Policies

In submitting a manuscript to JNeurosci, all authors must agree to abide by all relevant Society for Neuroscience policies, including its Guidelines for Responsible Conduct Regarding Scientific Communication. Manuscripts with multiple authors are reviewed with the explicit understanding that all authors have seen and approve of the submitted version and agree to abide by the Society's policies.

JNeurosci recognizes its responsibility to ensure that questions of scientific misconduct or dishonesty in research are adequately pursued. Should scientific misconduct or dishonesty be suspected or alleged, JNeurosci follows the recommended procedures outlined by COPE when dealing with allegations of misconduct. Manuscripts which have been referred to the SfN Ethics Committee because a violation of the Ethics Policy may have occurred may not be withdrawn until the Ethics Committee has rendered a final decision to the authors.

Policy on Ethics top
It is expected that authors submitting papers to The Journal of Neuroscience will have conducted their work in strict accordance with the Society's Policy on Ethics. SfN follows the recommended procedures outlined by COPE when dealing with allegations of misconduct.

Policies on the Use of Animals and Humans in Neuroscience Research top
All animal experimentation reported in JNeurosci must have been conducted in accordance with the Society's Policies on the Use of Animals and Humans in Neuroscience Research.

Policy on Prepublication top

The Journal of Neuroscience generally does not consider manuscripts that have been previously published. Posting to a preprint server such as bioRxiv, ArXiv, Open Science Framework, etc. are not considered prior publication. Exceptions are made for published abstracts, theses, and posters or manuscripts that have been posted on the Internet for the purpose of receiving commentary from the community. Online posting is typically done at a prepublication repository that has been designed for the purpose, but posting on an institutional web site or other Internet location is acceptable.

It is essential that the authors retain the copyright for any prepublished material that they submit to JNeurosci, and that they are willing and able to relinquish to JNeurosci any copyrights and/or licenses that JNeurosci requires for publication of accepted manuscripts. Authors should realize that other journals might not consider prepublished material and that prepublication will restrict their alternatives when a manuscript is not accepted by JNeurosci.

Policy on Molecular Data top
The Journal of Neuroscience subscribes to the policies of The Journal of Biological Chemistry on protein & nucleic acid sequences and genomic & proteomic data, which it modifies as follows.

Protein and nucleic acid sequences: Newly determined nucleotide or protein sequences must be deposited in GenBank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/), EMBL (http://www.ebi.ac.uk), or the DNA Databank of Japan (http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp). Accession numbers must be reported in the manuscript and data must be available upon acceptance and publication of the manuscript. No data are to be withdrawn following publication.

Genomic and proteomic data: Authors of papers that include functional genomics data such as microarray, ChIP seq, RNA-seq, or other high-throughput data are required to deposit the data in a MIAME-compliant database such as GEO (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo), ArrayExpress (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress) or CYBEX (http://cibex.nig.ac.jp/data/index.html) and to provide accession numbers. Data must be publicly accessible upon acceptance and publication of the manuscript. No data are to be withdrawn following publication.

Authors of papers that include proteomics data should comply with the guidelines developed by Molecular and Cellular Proteomics (http://www.mcponline.org/site/misc/CheckList.pdf).

Policy on Image Manipulation top
The Journal of Neuroscience subscribes to the policy of The Journal of Cell Biology on image manipulation, which it modifies as follows.

Original data: The editors reserve the right to request any original data from authors at any stage in the submission, review, or publication process, including after publication. Failure to provide requested information may result in publication delays or revocation of acceptance.

Image manipulation: All images in manuscripts accepted for publication will be scrutinized by our production department for any indication of manipulation that is inconsistent with the following guidelines. Manipulation that violates these guidelines may result in production delays or revocation of acceptance.

  • No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced.
  • Constructing figures using images taken from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels, is discouraged. But when this is necessary it must be made explicit by the arrangement of the figure (e.g., using dividing lines) and in the text of the figure legend.
  • Recordings obtained at different time points or from different sites must not be spliced together to give the appearance of a continuous record. Authors must make it clear in the figure legend how many different recordings are illustrated.
  • Adjustments to images or recordings are acceptable if they are applied uniformly to all portions of the image or recording, and as long as they do not obscure, eliminate, or misrepresent information present in the original, including the background. Adjustments involving filtering or scaling (e.g., brightness, contrast, or color balance) must be applied to every pixel in the image or applied uniformly to an entire recording. Non-linear adjustments (e.g., changes to gamma settings) or deleting portions of a recording (e.g. leak subtraction or stimulus artifacts) must be disclosed in the figure legend.
  • The minimum resolution for images is 300 dpi.
  • At the time of acceptance, authors will be required to submit uncropped images of complete gels for comparison to the prepared figures. If original data cannot be produced, the acceptance of the manuscript may be revoked.

Scale bars: All illustrations documenting results must include a bar to indicate the scale.

Molecular weights and fragment sizes: The migration of protein molecular weight size markers or nucleic acid size markers must be indicated and labeled appropriately (e.g., "kD", "nt", "bp") on all figure panels showing gel electrophoresis.

Policy on Copyright top
Copyright of all material published in The Journal of Neuroscience remains with the authors. The authors grant the Society for Neuroscience an exclusive license to publish their work for the first 6 months. After 6 months the work becomes available to the public to copy, distribute, or display under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. The corresponding author may sign the license agreement on behalf of all authors, except authors who are NIH employees. Each author employed by NIH will have to complete and sign an NIH Publishing Agreement and attach it to an unsigned Journal of Neuroscience License to Publish form. To view the latest version of the NIH Publishing Agreement, please click here:
http://www1.od.nih.gov/oir/sourcebook/oversight/NIHCover%20Sheet.pdf.

The Journal of Neuroscience License to Publish form can be found at http://www.jneurosci.org/site/misc/JN_License_to_Publish.pdf. These forms will be made available to authors in electronic format as a link on their home page at http://jneurosci.msubmit.net upon submission of a resubmission or revision. Authors will be notified via email with a link to complete the License to Publish form and receive a copy of the completed form when available.

Policy Concerning Availability of Materials and Data top
By publishing a paper in The Journal of Neuroscience the author(s) agree to make freely available to colleagues in academic research any clones of cells, nucleic acids, antibodies, etc. that were used in the research reported and that are not available from commercial suppliers.

Authors should, when possible, honor requests for access to any form of published data for appropriate scientific use. The editors reserve the right to request any original data from authors at any stage in the review or publication process, including after publication. Failure to provide requested information may result in publication delays or revocation of acceptance.

 

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