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Instructions for Authors > For Authors and Reviewers > Instructions for Authors


Enacted, August 2015
Amended, November 2020
Amended, December 2021
Amended, November 2022
Amended, November 2023

Table of Contents

General Information

  1. The Nerve is the official journal of the Korean Society of Peripheral Nervous System, and electrically published twice a year (30th April, 31st October). This Journal publishes important issues covering all aspects of the peripheral and central nervous systems. Laboratorial investigations, original research articles, studies on valuable cases, technical notes of special surgical tactics or editorials in the field of neurosurgery, neurology and neuroscience are acceptable. All submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed and review articles can only be published upon specific request of the editorial board. Authors can publish special drafts with the approval fromublication Processing Fees the editorial board. Case reports should be brief, and avoid an extensive review of the literature.
  2. It should be assured that authors must not simultaneously submit an identical or similar paper for publication elsewhere. Multiple publication is acceptable only in the case of meeting the criteria of Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (Ann Intern Med 108: 258-265, 1988). Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journal developed by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (February 2006).
  3. Clinical and laboratory research should be approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) or research board of the affiliated institution. Editorial board may request the approved number of IRB.

Language

  1. All manuscripts must be written in English. Authors should minimize the use of English abbreviations. When abbreviations are used, full expression of the abbreviation following abbreviated word in parentheses should be given at first use. When spelling out loanwords, it should follow loanword orthography (Notification No. 85-11 of the Ministry of Education), and when spelled out into foreign words, should conform to the Romanization rule (Notification on Jul 7, 2000). Terms should be noted in English when used in tables, figures, or illustrations.
  2. All units should be given in metric system (The International System of Units: SI units).

Submission and Revision of Manuscript

  1. All papers must be submitted by corresponding author and then review process will be also achieved with corresponding author. Authors are requested to submit their paper via our online submission system. Authors should upload their articles in Microsoft (MS) Word (2007 or higher version). Authors, reviewers, and editors send and receive all correspondence by e-mail and no paper correspondence is necessary.
  2. Authors should upload the copyright release/author agreement form, authors check list and disclosure of conflict of interest form (http://thenerve.net) via our submission system.
  3. Author information - The list of the authors in the manuscript should include only those who were directly involved in the process of the work. Authors can refer to the guideline by Harvard University in 1999 to find details on authorship. (http://www.hms.harvard.edu/integrity/authorship.html)
  4. The manuscript should be composed of approximately 6,000 English words (not to exceed 10 pages of the journal) for clinical and laboratory studies, 3,000 English words for case reports and technical notes (not to exceed 5pages of the journal). It should be composed of 600 English words for letters to the editor. Manuscript should be typed in A4 size white paper with double spaced (200%), and font size of 11 point with margins of 3 cm on each side.
  5. The editorial board will decide on the approval for publication of the submitted manuscripts, and can request any further corrections, revisions, and deletions to the article text if necessary.
  6. All fees regarding the review, publishing and re-printing of the manuscript will be determined by the editorial board and should be deposited as stated.
  7. For a better English copyediting, proofreading from professional editing company is recommended. Reviewers can require professional editing if the language or context of the study is poor.

Copyright and Creative Commons Attribution License

Copyrights of all published materials are owned by the Korean Society of Peripheral Nervous system and must not be published elsewhere without written permission. The Nerve also follow the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License of CC BY-NC 4.0 (Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International — CC BY-NC 4.0)

Publication Processing Fees

Starting from January 2023, all authors will be charged a submission fee of 100,000 KRW. The authors will have to wire transfer this amount to the bank account below. If receipts are necessary please contact the editorial office and the necessary document will be sent via e-mail.

Wire transfer bank account:
1002-963-899952, Woori Bank, Young Jin Kim
SWIFT CODE: HVBKKRSEXXX

“The Nerve” has regulations for publication fee waivers. Publication fees can be waivered if the author is from a developing country or from low-income economy or if the author can prove that he/she is under demonstrable needs. Please send an e-mail to the editor for the possibility of a waiver. After a thorough evaluation via a consultation with the editorial board the final decision will be made. Results will be sent by mail before the 1st review.

Manuscript preparation

  1. Title page
    The title page should be composed of external and internal title pages.
    1. The external title page should contain the article title, and full names of all authors with their institutional affiliations in English. The type of manuscript (Clinical research, Laboratory study, Case report, Technical note, Review article) should be also addressed. When the work includes multiple authors with different affiliations, the institution where the research was mainly conducted should be spelled out first, then be followed by foot notes in superscript Arabic numerals beside the authors' names to describe their affiliation in a consecutive order of the numbers. Running head must be included consisting of no more than 65 characters/spaces. The external title page should also contain the address, telephone and facsimile numbers, and e-mail address of the corresponding author at the bottom of the page, as well as information on the previous presentation of the manuscript in conferences and funding resources, if necessary. The external title page should be a separate file.
    2. The internal title page should only contain the article title in English. The internal title page must not contain any information on the names and affiliations of the authors.
  2. Manuscript format
    The article should be organized in the order of title, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusions, references, tables, and figures or illustrations. Case reports should consist of an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Case description, Discussion, Conclusion and References. Also, case reports should have fewer than nine authors. Manuscript format may vary in review articles and special drafts.
  3. Abstract
    All manuscripts must contain an abstract. Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion sections should be included in clinical or laboratory research, but are not necessary in other types of studies such as case reports. The abstract should include brief descriptions on the objective, methods, results, and conclusion as well as a detailed description of the data. An abstract containing 400 words or less is required for original articles and review articles and 250 words for case reports and technical notes. A list of key words, with a maximum of six items, should be included at the end of the abstract. The selection of Key Words should be based on Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) of Index Medicus and the Web site (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).
  4. Introduction
    The introduction should address the purpose of the article concisely, and include background reports mainly relevant to the purpose of the paper. Detailed review of the literature should be addressed in the discussion section.
  5. Materials and Methods
    The article should record research plans, objective, and methods in order, as well as the data analysis strategies and control of bias in the study. Enough details should be furnished for the reader to understand the method(s) without reference to another work in the study described.
    When reporting experiments with human subjects, the authors should indicate whether they received an approval from the Institutional Review Board for the study. When reporting experiments with animal subjects, the authors should indicate whether the handling of the animals was supervised by the research board of the affiliated institution or a similar one. Photographs disclosing patients must be accompanied by a signed release form from the patient or family permitting publication.
    We endorse the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki and expect that all investigations involving human materials have been performed in accordance with these principles. For animal experiment, “the Guiding Principles in the Care and Use of Animals” approved by the American Physiological Society have to be observed. Explanation of the experimental methods should be concise and sufficient for repetition by other qualified investigators. Procedures that have been published previously should not be described in detail. However, new or significant modifications of previously published procedures need full descriptions. The sources of special chemicals or preparations should be given along with their location (name of company, city and state, and country). Method of statistical analyses and criteria of significance level should be described. In Case Reports, case history or case description replace the Materials and Methods section as well as Results section. Please inform us the approved number of IRB when you submit the manuscript.
  6. Results
    The authors should describe logically their results of observations and analyses performed using methodology given in the previous section and provide actual data. For biometric measurements in which considerable amount of stochastic variation exists a statistical treatment should be used in principle. The result section should include sorely the findings of the current study, and not refer to previous reports. While an effort should be made to avoid overlapping descriptions by Tables and by main text, important trends and points in the Table should be described in the text.
  7. Discussion
    Discussion should contain contents regarding the findings of the research and interpretations in relation to other studies. It is necessary to emphasize the new and critical findings of the study and not to repeat the results of the study presented in the previous sections. The meaning and limitation of observed facts should be described, and the conclusion should be related to the objective of the study only when it is supported by the results of the research. It is encouraged for the authors to use subheadings in the discussion section so that the readers can follow the logical flow of the authors' thought.
  8. Conclusion
    The conclusion section should include a concise statement of the major findings of the study in accordance with the study purpose.
  9. References
    1. Only references cited in text must appear in the reference list and marked in the form of superscript at the end of the sentences they were used in text (example: reference10,16-19)
    2. All references should be alphabetized by the first author's last name.
    3. The number of references should be 30 or less for a clinical/ laboratorial study and 20 or less for a case report.
    4. When a work has six or less authors, cite the names of all authors. When a work has over six authors, cite the first six authors' name followed by "et al." Abbreviations for journal titles should be congruent with the style of Index Medicus. A journal title with one word does not need to be written out in abbreviation. The styles of references are as follows:
      ▸ Journal
      Yang HJ, Lee DH, Lee YJ, Chi JG, Lee JY, Phi JH, et al.: Secondary neurulation of human embryos: morphological changes and the expression of neuronal antigens. Childs Nerv Syst 30: 73-82, 2014
      ▸ Book
      Conover WJ: Practical Nonparametric Statistics, ed 2. New York: Jon Wiley & Sons, 1971, pp216-218
      ▸ Chapter in a book
      Fischberg GM, Mohammadi A, Suzuki S, Fisher M. Diagnosis and management of moyamoya disease. In: Cohen SN, ed. Management of Ischemic Stroke. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2000; 291-310
  10. Tables, figures, and illustrations
    1. Tables and figure legends should be included below the references pages at the end of the paper, but figures should be submitted separately from the text of paper.
    2. Table should be simple and should not duplicate information in figures. Title all tables and number them with Arabic numerals in the order of their citation. Type each table on a separate sheet. Describe all abbreviations. Each column should have an appropriate heading, and if numerical measurements are given, the unit should be added to column heading. The significance of results should be indicated by appropriate statistical analysis. Table footnotes should be indicated with superscript markings. When remarks are used to explain items of the table, the markers should be given in the order of *, †, ‡, §, ∥. Tables cannot be submitted in a picture format.
    3. Photographs should be submitted individually (Namely, if Figure 1 is divided into A, B, C and D, do not combine it into one, but submit each of them separately). Allowable file format for figures are JPG or TIF(TIFF) only. Figures should be named according to figure name (example: Fig-1A.tif). If the quality of the photographs is considered as inappropriate for printing, re-submission of them can be requested by the journal. Authors should submit figures in black and white if they want them to be printed in black and white. Total file size of all figures should not exceed 5MB for review purpose. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, editorial office can request you to upload figure files of highest quality for printing. Line art should have resolution of 1,200 dpi or more in JPG or TIF format.
    4. Cover illustrations: Of their works, authors can submit art to be considered as a cover illustration along with the article.
  11. Letters to the editor or commentary letters
    Authors can submit a sound critic or opinion for the specific article published in the journal, topic of general interest to neurosurgeons, personal view on a specific scientific issue, departmental announcements or changes, conference schedules, or other information of the clinical fields.
  12. Review articles
    The authors and topics for review articles will be selected by the editorial board. Review articles should also undergo the review process.
  13. Special articles
    Special articles are devoted to providing updated reports by specialists in various fields or significant issues (e.g. history of the field) for the members of the society. The authors and topics of special drafts will be assigned and specially requested by the editorial board.

Publication and Reprints

  1. Once a manuscript is accepted for publication by the journal, it will be sent to the press, and page proofs will be sent to authors. Authors must respond to the page proofs as soon as possible after making necessary corrections of misspellings, and the location of the photographs, figures or tables. Authors can make corrections for only typing errors, and are not allowed to make any author alteration or substantive changes of the text. Proofs must be returned to the press within 72 hours of receipt. No response from the authors within this time frame will lead the publication of the proof read without corrections, and the editorial board is not responsible for any mistakes or errors occurring in this process.
  2. We currently have on-line publication policy, and there will be publication fee when accepted for publication. A reprint form of PDF files is provided to authors.

Author Checklist

  1. Before submitting the manuscript, authors should double-check all requirements noted in the agreement form regarding the registration and copyrights of their manuscript. A manuscript that does not fit the author instructions of the journal regarding format and references will be returned to the authors for further correction.
  2. The page numbers in the manuscript should be counted from the page with the abstract, and the name and affiliation of the authors should not appear thereafter.
  3. Author check list should be prepared, signed by corresponding author, submitted with manuscripts. Relevant forms can be downloaded at the journal site.

Research and Publication Ethics

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. Also, The Nerve routinely screens submitted articles for plagiarism via professional anti-plagiarism companies (i.e. www.copykiller.com). 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:

  1. substantial contribution to conception and design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of data;
  2. drafting the article or revising it critically;
  3. reading and approval of the final version;
  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

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Studies of diagnostic accuracy (STARD)
    Reports of studies of diagnostic accuracy should be prepared according to the Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) guidelines.

11. Research and Publication Ethics Committee and Protocols

Link: https://www.kpns.or.kr/journal/corule


Editorial Office
Department of Neurosurgery, Dankook University Hospital
201, Manghyang-ro, Dongnam-gu, Cheonan-si, Chungcheongnam-do 31116, South Korea
TEL: +0082-41-550-6280   FAX: +82-41-556-0524   
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