Editorial Policy

Authorship

Submission to the journal implies that all authors have seen and approved the author list. Changes to the author list after manuscript submission – such as the insertion or removal of author names, or a rearrangement of author order – must be approved by all authors and the editor.

Authors are encouraged to consider the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations on ‘Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors’. The ICMJE recommends that authorship is based on four criteria: 1) making a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; 2) drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) approving the final version of the manuscript for publication; and 4) agreeing to be held accountable for all aspects of the work and working to resolve any issues raised.

Any contributor who has met all four criteria should be an author on the manuscript. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria should not be authors of the manuscript but may be included in the Acknowledgements section instead.

Conflicts of Interest

In the interests of transparency, the journal requires all authors to declare any competing or conflicts of interest in relation to their submitted manuscript in the ‘Disclosure of Conflict of Interest’ section of the manuscript (see the relevant section below). A conflict of interest exists when there are actual, perceived or potential circumstances that could influence an author’s ability to conduct or report research impartially. Potential conflicts include (but are not limited to) employment-consultancy relationships, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/ registrations, and grants or other funding. Further disclosure standards of financial conflicts of interest are available.

Authors should list all funding sources for their work in the Acknowledgements section of their manuscript.

Members of Japan Neurosurgical Society (JNS) must have supplied a current annual COI declaration to the JNS Office before submitting a manuscript.

Ethics Policies

NMC and NMC CRJ uphold the highest standards in scholarly publishing.

Before submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors must ensure that they have read and complied with the journal’s policies. The journal reserves the right to reject without review, or retract, any manuscript that the Editor believes may not comply with these policies.

The responsibilities of the journal’s authors, editors, reviewers and publisher regarding research and publication ethics are described in full below.

Submission to the journal implies that the manuscript has not been previously published (in part or in whole, in any language), is not in press, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. The affidavit following the instructions must be completed and signed by all authors and submitted with the manuscript.

Authors must inform the editors if any related manuscripts are under consideration, in press or published elsewhere. The availability of a manuscript on a publicly accessible preprint server does not constitute prior publication (see ‘Preprints’).

If authors choose to submit their manuscript elsewhere before a final decision has been made on its suitability for publication in NMC or NMC CRJ, they should first withdraw it from the journal.

Animal/Human Experimentation and Informed Consent

Authors of manuscripts describing experiments involving humans or materials derived from humans must demonstrate that the work was carried out in accordance with the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki, its revisions, and any guidelines approved by the authors’ institutions. In addition, authors should state in the text that the procedures followed in experiments on human subjects were conducted in accordance with “Ethical Guidelines for Medical and Health Research Involving Human Subjects (Provisional Translation as of March 2015)” and its later amendments.

If identification of patients is unavoidable in being able to affirm scientific validity, the authors must include a statement in the Materials and Methods section that describes the procedures for obtaining informed consent from participants regarding participation in the research and publication of the research. A PDF of the statement of approval of the study by the relevant institutional or regional review board should be uploaded to the submission system upon first submission.

Patient anonymity must be protected by avoiding details that might identify patients unless essential for scientific purposes. Details in the text, figures, photographs that might disclose identity of subjects should be omitted to preserve subjects’ anonymity. Measures such as masking of the eye region in photographs of patients may be inadequate.

Authors of manuscripts describing experiments involving animals or materials derived from animals must demonstrate that the work was carried out in accordance with the ethical guidelines approved by responsible committee of the authors’ institution(s).

The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above provisions. Authors remain fully responsible for their statements.