Before submitting any form of study, The Nerve, expects all authors to fully understand our ethics policies and be aware of the consequences if the terms are not met. There are growing concerns regarding increasing number of ethical issues in the academic field. Thus, strict guidelines are listed below in order to prevent any form of ethical misconduct. Nevertheless, the guideline proposed in this journal is for prevention not for persecution. Authors must be aware of the ethical policies since incidences of copyright issues, plagiarism, redundant publication is usually due to lack of understanding rather than fraudulent intent.
The Nerve is in accordance with the strict ethics guidelines recommend 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/en/main_en). Also, The Nerve, will follow the guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for settlement of any misconduct. If ethical misconduct is in fact found, the editorial board of The Nerve will not take it lightly. We will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and request apologies. Also, there can be possible sanctions, notification to other editors of other biomedical journals, and depending on the severity of the allegation, notify the author's institution
1. Authorship
The Nerve follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria of authorship. All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and will be required to submit a statement confirming that they meet the authorship criteria.
The order of authorship should be a joint decision by all the co-authors. Every author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content.
Authorship credit should be based on authors fulfilling four criteria:
- substantial contribution to conception and design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of data;
- drafting the article or revising it critically;
- reading and approval of the final version;
- 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
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not, in themselves, constitute authorship.
All non-authors who have made substantial contributions (including writing and editing assistance) must be named in the Acknowledgements and must have given permission to be named. Changes to the authorship list are not allowed after a paper has been accepted.
Members of the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) (or Data Monitoring Committee [DMC]) should be independent of the trial and not be involved in the preparation of the manuscript for publication or act as an author on the paper.
For studies involving a large multicenter group, the group should jointly make a decision about authorship by listing only those members who qualify for authorship and are willing to accept responsibility for the manuscript as authors. List the other members of the group who have contributed to the study in the Acknowledgements section including their name and town. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) indexes the group name and authors and lists the names of collaborators if listed in Acknowledgements.
The involvement of a group in the authorship list should be indicated by the connector and with the name of the group, and all authors must be aware and agree to the submission of the paper to the Journal.
When the study has been carried out on behalf of a group, the connector for should be used in the authorship list.
Contributors from the collaborating group(s) or investigators in the study can be listed in the appendix.
When the authorship list contains a group name but no individual names, all members of the group must qualify for authorship and the members of the group listed in the acknowledgement section (including their name and town).
It is not recommended to submit an article that is conducted in collaboration with people with personal connections if not absolutely necessary. As stated we strictly follow the conduct of ICMJE for authorship. Authors need to take extra care if the person or people with personal connections is under 19 years of age. Before submission authors must contact the editor in chief via e-mail for the disclosure form for Involving People with Personal Connections. If the subject of the study seems not fit for the involved persons, the editor in-chief will reject the study that is to be submitted. Researchers should try to prevent any appearance of research misconduct when involving people with personal connections in research or publishing papers with them at all times.
2. Conflicts of Interest
The Nerve's policy requires that every author disclose any direct or indirect financial or personal interests. All papers when submitted should contain a disclosure statement indicating any potential conflicts of interest that might constitute an embarrassment to any of the authors were it not declared and emerged after publication.
The Journal encourages authors to err on the side of full disclosure. Such conflicts might include, but are not limited to:
- shareholding in a company,
- receipt of a grant, or
- consultancy fee from a company whose product features in the submitted manuscript or manufactures a competing product.
See the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) policy statement on conflicts of interest for more information of the different types of conflicts.
If no conflicts of interest are declared, then this should be stated in the article. On acceptance of a manuscript authors are also required to complete an author disclosure form.
The aim of the disclosure statement is not to discourage authors from involvement with or from receiving financial support for their scientific work from commercial sources. Rather, it is designed to maintain the scientific and professional integrity of the Journal and ensure transparency.
If conflicts of interest become known from other sources after a manuscript has been submitted or published, the Journal may investigate the allegations and appropriate action may be taken on a case-by-case basis.
3. Patient Consent
Informed Patient Consent
The Nerve follows the ICMJE guidelines for reporting about patients. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without prior informed consent.
Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) has given written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published.
When informed consent has been obtained, please indicate this in the published article.
Mandatory patient consent form
For publication of material that contains detailed patient information about a living individual, it is compulsory for a signed patient consent to be obtained irrespective of whether there are any photos of the patient.
Images of patients
For publication of pictures of patients when there is any chance the patient may be identified from the photo/image or legend, consent is required from the patient.
The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject papers for which the ethical aspects are, in the Board's opinion, open to doubt.
4. Availability of data and materials
A condition of publication in The Nerve is that the authors agree to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers if requested. Where reagents are not available commercially, authors must make these freely available to academic researchers for their own use. If there are any restrictions on materials/data, authors must disclose this at the time of submission.
5. Publishing misconduct
An article is reviewed for publication on the understanding that the work it represents has not been submitted for publication elsewhere. All authors will be required to submit a statement confirming that the manuscript represents original work that has not been published, accepted or is currently being considered for publication elsewhere except as an abstract. If you have submitted your manuscript and are awaiting a decision, please do not submit elsewhere. Duplicate submissions is a strain on reviewers and journal office resources.
If the work or an abstract of it has been previously published, for instance, in another language, then this fact should be made clear in the covering letter. Authors must declare, and submit copies of, any manuscripts in preparation or submitted elsewhere that are closely related to the manuscript to be considered. Duplicate or redundant publication is considered a serious form of misconduct and may be reported to employing institutions and funding bodies, or lead to a public notice in the Journal. If duplication is suspected, the publication will be checked through CrossCheck (https://www.ithenticate.com).
Plagiarism of other people's words/ideas is a serious scientific misconduct. Plagiarism is the unauthorized use of others published or unpublished words or ideas and presenting them as your own original work. Such work includes abstracts, research grant applications, ethics committee applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format (print or electronic).
Salami publications (papers that have overlapping data with another paper by the same authors) are discouraged.
Data fabrication is also a serious violation to the ethics policy of The Nerve. It is often difficult to find the aspects of tampered data, since reviewers do not have full access to the initial raw data. However, since it can be used to strengthen a study’s hypothesis which can affect the whole area of science, the Editor may request raw data, copies of relevant correspondence (e.g. ethical approval) or an explanation from the authors if they have concerns about a manuscript.
The Nerve takes publication ethics very seriously. If misconduct is found or suspected after the manuscript is published, the journal will investigate the matter and this may result in the article subsequently being retracted.
6. Image manipulation
The Nerve does not allow certain electronic enhancements or manipulations of micrographs, gels, or other digital images.
Figures assembled from multiple photographs or images must indicate the separate parts with the lines between them.
Linear adjustment of contrast, brightness, or color must be applied to an entire image or plate equally and are allowed as long as they do not obscure, eliminate or misrepresent any information present in the original.
Nonlinear adjustments must be specified in the figure legend. Selective enhancements or alterations of one part of an image are not acceptable.
When suspicions are raised regarding the authenticity of an image it is the Journal¡¯s policy to investigate. The Nerve may ask authors to provide additional documentation of their primary data and/or for copies of the original figures.
7. Ghost writing and writing assistance
Ghost writing is when someone has made a substantial contribution to the research, writing or editing of a manuscript and this role is not mentioned in the paper. Such writers are contributors to the manuscript and if they are not included in the authorship list their involvement, affiliations and any funding that was provided for their assistance should be included in the acknowledgement section of the paper.
8. Study design: ethical approval and patient consent
All manuscripts in which experiments on patients or healthy volunteers, patients' case histories or use of genetic material are reported should contain a statement that:
- the subjects' written consent was obtained according to the Declaration of Helsinki (updated 2008), and
- the study has been approved by a local ethics committee/institutional review board (IRB) or that it conforms to standards currently applied in the country of origin; the name of the authorizing body should be stated in the paper.
All manuscripts in which experiments on animals are reported should include a statement that the experiments were conducted with full compliance with local, national, ethical, and regulatory principles and local licensing regulations. The name of the authorizing body should be stated in the paper.
Also, when conductig experiments on both animals and humans, specific characteristics must be mentioned (Species, Ethnicity, Gender, Type of cells, age of donator of specific cells). If these factors are not necessary for the study it must be stated.
9. Clinical trial registration
The Nerve requires the registration of all clinical trials in line with the ICMJE and WHO declarations. From 1 January 2009, all prospective, interventional studies whether begun before or after that date must be registered with either a WHO primary registry or an approved ICMJE registry before the onset of enrolment of patients to be considered for publication. Trials beginning after 1 January 2009 must be registered before recruitment of the first patient. The Nerve will accept retrospective registration (i.e., registration after patient enrolment begins) of trials that began before 1 January 2009.
For submission of a randomized controlled trial, please provide the registration number of the trial and the name of the trial registry in the last line of the paper’s structured abstract. Click here for more information on how to format the registration. You may also like to read the published editorial for more information about the Journal’s policy on clinical trial registration.
For further information, see Statement from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.
10. Reporting guidelines
To ensure the highest quality of research reporting, The Nerve follows the EQUATOR network resource centre for good research reporting. The Nerve strongly advises authors to follow the standard formats and guidelines provided.
- Randomized Controlled Trials
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) should be reported according to the standard guidelines outlined in the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement. CONSORT has developed a checklist to include when reporting such trials. The Nerve also encourages authors to include the patient flow diagram.
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of RCTs (QUOROM)
Systematic reviews or meta-analyses of RCTs should be based on the Quality of Reporting of Meta-analyses (QUOROM) guidelines.
- Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE)
Meta-analysis of observational studies should be developed according to the Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) guidelines.
- Studies of diagnostic accuracy (STARD)
Reports of studies of diagnostic accuracy should be prepared according to the Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) guidelines.
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