Guidelines for Reviewers

The peer review process of the Neurologia medico-chirurgica (NMC) and NMC Case Report Journal (NMC CRJ) depends upon the professionalism of its volunteer reviewers. All reviewers are experts in the field of research; therefore, they are in the best position to judge the submitted work’s quality and importance to the journals.

NMC and NMC CRJ expect that peer review be fair, unbiased, and timely. Decisions to accept or reject a manuscript for publication are based on its importance to the field, originality and clarity of expression, study’s validity, and relevance to each journal’s aims and scopes. The Editor-in-Chief, who oversees the both journals, is responsible for all decisions made to the manuscripts.

Both NMC and NMC CRJ support and adhere to the guidelines and best practices, including the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/) by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (a joint statement by the Committee on Publication Ethics [COPE], the Directory of Open Access Journals [DOAJ], the World Association for Medical Editors [WAME], and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association [OASPA]; https://doaj.org/apply/transparency/).

The points below provide general guidelines for the peer review process. Please thoroughly read the instructions and the required ethics and policy statements, along with the journal instructions. If you have any questions, please contact the Editorial Office of NMC and NMC CRJ via e-mail: nmc@kyorin.co.jp

I. Peer Review Process

The names of the reviewers will remain anonymous to the authors, as the both NMC and NMC CRJ operate a single-anonymized review throughout the review process.

1. The author submits a manuscript, and this will receive a unique identification number.
2. The Editorial Office checks if the manuscript’s formatting and style follow the Instructions to the Authors.
3. The Editor-in-Chief screens the manuscript and decides whether or not to send it for full peer review. If the decision is not to send the manuscript for review, the Editor-in-Chief will send an e-mail to notify the author of the rejection.
4. If the Editor-in-Chief decides to send the manuscript for a full peer review, the Editor-in-Chief assigns an editor responsible for selecting external reviewers and evaluating the manuscript.
5. The Editor-in-Chief selects two reviewers for manuscript evaluation.
6. Reviewers agree to review the manuscript.
7. Reviewers submit their review comments to the editor.
8. The editor reviews the reviewers’ reports and submits the review comments to the Editor-in-Chief.
9. The Editor-in-Chief reviews the reviewers’ and the editors’ reports and makes a final decision.
10. The Editor-in-Chief sends a signed e-mail with the decision to the author.
11. If the author is allowed to revise the paper, he/she revises the paper according to the review comments for resubmission. The paper then goes through the same process above, but the Editor-in-Chief may accept the paper without further review by the reviewers.

II. Responsibilities of Reviewers

1. Competence
Peer reviewers should be experts in the scientific topic addressed in the articles they review. You must accept an assignment only if you have adequate expertise to provide an authoritative assessment. If you think certain aspects of a manuscript are outside your field of expertise or realize that your expertise is limited, you should notify the Editorial Office so that we can decide whether you should continue and address your areas of expertise only, or whether to assign an alternate reviewer(s).

2. Timeliness
Your review comments for new submissions are due in two (2) weeks from the day you agreed to review the manuscript. If you cannot meet the deadline, please contact the Editorial Office immediately so that the editor can decide whether to extend the deadline or assign an alternate reviewer. Your review comments for revised manuscripts are also due in two (2) weeks from the day it was assigned to you.

3. Conflict of Interest for Reviewers
The editor must be informed for any potential conflicts of interest as a manuscript reviewer before you begin the review process. If you are involved, in present or in the past, in any part of the research presented in the manuscripts, including but not limited to financial interests, collaborating with the authors, and other relationships or connections, both professional or personal, with any of the authors, companies, or institutions related to the manuscript, which might prevent you from providing a fair and unbiased review, you should decline the review task and inform the editor so that another individual can be invited to review the manuscript.

4. Confidentiality
The review process will remain strictly confidential.

• Do not discuss or mention, in any way or to anyone, the contents of the paper before or after the review process.
• The manuscript submitted for peer review is a privileged document. All materials must be treated with confidentiality. If additional advice from a colleague or any parties is helpful, please contact the Editorial Office in advance to obtain permission from the editor. Do not pass the manuscript on to your colleagues or other third parties without first obtaining the editor’s consent.
• Before publication, the research described in the paper should not be used as a reference in the reviewer’s own work. You must refrain from citing or referring to the work before its publication.
• Do not retain any copies of the reviewed manuscripts, and do not use their content or take scientific, financial, personal, or other advantage of material available to you through the peer review process.
• Do not upload the manuscript to software or any AI-assisted tools or technologies.

5. Constructive Comments
Provide objective and constructive feedback in your review to encourage the author to improve the paper and their writing. When you find negative aspects, suggest concrete means for improvement. Refrain from being hostile or condescending and from making derogatory personal comments.

6. Impartiality
Reviewer comments should be based on an impartial consideration of the facts, exclusive of personal or professional bias. All comments should be based solely on the paper’s scientific merit, originality, and quality of writing, including its relevance to the NMC’s or NMC CRJ’s scopes and missions, without regard to race, ethnic origin, sex, religion, or citizenship of the authors. If you determine that you have a potential bias during the review of the paper, please notify the editor immediately.

7. Manuscripts You Have Previously Handled
If you are invited to assess a manuscript you previously reviewed for another journal, please consider the manuscript as a new submission. In such cases, the authors may have made changes following the previous review comments. Also, the NMC and NMC CRJ evaluation criteria may differ from those of the other journals.

8. Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Tools/Technologies
Reviewers are prohibited from uploading the manuscript to software or AI-assisted tools/technologies where confidentiality is not assured. It must disclose to the journal if AI-assisted tools or technologies are used to facilitate the review.

9. Ethical Considerations
When reviewers suspect any instances of ethical misconduct during peer review, they should bring them to the attention of the Editor-in-Chief (EIC). Please see the section “V. Ethical Considerations” below for more details.

III. Invitation for Peer Review

1. General Process
Reviewer invitations are sent by e-mail from the submission system. Use the links in the e-mail to accept or decline the invitation to review. The invitation includes manuscript details, such as the title, the names of authors, and the abstract, which may help you to determine whether the subject of the manuscript is within your areas of expertise.

If you cannot agree to review a manuscript, please click the decline link in the e-mail. In such cases, it would be appreciated if you suggested another potential reviewer.

If you click the link to accept the invitation to review a manuscript, you will receive an instruction via e-mail about logging in to our online system to access the manuscript in PDF or HTML format and submitting your comments through the online system.

2. Revised Manuscripts
The manuscript’s revised version is normally returned to some or all original reviewers for re-review. If you are assigned to review a manuscript you previously reviewed, please ensure that the revisions requested in your original review have been addressed in the revised manuscript. Please be careful not to raise additional or new issues not addressed in the previous review comments, and make sure to limit any new amendments or additions to points responding to the comments.

IV. Your Comments

1. General Guidelines

• Evaluate whether the submitted manuscript fits the aims and scopes of the journals and demonstrates sufficient evidence of originality, in addition to the paper’s validity and potential impact on the readership of the journal.
• Your review comments should indicate whether the writing is clear and concise and whether the writing style and paper structure are appropriate, allowing the readers to understand the content easily.
• Evaluate the work’s scientific accuracy and comment on any missing information or methodological flaws.
• All criticisms should be specific. Provide evidence with appropriate references to substantiate general statements to help editors evaluate and decide and help authors with revisions.
• Any personal criticism against the authors, derogatory personal comments, or unfounded accusations must be avoided.
• Avoid making negative comments or unjustified criticisms of any work mentioned in the manuscript.
• You should not suggest that the authors cite your work to increase your citation count. Suggestions must be based only on valid academic or technological reasons.
• Remain anonymous as the journal operates a single-anonymized review process.

2. Points to Consider
Points to consider in your review:

• Significance of the manuscript to the research community
• Interest and the potential impact on the broad readership of the journal
• Weaknesses of the manuscript that must be addressed in the revision process
• Accuracy of the title, abstract, and keywords
• Sufficiency of contents, figures, and tables
• Appropriate and accurate references
• Quality and readability of the English language as presented in the manuscript
• Clarity of the aim
• Appropriate statistical analysis, if applicable
• Substantial data presented in the result section
• Conclusions supported by the data presented

3. Confidential Comments to the Editor
In NMC’s and NMC CRJ’s peer review management systems, there is a section titled “Confidential Comments to the Editor.” In this section, only the editors can read your comments, as these will not be sent to the authors. If there are any possible conflicts of interest, ethical issues, or any other comment you wish not to share with the authors, please comment regarding them in this section.

4. Comments to the Authors
Your peer review comments should include an introductory paragraph stating your overall impression of the paper. This paragraph should be followed by specific comments, which may be divided into two sections: major and minor points. Your comments are sent to the author as a part of the decision letter. However, please remember including any statements related to the acceptance or rejection of the paper is inappropriate.

V. Ethical Considerations

1. Misconduct
Please note any suspicious evidence of unethical conduct as listed below and inform the editor immediately.

1-1. Fabrication
Fabrication is inventing data or research results and recording or reporting them with the intentional purpose of deception.

1-2. Falsification
Falsification is defined as an inaccurate presentation of research results, intending to give a false impression. This includes manipulating research instrumentation, materials, and processes, changing, adding or omitting data, manipulating images, and omitting research results.
Scientific images for publication must be minimally processed. We understand that some image processing may be necessary. Adjustments, such as in brightness, contrast, or color, are permissible, but these adjustments must be applied entirely to an image uniformly and do not selectively enhance, eliminate, or mispresent any elements in the original image, including the background.

1-3. Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined as using another person’s ideas, processes, results, words, or theories as if they were the author’s own without giving appropriate credit. This involves any part of the manuscript, including the figures and tables. All information and content originating from other resources must be credited and cited and included in the “References” section. Upon submission, the manuscript will be automatically checked for plagiarism by using plagiarism screening services or software to determine text overlap and manuscript originality.

1-4. Redundant or Duplicate Publication
Articles published in another journal, including advanced publications, such as “in-press” or “E-pub ahead of print” articles, in any language, will be regarded as redundant or duplicate publications.

NMC and NMC CRJ do not consider manuscripts deposited in not-for-profit preprint servers, such as bioRxiv and medRxiv, before submission to the journals as redundant or duplicate publications. When submitting manuscripts that have been posted in a preprint server, authors should notify the editor and provide information about preprint postings of the submitted manuscript, which include the digital object identifier (DOI) to the preprint version of their manuscript.

The author should notify the editor formally about all submissions, postings, and previous reports that could be regarded as redundant or which duplicate publication of the same or similar work when submitting a manuscript. Any such material must be referred to and referenced in the submitted work. Copies of such work should be included with the submission. Abstracts or posters presented at scientific meetings are not considered previously published work.

Editorial actions should be expected if redundant or duplicate publication is attempted or occurs without such notification. Editorial actions may include the following: immediate rejection of the submitted manuscript, retraction of published work, a published notice of violation, and revocation of publishing privileges in the journal.

1-5. Author’s Undisclosed Conflict of Interest (COI)
All authors are required to disclose any financial relations, activities, relationships, and affiliations that exist or have existed related to the research presented, from the initial conception and planning to research completion. This includes, but is not limited to, agreements for research support (including research funding and provision of equipment or materials), honoraria (such as lecture fees), consulting, employment, promotional fees, advisory or directing roles, stock and share ownership, patent/licensing fees, travel and accommodation expenses, and any other financial, institutional, or personal relationships with any commercial organizations, groups, institutions, or any other entities with interest in the subject matter, materials, or process(es) discussed in the manuscript. Any possible COI related to the study presented in the manuscript must be disclosed in the manuscript under the heading “Conflicts of Interest.”

1-6. Citation Manipulation
Citation manipulation, such as including references from other publications without actually reading the cited work, or self-citing irrelevant works, must be avoided.

1-7. Copyright Infringement
All information and contents originating from other resources must be credited and cited. If any copyrighted or previously published materials, adapted, edited, or otherwise, are used in the manuscript, the author must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) before submitting the paper for review. Also, the authors must cite the source and indicate that permission has been received, as required by the copyright owner(s). The authors must submit permission letters from the copyright owner(s) when submitting the manuscript.

1-8. Failure to Obtain Institutional or National Review Board (IRB) Approval
Clinical research included in articles, reporting on human subjects or materials of human origin, must comply with the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki, and it must be mentioned that the study has been approved by the relevant IRB. If no approval from any IRB was required, such must be explicitly stated in the manuscript.

1-9. Improper Authorship/Contributorship
All authors listed in the manuscript must meet the following criteria of contribution as described by the ICMJE in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the research or the acquisition and analysis of data for the work; and
2. Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; and
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. 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.

Excluding authors who made a definite contribution or including individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work is prohibited. Consent to submit to the journals must be obtained explicitly from all authors before submitting a manuscript.

1-10. Noncompliance with Local Laws and Regulations
Authors must comply with local regulations and laws if the work involves animals or human subjects, or if it involves possibly hazardous investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or any chemical materials.

1-11. Salami-Slicing
So-called “salami-slicing” or dividing a single study into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions to other journals or the same journal is prohibited.

2. Handling Allegations of Misconduct
The NMC and NMC CRJ follow the COPE’s Core Practices guidelines and flowcharts for handling allegations of publishing misconduct pre- and post-publication. For any information not mentioned in the COPE guidelines, please refer to COPE’s flowcharts.

2-1. Procedure for Handling Allegations of Misconduct in Submitted Manuscripts
When reviewers, editors, authors, and/or journal staff suspect any instances of ethical misconduct during peer review, the EIC should be informed. The manuscript will be placed on hold. The EIC will review the case and make the preliminary assessment. If the EIC finds that an explanation from the authors is necessary, the EIC will send the corresponding author a notification, pointing out the allegation and requesting an explanation.

If the corresponding author does not respond and/or provide sufficient rationale for the raised concern, or if the EIC is presented with evidence establishing an ethical breach, regardless of the severity, the EIC will refer the case to the Editorial Board, which will then discuss the allegations, explanations, evidence, possible sanctions, and corrective actions, such as publishing an erratum, expression of concern, or retraction.

2-2. Complaints and Appeals
The peer review decisions based on the editors’ judgment will not be rescinded once made. NMC and NMC CRJ will not reconsider the paper for peer review unless misconduct, negligence, or an absolutely unusual pattern of the review process by our editorial team is found. The journals, however, consider complaints an opportunity to improve our peer review process, manuscript handling procedures, and management for journal publishing. All received complaints are dealt with constructively and promptly. For procedures not summarized below, please refer to the COPE’s Core Practices for complaints and appeals.