Neurology Journals Style Points

Please carefully review your manuscript to comply with Neurology  Journals style. 

Ensuring sensitivity in terms

Neurology follows the American Psychological Association (APA) style regarding the capitalization of racial and ethnic terms: “Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. Therefore, use ‘Black’ and ‘White’ instead of ‘black’ and ‘white’ (do not use colors to refer to other human groups; doing so is considered pejorative). Likewise, capitalize terms such as ‘Native American,’ ‘Hispanic,’ and so on. Capitalize ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Aboriginal’ whenever they are used. Capitalize ‘Indigenous People’ or ‘Aboriginal People’ when referring to a specific group (e.g., the Indigenous Peoples of Canada), but use lowercase for ‘people’ when describing persons who are Indigenous or Aboriginal (e.g., ‘the authors were all Indigenous people but belonged to different nations’).

Do not use hyphens in multiword names, even if the names act as unit modifiers (e.g., write ‘Asian American participants,’ not ‘Asian-American participants’). If people belong to multiple racial or ethnic groups, the names of the specific groups are capitalized, but the terms ‘multiracial,’ ‘biracial,’ ‘multi-ethnic,’ and so on are lowercase.”

Avoid biased language. Do not change age range identifications in large epidemiologic studies. Do not routinely mention race if not medically relevant. (Race is relevant for HTLV-I [not II or III], hypertension, and sarcoidosis.)

Sex/gender:  In most cases, authors should use ‘sex’ instead of ‘gender’. Usually, ‘sex’ (the biological designation) is meant. ‘Gender’ is the social construct and is rarely relevant in neurologic disease. Please revise the text where ‘gender’ is mentioned.

Revise "the disabled" or "the handicapped" to "persons with a disability.” (Exceptions include historic “Oxford Handicap Scale”).

Revise “confined” or “bound to” a wheelchair to “uses a” wheelchair.

Revise "X disease patients"  to "patients with X disease"; using “stroke patients” is acceptable.

Revise "victim of X disease" or "afflicted with X" to “person with X disease” 

Replace “suffering from” with “has” when mentioning a person having a disease or condition, unless specifically studying suffering as a symptom.

Revise "demented subjects" to “patients with dementia.”

Revise "normals" to “normal participants" or "normal patients."

Revise "stiff-man syndrome" to "stiff-person syndrome."

Avoid the passive voice
Be clear and direct.

Priority Claims
No priority claims, e.g., “This is the first paper to show….”, "this is a novel study” or “these findings or data have never been reported before”. Instead of generating interest in a study, this may trivialize the findings. In addition, such claims may offend authors whose earlier papers on the topic may have appeared elsewhere. 
These are examples of revisions that can be made to avoid priority claims:

  • Unrevised: Typical infratentorial lesions were seen, even though presentation with central hyperventilation has not been described before to our knowledge.
    Revised: Typical infratentorial lesions were seen, even though presentation with central hyperventilation is rare.
  • Unrevised: We report on the first well-standardized RC-IFA, which was developed to determine autoantibodies against Tr/DNER.
    Revised: We report a well-standardized RC-IFA, which was developed to determine autoantibodies against Tr/DNER.

Correlation and Association
Do not use the following phrases; State what happened.

  • Positive (or negative, or inverse) correlation
  • Positive (or negative, or inverse) association
  • Positive (or negative, or inverse) relationship

Proprietary Names

  • If proprietary name of a drug or device (e.g. Viagra®) is mentioned, state the generic name with the proprietary name in parentheses along with name and location of manufacturer at first mention.
  • In subsequent mentions, the generic name should be used (unless it is study comparing generic vs proprietary drugs). For common drugs with multiple manufacturers such as aspirin, it is not necessary to include proprietary names.

Impact

  • Do not use “impact” as a verb.
  • If used as a verb, it is better to describe exactly what happens.  As a noun, ‘effect’ (or similar) would suffice.  For example, “The impact on quality of life…” could be rendered as “The reduction in quality of life…”  

Decimal points
Decimal points should be used vs. commas (outside US writers tend to use commas instead of decimal points).

Personal Communications
When citing personal communications, mention permission was granted to cite them.

P Value
If stating what significant is for the P value (e.g., “P value was considered significant at 0.05”), do not include sentences that have the word “significant” and a P value in it (e.g. we do not want “3 patients had a significant decline [P=0.2]”.

For example, “the presence of a lesion on the spinal cord was moderately significant (p=0.02).” could be re-written as: “the presence of a lesion on the spinal cord was moderate (p=0.02).”

Significant
Reserve ‘significant’ for statistics. Use a different word.

Subject
Do not use ‘subject’—use either ‘patients’ or ‘participants’.

Also, if applicable, control subjects can be referred to as "controls" and healthy control subjects can be referred to as "healthy controls."

Trend
Make sure to use ‘trend’ correctly. The term 'trend' is appropriate only when referring to the results of a trend analysis. It is not appropriate to use when a finding is 'almost, but not, significant' according to your criteria (such as p<0.05). Please correct the text to more correct wording, such as 'the result was … but this was not different from … '.

Check use of wording "trend to a decrease" and whether it would be more accurate to refer to significance rather than a trend.

Excessive use of last names
Do not mention authors' last names in the body of the manuscript related to specific studies. Omit the name and rewrite the sentence as necessary.
Unrevised:  Brown et al’s study showed that excessive MGi in the bloodstream led to increased spike waves on EEG. 1
Revised: It has been shown that excessive MGi in the bloodstream led to increased spike waves on EEG. 1

Unrevised:  Jones et al. article confirmed that eating green vegetables led to greater cognition in
 old age. 2
Revised: Eating green vegetables led to greater cognition in old age.2

URLS within text
Any URLS in the text should be moved to the reference list.

Naming conventions for Supplemental Files

Neurology follows AMA style naming conventions for supplemental files:

  • Tables: eTable 1, eTable 2, eTable 3...
  • Figures: eFigure 1, eFigure 2, eFigure 3...
  • Methods: eMethods.
  • Study Protocol and Statistical Analysis Plan (for Clinical Trials): eSAP 1, eSAP 2. 
  • Appendices: eAppendix 1, eAppendix 2, eAppendix 3...
    • Use eAppendix for any content type not listed. Example: "...questionnaire in eAppendix 2..."
  • Videos: Video 1, Video 2, Video 3...
  • References: eReferences. e1, e2, e3...