to declare in the Authorship Agreement Form that they take full responsibility for the data, the analyses and interpretation, and the conduct of the research; that they have full access to all of the data; and that they have the right to publish any and all data, separate and apart from the guidance of any sponsor. These statements must also be made in the cover letter.

 

Data Availability Policy 

The Neurology journals have adopted the following data availability (data sharing) policy in an effort to promote data transparency.

Authors must include carefully documented data, methods, and materials in all research articles. Please add the subheading ‘Data Availability’ at the end of the Methods section with a statement related to the availability of the data. (For clinical trials, please also see additional information on Data Availability in Clinical Trials below).

Data not provided in the article because of space limitations must be made available in a trusted data repository or shared at the request of other investigators for purposes of replicating procedures and results. Authors will be required to include a data availability statement specifying that any data not published within the article is available in a public repository and include digital object identifiers (doi) or accession numbers to the datasets or to state that anonymized data will be shared by request from any qualified investigator. This statement will be published with the article. If data cannot be shared for legal or ethical reasons or if there are embargoes on datasets, authors must inform the editors at submission and explain the restrictions on the dataset or materials.

For more information on data availability, see the editorial "The new Neurology: Redesigns, short articles for print, full articles online, and data availability policies"

Additional information required for data availability for Clinical Trials

Neurology supports the ICMJE requirement that all manuscripts reporting results of clinical trials contain a data sharing statement that indicates whether individual de-identified participant data will be shared; what data will be shared; whether related documents such as study protocol and statistical analysis plan will be shared; when and how long the data will be made available; and criteria for accessing data, including by whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanisms.

Open Data Repository

To facilitate full transparency and openness of data, Neurology encourages authors to use a publicly-accessible respository such as Dryad to handle supplementary data. We will require deposit of supplementary data beginning with manuscripts that are invited for revision after March 1, 2018. If deposit is required, information will be provided by the editorial office at revision. We have integrated Dryad deposition into our online peer review system. Please note that there is a nominal charge for deposit but payment will not be initiated until the manuscript is accepted. Waivers exist for submissions from authors based in countries classified by the World Bank as low- or middle-income economies.

Most file formats are accepted in Dryad. Please refer to Dryad FAQs . When you submit data, you will receive a Dryad DOI and temporary passcode, which will be made available to editors and referees. If your manuscript is accepted, the information will be released into the public domain in the Dryad archive under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

With increased length specifications for Articles and Views/Reviews, the journal’s goal is to eliminate the use of data supplements (except for videos and PowerPoint slides).

 

Embargo Policy

Embargo is the prohibition of releasing findings in a submitted or accepted paper to the public until after the article has been published (either online or in print) for copyright reasons. Prior to publication, authors may not reveal that the paper is under consideration at any Neurology Journal when presenting at other scientific meetings, or release information to the press, and must ensure that other organizations or institutions have been instructed of this policy. Exceptions to the embargo policy can be made at the Editor's discretion for papers presented at AAN Annual Meetings or in situations in which the article describes major medical advances deemed critical to public health. Please note that the Journals cannot guarantee that journal processes will be expedited to meet deadlines for presentation at other meetings. Consequences notification of the breach in the Journal, retraction of published articles, notification of institutional authorities, subsequent institutional investigation, and loss of privileges of publishing in the Journal.

  • Articles appearing in the print journals, Neurology and Neurology: Clinical Practice, are embargoed for release to the public until 4:00 PM, ET, the day before the Tuesday print publication date. If the full article is chosen to be published online ahead of print publication, the paper and its findings would be embargoed until 4:00 PM, ET, the day of online publication to Neurology (Wednesdays, Fridays) or Neurology: Clinical Practice (Thursdays).

  • Neurology: Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation and Neurology: Genetics  are online-only and articles are published on a continuous basis; findings are embargoed until 4:00 PM, ET, the day of online publication.

Credentialed representatives of the press may request further information about embargoed Neurology, Neurology: Clinical Practice, Neurology: Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation, and Neurology: Genetics articles, including advance copies of articles and help coordinating interviews with researchers, by contacting the American Academy of Neurology Media and Public Relations Department: Renee Tessman at RTessman@aan.com.

View Post-embargo Press Releases at https://www.aan.com/pressroom/.

Errata/Corrections

Corrections to previously-published articles are considered by Neurology to be errata. Neurology adheres to the National Library of Medicine’s policy on errata . To notify staff of a potential error in published material, please contact the Editorial Office.

Ombudsman

Neurology has an Ombudsman. Appointed by the American Academy of Neurology Board of Directors, this person acts as a mediator between authors and the Editorial Office. The Ombudsman can investigate editorial process: delays in peer review, challenges to publication ethics, and cases of editorial bias. The Ombudsman will address the editorial process and will not handle complaints about the substance of editorial decisions, criticisms regarding editorial content, or accusations of scientific misconduct. The complainant should contact the Editorial Office first to resolve the problem. If the complaint is not resolved by contacting the Editorial Office, the complainant may contact the Ombudsman: Jonathan W. Mink, MD, PhD, FAAN, Department of Neurology, University of Rochester, e-mail: jonathan_mink@urmc.rochester.edu.

Clinical Trial Guidelines

According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, a clinical trial is any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome; examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes are any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. The ICMJE does not define the timing of first participant enrollment, but best practice dictates registration by the time of first participant consent.

Statistics

Authors reporting clinical trials or observational will be prompted at manuscript upoad to indicate the specific author who carried out the biostatistical analysis and the author's academic, governmental, or commercial affiliation.

Due to the growing concerns on the overuse and misinterpretation of P values, replace P values with estimates of effects or association and corresponding 95% confidence intervals unless the protocol or the statistical analysis plan has specified methods to adjust for multiplicity of testing.  Hence, a well-designed randomized or observational study will have a primary hypothesis for which a P value < 0.05 can be applied after adjustment for testing multiple endpoints associated with that primary hypothesis. The analysis of all secondary and other endpoints should focus on estimates and 95% confidence intervals. Please see NEJM editorial for detailed information.

In the Results section of the manuscript, the following evidence-based medicine statistics must be included for the manuscript to be forwarded for editorial review:

  • Confidence intervals
  • Numbers needed to treat
  • Absolute risk reduction

Standard Protocol Approvals, Registrations, and Patient Consents

Humans: In reporting experiments on humans, the authors must indicate in the cover letter and a specific subsection in the Methods (titled “Standard Protocol Approvals, Registrations, and Patient Consents”) that the procedures were approved by an ethical standards committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional). Authors must comply with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors with regard to patient consent for research or participation in a study. Do not use study participants' names, initials, or hospital numbers anywhere in the manuscript (including figures). If there was a waiver from your institution’s ethical approval board, please note the waiver in this section and provide documentation to the editorial office that waiver was granted.

In addition to the standard patient consent for participation in research, authors are responsible for obtaining patient consent-to-disclose forms for all recognizable participants in photographs, videos, or other information that may be published in the Journal, in derivative works by the AAN, or on the Journal’s Web site. The patient consent-to-disclose form should indicate specific use (publication in the medical literature in print and online, with the understanding that participants and the public will have access) of the participant’s information and any images in figures or videos and must contain the participant’s signature (or that of a legal guardian). Authors must fax (651-454-2748) or email (the Editorial Office) a copy of the patient consent-to-disclose form when the manuscript is submitted. The original should be retained by the guarantor or Corresponding Author.

Animals:Authors must comply with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors  with regard to experiments on animals. Authors must indicate in the cover letter and the Methods that the procedures comply with the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals.

Registration of Clinical Trials

The Journals require investigators to register their clinical trials in a public trials registry and to provide the identification of the clinical trial registry and the clinical trial identification number. The National Library of Medicine provides a free registry that meets the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) requirements  (Section III.J). Investigators are required to register at or prior to patient enrollment. This policy is effective for any clinical trial beginning enrollment after July 1, 2005. The Journals will not consider retrospectively registered trials for publication. Authors must provide the clinical trial identifier number in the Methods section of the submitted article.

The Food and Drug Administration Amendment Acts of 2007 require mandatory results reporting for clinical trials. (See https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/manage-recs/fdaaa.) Neurology Journals, following the ICMJE policy, will not consider results posted in the same clinical trials registry in which the primary registration resides to be previous publication if the results are presented in the form of a brief, structured (<500 words) abstract or table. The authors should alert the Editor in the cover letter at submission that the review of the manuscript should be accelerated if possible.

Rejected Manuscript Policy

The Editors of the Neurology Journals do not consider manuscripts that they have previously rejected.

Classification of Evidence

Authors submitting articles that report on clinical therapeutic intervention (clinical trial or use of medication, procedure, maneuver, or change in patient environment intended to benefit the patient) or diagnostic accuracy must state in the Abstract and Methods the primary research question(s) and the classification of level of evidence1 assigned to each question based on the latest versions of the AAN classification scheme requirements. Authors of Clinical/Scientific Notes that report on clinical therapeutic intervention studies must also state the primary research question and level of evidence at the end of the manuscript. Authors are expected to initially assign a level of evidence. If the submission is invited for revision, an independent team affiliated with the AAN guidelines committee will review, adjudicate, and assign the level of evidence they deem appropriate and relay to the author with the reviewers' comments. If aspects of the manuscript can be adjusted to raise the level of evidence assignment, the authors should indicate this in the ‘Response to Reviewers’ when returning the revision. The final level of evidence will be assigned by the guidelines committee team before final publication.

  1. Gross RA, Johnston KC. Levels of evidence: taking Neurology to the next level. Neurology 2009;72:8-10.

Permissions

NON-OPEN ACCESS ARTICLES: Authors must submit written permission from the copyright owner (usually the publisher) to use direct quotations, tables, or illustrations that have appeared in copyright form elsewhere, along with complete details about the source. Any permissions fees that might be required by the copyright owner are the responsibility of the authors requesting use of the borrowed material, not the responsibility of Wolters Kluwer or the Neurology editorial office. To request permission and/or rights to use content from the Journals, access the Copyright Clearance Center) and enter Neurology in the ‘Get Permissions’ field in the upper right. Please note: Permission will not be granted to adapt figures that have been previously published in the Journals.

OPEN ACCESS ARTICLES: Authors retain copyright when they opt to publish via the open access option. Papers (including the tables/figures within) with a Creative Commons license CCBY-NC-ND (noncommercial/nonderivative) may be reproduced with permission from the author and must be attributed to the author and the journal. They cannot be reproduced in any way for commercial use. Open access articles published with a CCBY license may be re-used for any purpose (including commercial) without requesting permission from the author or the journal. Content re-use must be attributed to the author and the journal.

Use of Generic and Proprietary Drugs and Devices

At first mention of a drug or device in a manuscript, authors must state the generic name with the proprietary name in parentheses along with the name, city, and state of the manufacturer. In subsequent mentions, the generic name should be used. Clinical/Scientific notes only need to list the generic name unless the paper compares two medications.

Genetic Studies

  • Authors of genetic association studies must consider whether their results are likely to be considered of sufficient power and interest to warrant publication. The Journals follow the guidelines outlined by authorities in the genetics research field (Neurology 2001 57:1153-1154 and Nature Genetics 2005:1217-1223). Calculations of statistical significance must make appropriate corrections for multiple testing. After such correction, the (experiment-wise) significance level must not exceed 0.01 and should preferably be smaller than that limit. The Journals will not accept articles claiming a new gene has been discovered for a neurologic disease unless an adequately powered verification sample is included with the journal submission.
     
  • For standards and guidelines related to the classification of sequence variants, refer to https://www.acmg.net/docs/Standards_Guidelines_for_the_Interpretation_of_Sequence_Variants.pdf. For standards and guidelines related to reporting incidental or secondary findings in clinical exome and genome sequencing, refer to https://www.nature.com/articles/gim2016190.

  • Methodological information such as primer sequences or PCR conditions should be submitted with the main manuscript as supplemental data .

  • Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) values must be calculated and reported in population genetic studies submitted to the Journals.

NIH-Funded Studies and Public Access

Authors must acknowledge explicitly in the text of their research articles the funding source of the research and, if applicable, their institutional affiliation with the appropriate agency. They must also check the appropriate funding box on the Publication Agreement form if the manuscript reaches provisional acceptance.

Wolters Kluwer (WK), publisher of the Neurology and Neurology: Clinical Practice, will submit an electronic version, on behalf of the authors, of the final published article of any study funded by NIH (or in which any of the authors are funded by NIH) to PubMed Central (PMC) for publication 12 months after print or online publication (whichever is first) in Neurology. The authorization is a non-exclusive license only for the purpose stated in the NIH Public Access Policy. The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) reserves all rights not specifically granted in this non-exclusive license. Further information on the NIH Public Access Policy is available at: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

WK will submit, on behalf of the authors, an electronic version of the final published article of any study funded by Austrian Science Foundation, Canadian Institute for Health Research, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, NIH, and World Bank to PMC within 12 months after print or online publication (whichever is first). (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UKRI [formerly known as RCUK], Swedish Research Council, Telethon Italy, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) [UK] and Wellcome Trust/ COAF Partners authors: Please see open access mandates.) Queries can be sent to customerservice@lww.com; 1-800-638-3030 or 1-301-223-2300 (outside the US).

Depositing in institutional repositories. Neurology will permit authors to deposit their final, published (not the accepted, pre-print) manuscripts in institutional repositories if required by the author’s institution or funder.

Reporting guidelines

Forms for the following guidelines if applicable (forms should be included with FIRST submission and if not, will be included in revision requests):

  • Randomized Controlled Trials. Authors reporting the results of Phase 1, Phase 2, or Phase 3 randomized controlled trials must submit a CONSORT checklist and flow diagram.
  • Systematic Review or Meta-Analysis. Authors reporting systematic review or meta-analysis of randomized trials must submit the PRISMA statement (previously known as QUORUM).
  • Diagnostic Accuracy. Authors reporting studies on the accuracy of diagnostic tests must submit the STARD checklist.
  • Observational Studies. Neurology requires the STROBE checklist for cohort, case-controlled, and cross-sectional studies and all observational studies of humans, as well as case series, pilot studies, genetic linkage studies, and retrospective data collection studies. If the detailed methods are explicitly stated in the manuscript for single-case studies, STROBE is not required. Please make a note on the checklist which page numbers contain the requested information.
  • Epidemiologic Studies. Neurology requires the STROND checklist to assess the reporting of prevalence and incidence studies of neurologic disorders. Please make a note on the checklist which page numbers contain the requested information.
  • Genetic Association Studies. Authors reporting genetic association studies must submit the STREGA checklist.
  • Reporting Adverse Events. In case reports, author should state whether they have reported serious adverse events to the manufacturer, US FDA, or other governmental regulatory agency.
  • Patient consent form (if applicable).
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