Ethics Policies

Neurology® Education (the Journal) is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and follows the "Editorial Policy Statements" published by the Council of Science Editors (CSE) that cover the responsibilities and rights of editors of peer-reviewed journals.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION
Authors should follow "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals" formerly known as "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts" published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) when preparing their manuscripts for submission.

CLINICAL TRIALS
Clinical trials submitted for consideration (i.e., any clinical study in which patients are randomized into two treatment groups OR are followed prospectively to compare two different treatments) must have been registered in a public trials registry such as www.clinicaltrials.gov at the beginning of the research before participant enrollment. Authors must also submit clinical trials results to a public trials registry (e.g., on www.clinicaltrials.gov).

ETHICS BOARD APPROVAL
Research studies should be carried out in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. Patient consent must be obtained for all human studies; this must be stated in the Methods section of the manuscript. If consent has not been obtained, an explanation must be included in the Cover Letter for review by the Editor. Authors are responsible for obtaining and retaining participant permission-to-treat documentation; this documentation should not be forwarded to the Journal in order to protect patient privacy in accordance with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Research studies submitted for consideration must include a statement regarding Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval (or approval by similar ethics board) in the Methods section of the manuscript. If approval is not included, an explanation must be provided in the Cover Letter for review by the Editor.

RECOGNIZABLE PATIENTS AND PARTICIPANTS 
Authors are responsible for obtaining patient consent-to-disclose forms for all recognizable participants in photographs, videos, or other information that may be published in the Journal, in derivative works by the AAN, or on the Journal website. The consent-to-disclose form should indicate specific use (publication in the medical literature in print and online, with the understanding that participants and the public will have access) of the participant’s information and any images in figures or videos and must contain the participant’s signature or that of a legal guardian. The original form should be retained by the guarantor or corresponding author.

ANIMAL RESEARCH
Manuscripts that include experimental results in animals must include a statement that the study has been approved by an animal utilization study committee. Information about the management of postoperative pain for animal subjects must be provided. Any animal research articles should follow the American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines on animal welfare and pain management in animals.

REPORTING GUIDELINES
Randomized Controlled Trials. Authors reporting results of Phase 1, Phase 2, or Phase 3 randomized controlled trials must submit a CONSORT checklist and flow diagram.
Systematic Review or Meta-analysis. Authors reporting systematic review or meta-analysis of randomized trials must submit the PRISMA (previously named QUOROM) checklist.
Diagnostic Accuracy. Authors reporting studies of the accuracy of diagnostic tests should provide the completed STARD checklist and flow diagram.
Observational Studies. The STROBE checklist is required for cohort, case-controlled, and cross-sectional studies and all observational studies of human subjects as well as case series, pilot studies, genetic linkage studies, and retrospective data collection studies.
Incidence and Prevalence Studies. The STROND checklist is required for incidence and prevalence studies in neuroepidemiology.
Genetic Association Studies. Authors reporting genetic association studies must submit the STREGA checklist.
Reporting Adverse Events. In case reports, authors should state whether they have reported serious adverse events to the manufacturer, US FDA, or other governmental regulatory agency.

AUTHORSHIP
The Journal defines an author as a person who has made a substantive intellectual contribution to the submitted manuscript. A substantive contribution includes one or more of the following: Design or conceptualization of the study; or analysis or interpretation of the data; or drafting or revising the manuscript for intellectual content.

All those qualifying for authorship must review all versions of the manuscript (they are provided via the journal tracking system to all authors) and give final approval of the version to be published, take responsibility for the conduct of the research, and indicate their individual contributions to the article on the Authorship Agreement form.

The Principal Investigator or Guarantor must have access to all the data and take responsibility for the data, accuracy of the data analysis, and the conduct of the research, and give opportunity for all authors to take part in writing and revision and to give final approval. During the peer review process, all authors are included in the correspondence with the Corresponding Author so that all can view all versions and suggest revisions.

Manuscripts submitted for publication must list all Authors, including the person who drafted the original manuscript or substantively answered reviewer comments and thus framed the discussions from an intellectual standpoint. The Journal considers ghostwriting (undisclosed authorship) unethical; all authorship needs to be disclosed. Professional writers employed by pharmaceutical companies or other academic, governmental, or commercial entities who have drafted or revised the intellectual content of the paper must be included as authors (this is an additional requirement to the ICMJE requirements, which we do to further increase transparency as these writers contribute to the interpretation of the concepts and data). “Guest" or "honorary" authorship based solely on position (e.g., research supervisor, department head) is not permitted. In addition, all authors must list their contributions to the study and the contributions are subsequently published, so that author roles, including those writers who wrote or revised the paper from an intellectual vantage, are differentiated in the published article.

Coinvestigators who do not qualify as authors but whose role is to collect data at study centers are listed in a Coinvestigators' Appendix. Contributors who do not qualify for authorship according to the criteria are listed in the Acknowledgments along with their contributions.

The Corresponding Author must provide an explanation to the Editor if there is any change in authorship status (addition, omission, or author order) after manuscript submission. Letters of agreement from all authors of the manuscript (including the author who is being added or omitted or whose position is changed) must be provided to the Editor and forwarded to the editorial office.

The Journal follows the peer review process for Neurology. The Journal requires full disclosures (not only those relevant to a paper) of all authors and funding statements, published with each paper at the article level. In addition, each author must sign forms indicating their contributions to the paper for greater authorship transparency.

SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT AND BREACH OF PUBLICATION ETHICS

  • Scientific misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism by the authors. This includes fraudulent manipulation of data and photographs.
  • Breaches of publication ethics include failure to reveal financial conflicts of interest; omitting a deserving author or adding a non-contributing author; misrepresenting publication status in the reference list (erroneously claiming that a paper is "in-press"); self-plagiarism without attribution; and duplicate or redundant publication.
  • Editorial action should be expected in breaches of publication ethics, cases of scientific misconduct, and embargo violations (see Embargo policy). The Journal is a member of, and subscribes to the principles of, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Any and all authors submitting a manuscript to the Journal agree to adhere to the ethical guidelines contained in the Information for Authors, and acknowledge that they are aware of the consequences that may result following breaches of publication ethics. Consequences include notification of the breach in the Journal, retraction of published articles, notification of institutional authorities, subsequent institutional investigation, and loss of privileges of publishing in the Journal.
  • Redundant or duplicate publication is publication of data, tables, figures, or any other content that substantially overlaps with other material published previously or to be published in the future, either in print or online. This includes work published by others or any author of the manuscript submitted to the Journal. When submitting a paper, the Corresponding Author must make a full statement to the Editor in the Cover Letter about all submissions and previous reports (in any language) that might be regarded as redundant or duplicate publication of the same or very similar work. The Corresponding Author is also responsible for alerting the Editor if the work includes subjects about which a previous report has been published or about a manuscript that is under review by, submitted to, in press at, or to be submitted to or published in another journal or other published venue. Any such work should be referred to and referenced in the new paper and a copy of the material should be included with the submission as a supplemental file. Abstracts presented at scientific meetings (with no press releases and not discussed in detail at a symposium) and data provided as required to clinical trial registries are not considered pre-published material.
  • Plagiarism is the use of others' ideas or words without properly crediting the source. If authors include one or more sentences verbatim from another source, the original source must be cited and the sentence(s) put in quotation marks to avoid plagiarism. Authors must not use materials of others (text, figures, images, tables) without permission and attribution, including their own published work. See Miguel Roig, (Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing). 
  • Overlap detection technology has been implemented by the Journal and a number of other journals in the form of iThenticate, a software tool created by CrossRef to check for overlap in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate detects possible plagiarism in text using an extensive database of published materials. (For more information on the software, see http://www.ithenticate.com/about.) Manuscripts with excessive duplication will be rejected. (Wording adapted from Baskin PK and Gross RA. Neurology 2013;80:2-4.)

CONFLICT OF INTEREST/DISCLOSURE POLICY
The Journal complies with the position of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors on "Conflict of Interest." Conflict of interest for authors is defined as "financial and other conflicts of interest that might bias their work." In addition, the Journal has adopted the Conflict of Interest and Disclosure Policy of the American Academy of Neurology. This policy requires complete disclosure from all authors of all financial relationships or other competing interests that could be perceived as biasing the study whether or not this support was related to the subject of the manuscript. All authors' financial relationships (and those of their immediate family members) from the past two years must be disclosed regardless of whether these relationships are related to the study described in the submitted manuscript. If the study period of the submitted manuscript exceeded two years, financial relationships relevant to the topic must also be disclosed for the entire duration of the study.

Full Author Disclosures are available by clicking on the “SHOW DISCLOSURES” link directly under the author byline on the article page of the Journal website. A footnote on Page 1 of each article alerts the reader to the disclosures at the end of the article.  The “full text of this article” phrase has the DOI-derived URL embedded in the PDF so that the reader can click directly to the article.

The Journal Editors and Editorial Board members have disclosed all conflicts of interest to the Editor of the Journal, who has resolved those as necessary to ensure that an Editor conflict of interest does not affect the review of any submission. Editorial Board disclosures are reviewed annually.

Sources of funding must be disclosed in the manuscript text. They are also included in a special section after the article content.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS 
The Journal follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Newly submitted manuscripts are initially reviewed by our Editors for appropriateness and timeliness. Manuscripts that are not rejected after this initial review are sent to two or more external peer review experts in the appropriate field(s). The identities of reviewers are never disclosed to the authors. The Journal requires prospective reviewers to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission and they are reminded that the manuscript is confidential. The Editor reviews any reviewer's competing interests and recuses that person from reviewing. Prior to requesting revisions, the Journal uses iThenticate software to detect plagiarism.

The Journal has an Ombudsman. Appointed by the American Academy of Neurology Board of Directors, this person acts as a mediator between authors and the Editorial Office. The Ombudsman can investigate editorial process issues including delays in peer review, challenges to publication ethics, and cases of editorial bias. The Ombudsman will address the editorial process but will not handle complaints about the substance of editorial decisions, criticisms regarding editorial content, or accusations of scientific misconduct. Final decisions regarding rejection and acceptance are at the discretion of the Editor.

The Journal does not use reviewers suggested by the authors unless they are known Neurology® reviewers or an appropriate reviewer cannot otherwise be identified. If an author-suggested reviewer is invited to review, the suggested reviewer must be reachable by an institutional email address.

ADVERTISING
Publication of advertisements in the Journal does not imply endorsement. Advertisers and sponsors do not have advance knowledge of our specific editorial content other than the information contained in the table of contents. Content is not edited or modified to accommodate advertisers. The Journal does not knowingly permit advertising for a specific product in physical proximity to a specific article mentioning that product. Editorial decisions are made without influence by advertisers or sponsors. The Editor must approve any advertising and its placement.

CROSSMARK
A Crossmark logo displayed from a search result indicates that information in the article is either current or that updates are available to the original version of the published article. Updates may include an erratum or multiple errata that may have been issued, updating of an article, or publishing of a retraction, an expression of concern, or other editorial note.