Editorial Policy

 

The Neurological Surgery and Anatomy (NS&A) maintains a transparent editorial policy delineating the roles and responsibilities of editors, reviewers, and authors. Our policy encompasses the manuscript review process, ethics, plagiarism prevention, misconduct handling, and guidelines ensuring publication quality.

Editors are entrusted with the following responsibilities:

  • It ensures transparency throughout the editorial process by providing clear guidelines and procedures.
  • We adhere to ethical standards, disclose conflicts of interest, and comply with institutional policies.
  • Investigating and addressing all complaints regarding submissions, ensuring authors are allowed to respond.
  • Maintaining impartiality, free from discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs.
  • They are transparently handling sponsored supplements or sponsorships and evaluating articles based on academic and scientific merit.
  • It ensures open access and indicates the Creative Commons license for each article.
  • The NS&A maintains documentation related to submissions.

Reviewers are responsible for:

  • Assisting in decision-making and enhancing article quality through objective and timely reviews.
  • Safeguarding the confidentiality of provided information.
  • Identifying and reporting similarities with published content or ongoing studies to prevent plagiarism.
  • Declaring any potential conflicts of interest.

Authors are required to:

  • Assert that the submitted manuscript is original and not under consideration elsewhere.
  • Ensure compliance with ethical standards for studies involving humans or animals.
  • Disclose conflicts of interest and notify the editor-in-chief of significant errors for correction.
  • Provide necessary information for errata, retractions, or corrections.
  • Make associated records available upon request.
  • Retain copyright and publishing rights without restrictions.
  • Register with Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID).

Authorship Criteria:

  • Authors must have contributed substantially to conception, design, data analysis, interpretation, writing, or critical review.
  • Participation in resource acquisition or oversight does not warrant authorship.
  • The number of authors should follow NML/NIH/Index Medicus guidelines, with discretion for additional authors based on contribution types. For more details on authorship criteria, refer to www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html.

 

Submission

Neurological Surgery and Anatomy provides:

  • A dedicated electronic submission system.
  • Facilitating the entire editorial process from initial submission to peer review.
  • Single or double-blind review.
  • Technical proofing.
  • Formatting.

Upon submission, manuscripts undergo an initial review by the editorial office to ensure compliance with journal policies, including document accuracy, image and graphic quality, and author ORCID registration. Manuscripts failing to meet these criteria are returned to the corresponding author with a set deadline for resubmission.

Following initial approval, manuscripts are evaluated by the editor-in-chief and scientific editor, who then assign associate editors according to the manuscript's field. These associate editors assess the significance, originality, clarity, and relevance of the study, either recommending continuation or rejection and appointing at least two reviewers. After peer review, the editor-in-chief sends the manuscript back to the corresponding author for necessary corrections. Subsequently, the revised manuscripts undergo further review by the original reviewers.

Based on reviewer recommendations, the editor-in-chief makes the final editorial decision, which may involve technical review and subsequent corrections, acceptance, or rejection. This decision is communicated to the corresponding author.

Following this phase, all articles undergo grammar review and, if required, English translation before entering the editorial process.

 

Ethics, Plagiarism, and Misconduct

Neurological Surgery and Anatomy upholds strict protocols to safeguard intellectual property and combat plagiarism. Manuscripts undergo a similarity check upon final approval. If plagiarism is detected during the technical review process, the author is notified to rectify the citations. However, if plagiarism exceeds 25%, the article is rejected, and both the author and their institution are informed.

The NS&A adheres to ethical guidelines outlined in the Code of Conduct for Journal Editors (COPE) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). For experimental work involving animals, standards set by the 1996 Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and ethical principles in animal experimentation are followed.

The views expressed in submitted manuscripts are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the journal's editors.

 

Guidelines for Manuscript Quality

Neurological Surgery and Anatomy recommends adherence to established reporting guidelines, including CONSORT, STARD, PRISMA, and STROBE, to ensure manuscript quality.

Neurological Surgery and Anatomy is an open-access journal with article processing charges (APC) ranging from US$50 for low-income countries, US$100 for middle-income countries, and US$200 for high-income countries (https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups). All processes are conducted electronically.