Enactment June 1, 2005
1st revised April 7, 2019
2nd revised September 30, 2022

Table of Contents

• General Information
• Research Ethics
• Publication Ethics
• Copyright Policy
• Open Access Policy
• Language
• Submission and Revision of Manuscripts
• Manuscript Preparation
• Review Articles
• Special Articles
• Acknowledgements
• Formatting of Funding Sources
• Author Checklist
• Publication and Reprints

General Information

• 1) Neurofunction (Neurofunction, NF) is a peer-reviewed journal and the official Neurofunction, and published twice a year on the last day of June and September. This Journal publishes important papers covering the whole field of neurosurgery, including studies in neuroscience, neurology, and molecular biology. Studies on rare cases and technical notes of special instruments or equipment that might be useful to the field of neurosurgical science are also acceptable. Papers, to be accepted, will include clinical articles (clinical and laboratory research), case reports, brief reports, technical reports, review articles, letters to the editor, etc. Review articles can be published upon specific request by the journal. Authors can publish special drafts with the approval from the editorial board. Case reports should be brief, and avoid an extensive review of the literature.
• 2) Material submitted for publication should be the result of a recent investigation, should be scientifically sound, and should be well organized theoretically. Manuscripts are considered for publication with the understanding that they have not been published previously and are not under consideration by another journal. NF follows Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/) in cases not described otherwise below.

The chief goal of our policy is threefold: to provide advice for our authors, to maintain the scholarly integrity of our journals and their content, and to detail the ethical responsibilities of Neurofunction, our editors and authors. We expect all authors to read and understand our ethics policy before submitting to any of our journals. This is in accordance with our commitment to the prevention of ethical misconduct, which we recognize to be a growing problem in academic and professional publications. It is important to note that most incidents of plagiarism, redundant publication, copyright infringement or similar occur because of a lack of understanding, and not through fraudulent intent. Our policy is one of prevention and not persecution.

Research Ethics

All of the manuscripts should be prepared in strict observation of research and publication ethics guidelines recommended by the Council of Science Editors (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME, http://www.wame.org), and the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE, https://www.kamje.or.kr). Any study including human subjects or human data must be reviewed and approved by a responsible institutional review board (IRB). Please refer to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki, revised in 2013 (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/) for all investigations involving human materials. If ethical approval is not required, authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee that indicates ethics approval is not required for this type of study. For non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys, questionnaires, social media research), all participants must be fully informed if the anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used and if there are any risks associated.

Animal experiments also should be reviewed by an appropriate committee (IACUC) for the care and use of animals. If ethical approval is not required, authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee. The editors will require that the benefits potentially derived from any research causing harm to animals are significant in relation to any cost endured by animals, and that procedures followed are unlikely to cause offense to the majority of readers. Authors should particularly ensure that their research complies with the commonly-accepted '3Rs': Replacement of animals by alternatives wherever possible, Reduction in number of animals used, and Refinement of experimental conditions and procedures to minimize the harm to animals. Authors must include details on housing, husbandry and pain management in their manuscript.

Also studies with pathogens or Cell Lines requiring a high degree of biosafety should pass review of a relevant committee (IBC). Methods sections for submissions reporting on research with cell lines should state the origin of any cell lines. For established cell lines the provenance should be stated and references must also be given to either a published paper or to a commercial source. If previously unpublished de novo cell lines were used, including those gifted from another laboratory, details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval must be given, and confirmation of written informed consent must be provided if the line is of human origin.

In studies of clinical tirals authors must follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ policy and deposit trial information and design into an accepted clinical trial registry before the onset of patient enrollment.

Publication Ethics

The editor of Neurofunction, may request submission of copies of informed consents from human subjects in clinical studies or IRB approval documents. The Neurofunction, will follow the guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, http://publicationethics.org) for settlement of any misconduct.

1) Redundant Publication and Plagiarism
Redundant publication is defined as "reporting (publishing or attempting to publish) substantially the same work more than once, without attribution of the original source(s)". Characteristics of reports that are substantially similar include the following: (a) "at least one of the authors must be common to all reports (if there are no common authors, it is more likely plagiarism than redundant publication)," (b) "the subject or study populations are often the same or similar," (c) "the methodology is typically identical or nearly so," and (d) "the results and their interpretation generally vary little, if at all."

A study that has been posted on a preprint server is not considered as prior publication. However, the authors must notify in the title page whether their study has been posted on elsewhere.

If all or part of your patient population was previously reported, this should be mentioned in the Materials and Methods, with citation of the appropriate reference(s).

Please note that submitted manuscripts may be subject to checks using the iThenticate service, in conjunction with Similarity Check, in order to detect instances of overlapping and similar text. The iThenticate software checks submissions against millions of published research papers, documents on the web, and other relevant sources. If plagiarism or misconduct is found, we will retract the article before peer-review process and contact the corresponding author requesting an explanation of the suspect material. In the event that a simple oversight is identified and corrected, no further action is needed. In more egregious cases, editors are obliged to contact the other authors of the manuscript and institutional leaders such as a department chair or dean, which may have serious consequences.

2) Data Fabrication
Data falsification can take many forms from overt to subtle. Clear-cut fabrication of results has no place in scientific literature. It can be difficult to identify and often is found only when co-authors or collaborators find serious questions about a manuscript and bring them to attention. In one case, a reviewer of a manuscript provided evidence that the data presented in no way could have been collected by the submitting authors. Journals must rely heavily on the honor system because they do not typically have direct access to primary data. More subtle forms of data falsification include embellishment, selective publication of results, or even non-publication of results. Efforts to limit these include clinical trials registration, preferably at the outset of a study. The policy of the ICMJE, followed by our journals, is that all clinical trials should be registered, preferably before enrollment of the first patient. ICMJE defines a clinical trial as “any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes” (http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/clinical-trials-registration/). Note that certain publishable studies, such as retrospective studies or the use of registry data, do not currently require registration. Manipulation of figures is sometimes unethically done to support or strengthen a hypothesis. It is made easier with modern photo editing programs, but the same programs help us detect figure manipulation. A more subtle issue occurs when, if an author discovers after publication an error that he/she made, he/she ignores it to avoid embarrassment or to just avoid the bother of correcting it. Instead, the author should always notify the editorial office and get an erratum attached to the article. Not doing so is also considered unethical.

Authors have the responsibility to ensure that their published information is correct, to the best of their knowledge.

3) Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest may involve many individuals in the publication process including authors, reviewers, or editors. Conflicts may be financial, legal, scientific, or personal, including academic competition. Authors should address the statements regarding potential conflicts of interest including related information in a separated section entitled “Conflict of Interest” in their submitting manuscript. If there is no interest to declare then please state this: ‘There is no conflict of interest to disclose.’ The Editor-in-chief may reject manuscript that does not fulfill the above mentioned guideline.

4) Informed consent
Every individual has a right that cannot be infringed. Individuals participating in research have the right to determine what happens to collected (identifiable) personal data, what they say in research or interviews, and what happens to the pictures taken. It is therefore important that all participants gave their informed consent in writing prior to their inclusion in the study. Details of the subject (name, date of birth, identity number, and other information) should not be published as written description, photographs, and genetic information unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or guardian participant) gave their informed consent for publication. When complete anonymity may not be achieved (for example, masking an eye area in a participant's photo is inappropriate for anonymity protection), the author should obtains informed consent.

The following statement should be addressed in separated section entitled “Informed consent”.

“Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study”. If informed consent is not required, the author must state that “this type of study does not require informed consent.”

5) Authorship
The Neurofunction, follows the recommendations for authorship by the ICMJE, 2013 (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals 2nd Edition (KAMJE, 2013, https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=7).

The rules for authorship are clearly laid out by the ICMJE as follows.

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
Final approval of the version to be published;
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Authors should meet conditions of 1, 2, 3, and 4. In addition, an author should be accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done and should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. Authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their coauthors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.

6) Role of the committee on the publication ethics for an ethical problem
When there is an ethical issue any of listed above in a submitted manuscript, the committee on the publication ethics performs the following processes.

• - Reviewer or editor raises ethical concerns about the manuscript.
• - The committee on the publication ethics notifies the author of the ethical issue.
• - The Author should answer to this issue.
• - If the answer is satisfactory, the committee on the publication ethics will apologize to the author and review process will be continued.
• - If the answer is unsatisfactory, the review process will be stopped.
• - If the issue is not resolved, the concerns are forwarded to author’s employer or person responsible for research governance at institution.
• - If the issue is not resolved after the processes above, the issue is referred to other authorities.

Copyright Policy

NF permanently retains the copyrights to all manuscripts published in NF (including those submitted and approved for publication but not yet published) since June 2005. Authors should complete and submit the Copyright Transfer Agreement signed by all authors, available on the website (https://submit.e-neurofunction.org/).

Open Access Policy

Every paper published in NF is freely available via our website (https://e-neurofunction.org/). Articles published in NF are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Language

All manuscripts must be written in English. Authors should minimize the use of English abbreviations. Spell out all abbreviations at first occurrence, and then introduce them by placing the abbreviation in parenthesis after the term being abbreviated. All units should be given in metric system (The International System of Units: SI units).

Submission and Revision of Manuscripts

• 1) Authors are requested to submit their papers electronically by using online manuscript submission available at below address. Authors can send their articles as Microsoft (MS) Word. Authors, reviewers, and editors send and receive all correspondence by e-mail and no paper correspondence is necessary.
• 2) Upon submission of a manuscript, authors should send a copyright release/author agreement form to editorial office (https://submit.e-neurofunction.org/).
• 3) The manuscript should be composed of approximately 6,000 English words for clinical articles and the abstract should be concisely written (fewer than 250 words).
• 4) The review process is strictly confidential. All submitted papers are peer-reviewed by more than two accredited experts in the corresponsive field. The Editor-in-Chief will make a decision on the approval for publication of the submitted manuscripts based on results of reviewing process and can request any further corrections, revisions, and deletions to the article text if necessary. A decision on acceptance or rejection for publication is sent to the corresponding author. When the final version of an accepted manuscript is prepared according to the requirements of the journal, the publication date is determined. Rejected manuscripts will not be reconsidered for publication.
• 5) The price for all work requiring review, publishing, and re-printing of the paper will be determined by the editorial board.
• 6) When the article was written in English will receive English editorial comments from the journal upon acceptance of their paper. When the English correction is completed based on the comments, the accepted manuscript should be supplied as a file (Microsoft Word) via e-mail . The file should include the name of first author, manuscript ID number, and title of manuscript.
  
  Questions regarding manuscript submission may be sent to Editor-in-Chief.
  Tel: +82-2-2228-2150, Fax: +82-2-393-9979
  E-mail: changws@yonsei.ac.kr / changws0716@yuhs.ac
  Address: Yonsei University College of Medicine, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Korea
  

Manuscript Preparation

• 1) Title Page
  The title page should be composed of external and internal title pages.
  
  • a) The external title page should contain the article title, and full names of all authors with their institutional affiliations in English. The type of manuscript (clinical article, case report, technical report, brief report, letter to editor) should be also addressed. In the clinical articles, a total number of authors should be no more than six. When the work includes multiple authors with different affiliations, the institution where the research was mainly conducted should be spelled out first, then be followed by foot notes in superscript Arabic numerals beside the authors' names to describe their affiliation in a consecutive order of the numbers. Then, mark the running head as not to exceed 50 characters in English. The external title page should also contain the address, E-mail address, and ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) of the corresponding author at the bottom of the page, as well as information on the previous presentation of the manuscript in conferences and funding resources, if necessary.
  • b) The internal title page should only contain the article title in English. The internal title page must not contain any information on the names and affiliations of the authors.
• 2) Manuscript Format
  The article should be organized in the order of title, abstract (objective, methods, results, and conclusion sections should be included in clinical article, but are not necessary in other types of studies), introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references (no more than 50), tables, and figures or illustrations. In case reports, materials and methods and results section have to replaced with cases.
• 3) Abstract
  All manuscripts must contain an abstract except letter to the editor. A list of keywords, with a maximum of six items, should be included at the end of the abstract. The selection of keywords should be based on Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) and the website (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html). The abstract should include brief descriptions on the objective, methods, results, and conclusion as well as a detailed description of the data. An abstract containing 250 words or less is required for clinical articles and 200 words for review, special article, case reports, technical reports, and brief reports. Abstracts for clinical article should begin with the statement of the paper's purpose and end with conclusions. Abstracts for other types of papers should begin with a brief and clear statement of the paper's purpose, and be followed by appropriate details that support the conclusions of the paper.
• 4) Introduction
  The introduction should address the purpose of the article concisely, and include background reports mainly relevant to the purpose of the paper (detailed review of the literature should be addressed in the discussion section).
• 5) Materials and Methods

  Materials and Methods section should include sufficient details of the design, objects, and methods of the article in order, as well as the data analysis strategies and control of bias in the study. Enough details need to be addressed in the methodology section of an experimental study so that it can be further replicated by others.
   When reporting experiments with human subjects, the authors should indicate whether they received an approval from the institutional review board for the study. When reporting experiments with animal subjects, the authors should indicate whether the handling of the animals was supervised by the research board of the affiliated institution or a similar one. Photographs disclosing patients must be accompanied by a signed release form from the patient or family permitting publication.
   We endorse the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki and expect that all investigations involving human materials have been performed in accordance with these principles. For animal experiment, “the Guiding Principles in the Care and Use of Animals” approved by the American Physiological Society have to be observed. Explanation of the experimental methods should be concise and sufficient for repetition by other qualified investigators. Procedures that have been published previously should not be described in detail. However, new or significant modifications of previously published procedures need full descriptions. The sources of special chemicals or preparations should be given (name of company). Method of statistical analyses and criteria of significance level should be described. In case reports, case history or case description replace the Materials and Methods section as well as Results section. Please inform us the approved number of IRB when you submit the manuscript.

  • a) Ethics statement:
    • ▶ Example for clinical study: - The present study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of ### National University College of Medicine (approval No. 2019001). Informed consent was obtained by all subjects when they were enrolled.
    • ▶ Example for animal study: - The procedures used and the care of animals were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) in xxx University (approval No. 2019002).
    • ▶ Example for clinical trials: - This is a randomized clinical trial on the second phase, registered at NIH ClinicalTrials.gov (https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/), number NCT 2019003. Manuscripts reporting interventional clinical trial should include data sharing plan following the ICMJE statement by referring to the ICMJE Statement on Data Sharing (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html).
  • b) Description of participants:
    • ▶ Ensure correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors), and, unless inappropriate, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex and gender. If the study was done involving an exclusive population, for example in only one sex, authors should justify why, except in obvious cases (e.g., prostate cancer). Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity and justify their relevance.

• 6) Results
  The authors should describe logically their results of observations and analyses performed using methodology given in the previous section and provide actual data. For biometric measurements in which considerable amount of stochastic variation exists a statistical treatment should be used in principle. The result section should include sorely the findings of the current study, and not refer to previous reports. While an effort should be made to avoid overlapping descriptions by Tables and by main text, important trends and points in the Table should be described in the text. Experimental results should be described using Arabic numbers and the SI unit system.
• 7) Discussion
  Discussions about the findings of the research and interpretations in relation to other studies are made. It is necessary to emphasize the new and critical findings of the study, not to repeat the results of the study presented in the previous sections. The meaning and limitation of observed facts should be described, and the conclusion should be related to the objective of the study only when it is supported by the results of the research. It is encouraged for the authors to use subheadings in the discussion section so that the readers can follow the logical flow of the authors' thought.
• 8) Conclusion
  The conclusion section should include a concise statement of the major findings of the study in accordance with the study purpose.
• 9) References
  For all articles, the number of references should not exceed 50.
  • a) References are listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, cite the reference number in square brackets (e.g., “We used the techniques developed by author surname [17] to analyze the data”).
  • b) When a work has six or less authors, cite the names of all authors. When a work has over six authors, cite the first six authors' name followed by "et al." Abbreviations for journal titles should be congruent with the style of PubMed. A journal title with one word does not need to be written out in abbreviation. The styles of references are as follows.
    • ▶ Journal
      Lettieri C, Rinalodo S, Devigili G, Pauletto G, Verriello L, Budai R, et al. Deep brain stimulation: subthalamic electrophysiological activity in awake and anesthetized patients. Clin Neurophysiol 2012;123:2406-13
    • ▶ Book
      Conover WJ. Practical Nonparametric Statistics, 2nd ed. Jon Wiley & Sons, 1971, pp216-8
    • ▶ Chapter in a book
      Ojemann RG. Surgical management of bacterial intracranial aneurysms. In: Schmideck HH, Sweet HH (eds). Operative Neurosurgical Techniques: Indications, Methods and Results, 2nd ed. Grune & Stratton, 1988, Vol 2, pp997-1001
    • ▶ Internet source
      American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS). About the AANS [Internet]. AANS; [cited 2019 Sep 19]. Available from: https://www.aans.org/en/About-Us
      
• 10) Tables, Figures, and Illustrations
  

  Tables and figure legends should be included below the references pages at the end of the paper, but figures should be submitted separately from the text of paper.
  Table should be simple and should not duplicate information in figures. Title all tables and number them with arabic numerals in the order of their citation. Type each table on a separate sheet. Describe all abbreviations. Each column should have an appropriate heading, and if numerical measurements are given, the unit should be added to column heading. The significance of results should be indicated by appropriate statistical analysis. Table footnotes should be indicated with superscript markings. When remarks are used to explain items of the table, the markers should be given in the order of *, †, ‡, §, Ⅱ, ¶, #.
  Photographs should be submitted individually (Namely, if Figure 1 is divided into A, B, C and D, do not combine it into one, but submit each of them separately). Authors should submit figures in black and white if they want them to be printed in black and white. Authors are responsible for any additional costs of producing color figures.
   Total file size of all figures should not exceed 5 MB for review purpose. If your figures are more than 5 MB in total, upload the figures after reducing the file size within 5 MB. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, editorial office requests you to upload figure files of highest quality for printing.
   The files should have following resolutions for printing: line art at 1,200 dpi, combination half-tones at 600 dpi, and half-tones (gray scale or color without type or lettering) at 300 dpi. If the quality of the photographs is considered as inappropriate for printing, re-submission of them can be requested by the journal. Tables, graphs, figures, and photographs should be used only when necessary.

• 11) Case Report, Technical Report, Brief Report, and Letter to the Editor
  Case reports and technical reports should consist of an abstract, keywords, introduction, case report, discussion, conclusion, and references (no more than 20). Case reports should have fewer than four authors and should not exceed 3,000 words (excluding the abstract, references, and table/figure legends). Technical reports should not exceed 3,000 words (excluding the abstract, references, and table/figure legends) with up to 20 references. The abstract should be concisely written (fewer than 200 words). Brief report should not exceed 2,000 words (excluding the abstract, references, and table/figure legends). No subdivisions such as the introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion are required. It is not necessary to have a fully structured abstract for brief reports, case reports, and technical reports. Letters to the editor should have fewer than four authors and should not exceed 1,000 words.

Review Articles

• 1) The authors and topics for review articles will be selected by the editorial board.
• 2) Review articles should also undergo the review process.

Special Articles

• 1) Special articles are devoted to providing updated reports by specialists in various fields or significant issues (e.g., history of the field) for the members of the society.
• 2) The authors and topics of special drafts will be assigned and specially requested by the editorial board.
• 3) The authors’ views in special drafts will be respected as much as possible.

Acknowledgements

Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).

Formatting of Funding Sources

List funding sources in this standard way to facilitate compliance to funder's requirements.

Author Checklist

• 1) Before submitting the manuscript, authors should double-check all requirements noted in the agreement form regarding the registration and copyrights of their manuscript. A manuscript that does not fit the author instructions of the journal regarding format and references will be returned to the authors for further correction.
• 2) The page numbers in the manuscript should be counted from the page with the abstract, and the name and affiliation of the authors should not appear thereafter.

Publication and Reprints

• 1) Once a manuscript is accepted for publication by the journal, it will be sent to the press, and page proofs will be sent to authors. Authors must respond to the page proofs as soon as possible after making necessary corrections of misspellings, and the location of the photographs, figures or tables. Authors can make corrections for only typing errors, and are not allowed to make any author alteration or substantive changes of the text. Proofs must be returned to the press within 72 hours of receipt. No response from the authors within this time frame will lead the publication of the proof read without corrections, and the editorial board is not responsible for any mistakes or errors occurring in this process.
• 2) A reprint order form should be filled out and returned to the press along with the page proofs.

Won Seok Chang, M.D., Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief, Neurofunction
Yonsei University College of Medicine
50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Korea
Tel: +82-2-2228-2150, Fax: +82-2-393-9979
E-mail: changws@yonsei.ac.kr / changws0716@yuhs.ac