Instructions to Authors

1. Editorial policy

1.1 Journal scope

1.2 Originality of papers

1.3 Authorship

1.4 Availability of materials

2. Experimental and publishing ethics

3. Open Access policy

4. Journal features

4.1 Immediate Publications

4.2 Embedded videos

4.3 Medline links and inter-journal linking

5. Submission of papers

6. Format of manuscript

7. Accepted papers

7.1 Tables

7.2 Figures

7.3 Mathematics

8. Contact details

9. Proofs

10. Offprints

11. Portland Press books

---

1. Editorial policy

1.1 Journal scope

ASN NEURO provides researchers with recent advances across the whole breadth of the cellular and molecular neurosciences.

Original papers and reviews will be considered. Normally, however, review articles will be invited by the Reviews Editor; if you wish to submit an unsolicited review article for consideration please send a summary of the proposed article to the Reviews Editor, who will advise the author regarding its potential suitability. Normally, Brief Communications will not be published, although they may be published on rare occasions and authors should contact the Editor-in-Chief before submitting their manuscript.

1.2 Originality of papers

Manuscripts are accepted for review with the understanding that the same work has not been published elsewhere in any language, including publication on the Internet; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that its submission for publication has been approved by all of the authors and by the institution where the work was carried out; that all persons entitled to authorship have been so named; that conflicts of interest have been declared; and that any person cited as a source of personal communication has approved such citation. Abstracts of oral or poster presentations are not considered to constitute previous publication. Preliminary communications in journals that regularly publish reports in this form will not preclude publication of a paper in ASN NEURO, provided the full paper contains additional information that justifies its publication and does not repeat the presentation of the same data. To facilitate evaluation of this matter by the Editorial Board, submitted manuscripts should be accompanied by copies of all preliminary communications and of all relevant manuscripts that are in press or under editorial consideration elsewhere.

ASN NEURO will not tolerate plagiarism in submitted manuscripts. Passages quoted or closely paraphrased from other authors (or from the submitting authors' own published work) must be identified as quotations or paraphrases, and the sources of the quoted or paraphrased material must be acknowledged. Use of unacknowledged sources will be construed as plagiarism. If any manuscript is found to contain plagiarized material the review process will be halted immediately.

1.3 Authorship

ASN NEURO endorses the Vancouver Guidelines on authorship as defined in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' (ICMJE) Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, namely that entitlement to authorship should be based on all of the following criteria: (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgements.

ASN NEURO follows a rigorous reviewing procedure, which, for each paper, requires written input from three reviewers: a Senior Editor, a member of the Editorial Board and an outside Referee. In each case the Editorial Office ensures that those involved in the process act independently and have no conflict of interest in the paper. In case of a complaint, the Editorial Office, if it is deemed necessary and appropriate, may ask for additional review(s) before making a recommendation. In all cases, the final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject papers that are unsuitable for the journal or cannot adequately be assessed because of a poor standard of English.

1.4 Availability of materials

Original papers must contain sufficient detail to enable others to repeat the work. Submission of a paper to ASN NEURO implies that you will make available samples of unique biological materials (including cell lines, DNA clones and antibodies) to academic workers who request them.

2. Experimental and publishing ethics

• Experiments with animals should be performed in accordance with the legal requirements of the relevant local or national authority. Procedures should be such that experimental animals do not suffer unnecessarily. The text of papers should include details of the strain or stock of animal used, experimental procedures, and of anaesthetics used.
• Papers describing any experimental work with humans should include a statement that the research has been carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (2000) of the World Medical Association, that the Ethical Committee of the Institution in which the work was performed has approved it, and that the subjects have given wriiten informed consent to the work. The Editorial Board will not accept papers where the ethical aspects are, in the Board's opinion, open to doubt.
• Authors are strongly encouraged to disclose all relevant financial interests and sources of research funding that could be perceived to compromise the integrity of their article published in ASN NEURO.
• ASN NEURO endorses the guidelines published by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics; http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/).

3. Open Access policy

ASN NEURO is published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the American Society for Neurochemistry, the sole owner of the journal. On acceptance we will ask you to sign an Open Access Licence to Publish to allow your article to be distributed by Portland Press Limited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc/2.5/), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. Once your Licence to Publish has been received and payment of the relevant Open Access publication fee ($750 for ASN members and authors at institutions that have an institutional membership, $960 for non-members) has been made, your accepted paper will be processed and the Version of Record of your article will be made freely available upon publication (for definitions of journal article versions, see the Recommended Practice of the National Information Standards Organization in Partnership with the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers). The Version of Record of your paper will also be deposited with PubMed Central.

Users of Open Access articles are entitled to use, reproduce, disseminate or display articles for non-commercial purposes provided that:

1. Original authorship is properly and fully attributed
2. ASN NEURO and Portland Press Limited are attributed as the original place of the publication of the article, with the correct citation details provided
3. If an article is subsequently reproduced or disseminated not in its entirety but only part or as a derivative work, this must be clearly indicated

Full details will be provided on the Licence to Publish that you will be asked to sign when your paper is accepted for publication.

4. Journal features

4.1 Immediate Publications

PDFs of author manuscripts are mounted on the Journal's website as ASN NEURO Immediate Publications as soon as they are accepted, unless on submission you have requested that this not be done. ASN NEURO Immediate Publications can be cited by giving both the paper title and the DOI.

4.2 Embedded videos

ASN NEURO offers you the opportunity to enhance your paper with movie files. These will be embedded in the final published version if your paper is accepted. To submit a paper with a movie file, simply upload the file when you submit your manuscript. Preferred formats are AVI, MPEG, Quicktime (MOV), MP4 and Flash.

4.3 Medline links and inter-journal linking

ASN NEURO provides links to Medline citations, to related papers in Medline, to Medline citations for downloading to citation management software, and from references to the relevant abstracts in other online journals.

5. Submission of papers

You should submit your paper at www.asnneuro.org/submit/, where full instructions are available. Submission checklist:

• Covering letter
• Master electronic copy of typescript, as a one-line-spaced PDF:
  • complete text in appropriate style, pages numbered
  • full names and addresses of authors
  • full name, address, telephone and fax numbers and email address of corresponding author (all correspondence and proofs will be sent to this author)
  • figures
• Movie files to be embedded in final published paper if accepted
• Supplementary material (e.g. large data sets)
• Related papers in press or under editorial consideration
• Evidence of approval of personal communications
• Evidence of submission of nucleic acid or protein sequences to an appropriate data bank.

You are required to suggest the names of two Senior Editors to handle your paper. You may also specify the names of those reviewers you wish to have excluded from the review process for a particular paper; in such cases your wishes will usually be respected, unless, of course, in the opinion of the journal such a request unreasonably excludes all the expertise available to it in that scientific area.

6. Format of manuscript

Your manuscript should be written in clear, concise, and grammatically correct English; manuscripts that are inadequately prepared will be declined, since it is not feasible for the Editors to undertake extensive revision or rewriting of manuscripts.

Title page: this should contain the following:

• article title
• name(s) of author(s) (with first or second given name spelled out in full)
• author affiliation(s)
• short running title (abbreviated form of title) of less than 45 characters including spaces
• name and complete mailing address (including telephone and fax numbers and email address) of the person to whom correspondence should be sent
• up to six key words (in alphabetical order), of which at least three do not appear in the title of the paper
• list of abbreviations used
• any footnotes

Abstract (maximum 250 words; no subheadings)

Introduction

Materials and methods (or Experimental)

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgements

Funding (in the form of a sentence with the funding agency written out in full followed by the grant number in square brackets)

References

References should be cited within the text as follows:

• One or two authors: (Smith, 2007); (Schenk and Matteoli, 2008)
• More than two authors: (Jones et al., 2006)
• If style requires, the format Jones et al. (2006) is also acceptable
• Multiple dates, same author(s): (Smith et al., 2005a, 2005b)
• In date order: (Zhou et al., 1999; Ari et al., 2004)

In the reference list, references should appear in alphabetical order by first author's last name. Include all authors' names (do not use "et al."), year, complete article title, journal, volume and inclusive page numbers. Abbreviate journal names according to PubMed; spell out the names of unlisted journals. Do not list unpublished material but cite parenthetically within the text as "unpublished data". Do not use others forms such as "manuscript in preparation," "manuscript submitted," "unpublished results" or "unpublished observation". Unpublished data may not be cited in the Materials and methods section. Unpublished data provided by a person(s) who is not an author of the article must be cited as a "personal communication". An authorization from this person(s) must be provided with the manuscript.

Adhere to the reference formats provided by the following examples:

Journal article

Baptista MJ, O'Farrell C, Daya S, Ahmad R, Miller DW, Hardy J, Farrer MJ, Cookson MR (2003) Co-ordinate transcriptional regulation of dopamine synthesis genes by alpha-synuclein in human neuroblastoma cell lines. J Neurochem 85:957-968.

Benton RL, Maddie MA, Minnillo DR, Hagg T, Whittemore SR (2008a) Griffonia simplicifolia isolectin B4 identifies a specific subpopulation of angiogenic blood vessels following contusive spinal cord injury in the adult mouse. J Comp Neurol 507:1031-1052.

Benton RL, Maddie MA, Worth CA, Mahoney ET, Hagg T, Whittemore SR (2008b) Transcriptomic screening of microvascular endothelial cells implicates novel molecular regulators of vascular dysfunction after spinal cord injury. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 28:1771-1785.

Journal article in press

Paez PM, Fulton D, Colwell CS, Campagnoni AT (2008) Voltage-operated Ca2+ and Na+ channels in the oligodendrocyte linage. J Neurosci Res (in press).

Complete book

Beal MF, Howell N, Bodis-Wollner I (1997) Mitochondria and Free Radicals in Neurodegerative Diseases. New York: Wiley-Liss.

Chapter in a book

Parker WD, Davis RE (1997) Primary mitochondrial defects as a causative event in Alzheimer's disease. In: Mitochondria and Free Radicals in Neurodegenerative Diseases (Beal MF, Howell N, Bodis-Wollner I, eds), pp. 319-324. New York: Wiley-Liss.

References are often the cause of many proof corrections, and inaccuracies hamper inter-journal linking and Medline links in the journal. Please check the list carefully before submission.

WWW URLs are permitted in the text only, not in the reference list, and should be quoted only when a literature reference(s) will not suffice.

Tables

Tables should be numbered with arabic numerals (Table 1, Table 2, etc.) and cited consecutively in the text. Each table should have a title and an explanatory legend. Units must be clearly indicated for each of the entries in the table. Footnotes to tables should be identified by superscript lower-case roman letters and placed at the bottom of the table.

Figures

Figures should be cited consecutively in the text by arabic numerals (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.). Each figure should have a title and an explanatory legend.

7. Accepted papers

On acceptance the Production Office will ask you to supply a Word file of the final version of your paper. You must ensure that the file has been updated to incorporate all revisions, and hence that file matches the final version of the manuscript seen by the reviewers. Our preferred word-processing format is Word for Windows version 6. Please note that your accepted paper will not be processed until your Open Access publication fee (see section 3 above) has been paid.

7.1 Tables

Your tables should be prepared using the Microsoft Word table editor.

7.2 Figures

No artwork should be incorporated into the text files. Figures should be supplied as electronic files. Full instructions will be provided on acceptance and guidance notes for the preparation of figures are available here. Lettering on the figures should be of a size that allows for appropriate reduction of the figures.

Image acquisition and manipulation

Images will be checked for manipulation when a paper is accepted. The Editorial Board may request that you supply the original data for comparison against the prepared figures. If you are unable to comply with such a request, the acceptance of the paper may be withdrawn.

ASN NEURO endorses the guidelines given in the Instructions for Authors of the Journal of Cell Biology, from where the following is adapted by kind permission of Rockefeller University Press:

The following information must be provided about the acquisition and processing of images:

1. Make and model of microscope
2. Type, magnification and numerical aperture of the objective lenses
3. Temperature
4. Imaging medium
5. Fluorochromes
6. Camera make and model
7. Acquisition software
8. Any subsequent software used for image processing, with details about types of operations involved (e.g. type of deconvolution, 3D reconstructions, surface or volume rendering, gamma adjustments, etc.).

No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed or introduced. The grouping of images from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels, fields or exposures must be made explicit by the arrangement of the figure (i.e. using dividing lines) and in the text of the figure legend. Adjustments of brightness, contrast or colour balance are acceptable if they are applied to the whole image and as long as they do not obscure, eliminate or misrepresent any information present in the original, including backgrounds.The background of figures should be clearly distinct from the surrounding page. Non-linear adjustments (e.g. changes to gamma settings) must be disclosed in the figure legend.

You are encouraged to read the papers by M. Rossner and K. M. Yamada (2004) J. Cell Biol. 166, 11-15 and A. J. North (2006) J.Cell Biol. 172, 9-18

7.3 Mathematics

In-line equations should be typed as text. Displayed equations (unless prepared by the 'MathType Equation Editor') are re-keyed by our typesetter.

8. Contact details

Correspondence about papers in review should be sent to:

Michael Marshall, Administrative Specialist

ASN NEURO Editorial Office

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior

Neuroscience Research Building, Room 2601

635 Charles E. Young Drive South

Los Angeles

CA 90095-7332

U.S.A.

 

telephone +1 310 825 3630

fax +1 310 206 5050

email editorial@asnneuro.org

Correspondence about accepted papers, offprints and permissions should be sent to:

Clare Curtis, Executive Editor

ASN NEURO Production Office

Portland Press Limited

Third floor

Charles Darwin House

12 Roger Street

London WC1N 2JU

U.K.

 

telephone +44 20 7685 2410

fax +44 20 7685 2469

email production@asnneuro.org

9. Proofs

Proofs will be sent to you by email as a PDF, together with an offprint order form. Please note that you will be charged for extensive alterations. To avoid delay in publication, your corrected proofs should be faxed to the Production Office within 48 hours of receipt.

10. Offprints

You may purchase offprints at the prices given on the order form sent with the proofs.

11. Portland Press books

Authors, Editors and all contributors to Portland Press journals may order books published by Portland Press, for their personal use, at 25% discount. A complete list of books can be found at http://www.portlandpress.com.

© Portland Press, 2010