Information for Authors - Neural Regeneration Research

About the Journal

Neural Regeneration Research (NRR;ISSN 1673-5374, CN11-5422/R) is a peer-reviewed, open-access (www.nrronline.org) international journal published monthly, with its mission focused on reporting creative scientific advancements on the subject of neural regeneration. The journal is committed to publishing articles on original experimental and clinical research, technological advances and methods related to neural regeneration in the peripheral and central nervous systems, expert reviews and perspective articles.

NRR has been indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (JCR Impact Factor 2.234 in 2017), PubMed, SCOPUS and other important international indexing systems. We hope that, with your support, NRR will be a highly recognized journal in the field of neural regeneration.

Aims and Scopes

NRR publishes papers on a broad range of topics of the latest advances in both the clinical and laboratory investigation of science topic with creative results that are relevant to intervention, repair,protection, and regeneration after nerve injury. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, changes in neurons,mitochondria, axons, microenvironment, extracellular matrix, related factors, and exosomes in nerve injury.NRR is devoted to publishing articles regarding the diagnosis and intervention of the nervous system diseases (stroke,brain trauma, neurodegenerative diseases, neurodevelopmental diseases, spinal cord injuries, peripheral nerve injuries,cranial nerve injuries, optic nerve injuries) and techniques that involve cell therapy, gene therapy, bioengineering,neuromodulation, medication, and neuroprosthetics, and articles addressing tissue engineering (biomaterials, stem cells, and nerve tissue construction),neural plasticity, neuroimmunity, neuroinflammation, autophagy, exercise,brain health, and advanced brain technologies (brain-like organ, brain-like computer chip, optical genetics, single-unit recordings, neuroimaging, big data management) in the field of neural regeneration.

NRR focuses on the reports of hotspot topics in the international field of neuroregeneration, publishes high-quality basic research articles, clinical studies,and trials, and promotes translational research.

NRR welcomes high-quality research articles from scholars devoted in the field of neural regeneration.

After online submission, the manuscript will undergo peer-review process and author revisions. Then the accepted manuscript will undergo professional editing and language polishing services prior to publication and international dissemination after publication.

NRR's peer-review is a rigorous and speedy process that ensures the highest quality articles possible for publication.NRR dedicates to disseminate each published article to achieve the largest exposure through the most influential international journal platform.

Readership

NRR has a strong international focus on neural regeneration and draws attention from neuroscientists who are dedicated to neuroanatomy, neuroimmunity, neuropathology, neuropharmacology, neurophysiology, biochemistry, biophysics,neurosurgery, neurology, neuroimaging,neuroradiology, neurobiology, and neurorehabilitation.

NRR has emerged as an important forum for the experts from the disciplines including medicine, biostatistics, computer science, management science, pharmaceutics, bioethics, and evidence-based medicine, and as an important platform for communication between the government, funding agencies, journals, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, continuing education institute and patients.

Abstracting and Indexing

· Science Citation Index Expanded(SCI-E)

· PubMed

· PubMed Central (PMC)

· BIOSIS previews (BP)

· Chemical Abstracts (CA)

· Excerpta Medica (EM)

· Index of Copurnicus (IC)

· OvidSP

· Chinese Science Citation Database(CSCD)

· Chinese Science and Technology Paper Citation Database (CSTPCD)

· SCOPUS

· DOAJ

Editorial Board

Editors-in-chief

· Kwok-fai So, Member, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Fellow, National Academy of Inventors; Director, GHM Institute of Neural Regeneration, Jinan University; Jessie Ho Professor in Neuroscience, Department of Ophthalmology of Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine,The University of Hong Kong; Chairman, Board of Directors of China Spinal Cord Injury Network; Director, Hong Kong Spinal Cord Injury Fund (HKSCI Fund).

· Xiao-Ming Xu, Professor and Mari Hulman George Chair of Neurological Surgery, Scientific Director, Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Group, Indiana University School of Medicine,USA; Member, Scientific Review Group,National Institutes of Health.

Associate editors

· Vance P. Lemmon, Walter G. Ross Distinguished Chair, Department of Developmental Neuroscience and Neurological Surgery, University of Miami,USA.

· George M. Smith, Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Shriners Hospitals Pediatric Research Center, Temple University, School of Medicine, USA.

Editorial board members

The editorial board led by Professor

Kwok-fai So and Xiao-ming Xu comprises over a hundred members who are dedicated to developing a journal presenting outstanding peer-reviewed,evidence-based scholarly research in neural regeneration.

Criteria for Publication

· The study presents the novel results of primary scientific research.

· Experiments, statistics, and other anal-yses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail.

· Results reported have not been published elsewhere.

· Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data.

· The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.

· The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability.

· The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and in American English written.

Rigorous Peer Review

NRR will rigorously peer-review submissions and publish all papers that are judged to be technically sound.Judgments about the importance of any particular paper are then made after publication by the readership, who are the most qualified to determine what is of interest to them.

Editorial process

New submissions to NRR go through a rigorous quality control and peer-review process before receiving a decision. The initial in-house quality control check deals with issues such as plagiarism check; competing interests;ethical requirements for studies involving participants or animals; financial disclosures; full compliance with NRR's data availability policy, etc. Submissions may be returned to authors for queries,and will not be sent to the Editorial Board or peer reviewers until they pass this quality control check.

Peer-review process

Once the manuscript has passed quality control, it will be assigned to the strict double-blinded peer-review process and for making a decision to accept,invite revision of, or reject the article.Before manuscripts are sent for review,potential peer reviewers are contacted to confirm their availability and absence of conflicts of interest as well as their agreements to have their names included in the published review. A peer-review report together with the reviewer's name, if permitted, is posted at the end of the article. Only 15-20%of the approximately 2000 manuscripts submitted per year are published in NRR. The majority of NRR submissions are evaluated by 3-5 external reviewers.Average time from the submission to the first editorial decision is 1 month.The review time could be shortened to 7 days for the paper with sophisticated comments transferred by recognized journals. The final decision on a manuscript is made by the Academic Editor.After evaluation, the Academic Editor chooses between the following decisions, Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, Reject. Authors who receive a decision of Minor Revision or Major Revision have 21 days to resubmit the revised manuscript. The time from acceptance to publication is 8-10 weeks.

If you are submitting a revised manuscript, include the following items with your revised submission:

· Response to reviewers file: Address the specific points made by each reviewer.· Revised manuscript (marked-up copy): Include a marked-up copy of your manuscript file showing the changes you have made since the original submission.

· Revised manuscript (clean copy): Upload a clean copy of your revised manuscript that does not show your changes.

Reviewer recognition

The quality of NRR depends on the effort that is generously contributed by our reviewers who have lent their expertise and time helping to ensure we publish great science. Special thanks go out to an outstanding group of reviewers who have provided an extraordinary number of thoughtful reviews along with frequent reviewers who have reviewed four or more manuscripts each year.

Find attached a full list of NRR's 2018 outstanding reviewers. We appreciate their constructive and valuable suggestions made for NRR manuscripts. We provide a proof of review for those who provide more than 400 words of general comments and complete the peer-review process within 14 days.

We encourage the reviewers to share and discuss their review comments on Publons (www.publons.com). NRR will also give credit to registered reviewers on Publons.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically http://www.editorialmanager.com/nrr/.

Initial Submission

Cover letter

Authors are strongly encouraged to provide as much information as possible to the reviewers, including:

· Declaration that the manuscript is original, has not been submitted to or is not under consideration by another publication and has not been previously published in any language or any form,including electronic.

· Indication that all authors approve the final version of the manuscript and of its submission to NRR.

· Recommendation of 3-5 scientists as peer reviewers for your manuscript,including their contact information.The recommenced reviewers should be in the same field of your study, but not from the same institutions and have not copublished articles previously.

· Once submitted to NRR, the manuscript should not be submitted to other journals within 1 month, whether it is undergoing or awaiting the paper review process.

Update your ORCID record after publication

The first author or the corresponding author should provide ORCID upon manuscript submission to uniquely identify author's publication maintained by journal or database statisticians. NRR also serves authors to get a unique ORCID identifier.

Transfer of copyright agreement

Once your paper is successfully submitted, all publishing agreements should be signed by all authors and uploaded to the editorial system.

Article Type

· Review: Reviews are topical reviews that cover a current topic of interest in neural regeneration. Authors from internationally renowned laboratories who have acquired outstanding achievements are invited to write reviews. The invited reviews should introduce compelling new stories about how scientists or laboratories yielded their striking thoughts or achievements, rather than simply describe their research progress or current status in the field of neural regeneration.

Word limit: 6000 words minimum including the abstract, 1 figure and 2 tables minimum, 6 published pages minimum.

Submit an outline for your paper before writing, and submit the manuscript within 2 months after receiving permission from the NRR editorial committee.

· Perspective: Authors from internationally renowned laboratories who have acquired outstanding achievements are invited to write a short paper in which they provide background information that has not been previously published, offering the reasons behind their scientific hypothesis as well as answering such questions as why they chose specific animal models or patients as participants, developed a novel technique or method, used certain materials, or selected a given cell type.The invited perspectives should introduce compelling new stories about how scientists or laboratories yielded their striking thoughts or achievements, rather than simply describe their research progress or current status in the field of neural regeneration. These papers will provide readers with novel perspectives on the thoughts and insights of neural regeneration researchers.

Word limit: 1000-1500 words, 1-2 authors, 10 references maximum, no abstract, 1 figure required, and 2 published pages maximum.

· Research Article: NRR will consider manuscripts on any clinical or basic science topic with creative results that are relevant to intervention, repair,protection, and regeneration after nerve injury.

Word limit: 4000-6000 words, 8-10 published pages.

· Imaging in Neural Regeneration: We will consider photographic, radiographic, or artistic images that have exceptional visual impact and have relevance to neurologic recovery.

Word limit: 1500-2000 words, 2 published pages maximum, no abstract, 2-3 figures required to display the relationships between histology, nerve repair,nerve regeneration, and function.

· Letter to the Editor: Brief communications and case reports should be labeled as such and must offer an important new observation and not simply review the literature. In rare instances,we will consider case reports for this article type, but only if the topic is extraordinarily novel.

Formatting guidelines for NRR papers(Review, Perspective, Research Article,and Imaging in Neural Regeneration)are shown in Additional file.

Reporting Guidance

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with ICMJE Recommendation for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing,and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals. The following guidelines should be followed when writing an article:

· ARRIVE guideline (Animal Research:Reporting of In Vivo Experiments): The ARRIVE guidelines are recommended for in vivo experiments in animals. See https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines for more information.

· CONSORT statement (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials): The CONSORT statement is recommended for reporting randomized controlled trials, and allows different types of medical studies to be reported using different article types. The authors are encouraged to complete 25-item checklist in their cover letter. In addition,the registration identification number and registry position of the randomized controlled trial is listed in the last line in the Abstract. See http://www.consort-statement.org/ for more information.

· STARD statement (STAndards for the Reporting of Diagnostic accuracy studies): This checklist is recommended for reporting diagnostic accuracy studies. See http://www.stard-statement.org/ for more information.

· STREGA statement (STrengthening the REporting of Genetic Associations): These guidelines are recommended for the reporting of genetic association studies. See http://www.strega-statement.org/ for more information.

· STROBE statement (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology): These guidelines are recommended for the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology).See http://www.strobe-statement.org/for more information.

· TREND statement (Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Nonrandomized Designs): These guidelines are recommended for the reporting of non-randomized evaluations of behavioral and public health interventions.See http://www.cdc.gov/trendstatement/ for more information.

· MOOSE checklist (a Reporting Checklist for Authors, Editors, and Reviewers of Meta-analyses of Observational Studies): This checklist is recommended for meta-analyses of observational studies. See https://www.editorial-manager.com/jognn/account/MOOSE.pdf for more information.

· PRISMA statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses): The PRISMA Statement is recommended for the reporting of systematic evaluation and meta-analysis articles. See http://www.prisma-statement.org/ for more information.

Acceptance and Publication

After acceptance, the authors have access to inquiries regarding the progress of their manuscript submitted online using the account number assigned to the corresponding author at any time.Generally, accepted manuscripts will be published within 6 months after revision; however, authors can apply for rapid publication within 2-3 months after revision if their publications meet the following conditions:

· Grant-funded innovative publications;

· With comments made recently by peer reviewers of international excellent journals;

· Basic research manuscripts including original data with DOI register number;

· Prospective clinical trials with Clinicaltrials.gov register number;

· First-time innovative publications.

Ethics

According to the ICMJE recommendations, the authors should follow all ethical principles for medical research involving humans and experimental animals.

Requirements for ethical issues elated to medical research

· Medical researchers should abide by the relevant principles for medical research involving human participants,conscientiously accept supervision from the ethical review committee, and effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of the human participants.

· Medical researchers should objectively and accurately collect human samples,data, and information, and protect the life, health, privacy, and dignity of human participants.

· When performing studies involving humans or experimental animals, medical researchers should provide accurate medical records, including adverse reactions and events, and report information regarding severe adverse reactions and events according to related regulations.

· Medical researchers should be aware of public health and laboratory biology safety, consciously abide by the requirements of related laws and regulations,and accept inspection and supervision by related organizations when performing studies regarding emerging infectious diseases and diseases with unknown etiologies or known pathogen transformation.

· Medical researchers should store,share, and destroy human or animal samples, data, or materials after study completion according to corresponding management regulations of scientific research.

· Medical researchers should respect and protect the intellectual property rights of others and abide by the confidentiality rules of science and technology when performing academic communications and being invited to review another person's submitted research paper or topic declaration.

· When citing previously published view-points, data, images, results, or other data, the source should be indicated, and the use of citations, annotations, and references should be consistent with academic specifications.When using another person's design thoughts, perspectives, experimental data, figures and tables, results and conclusions that have not been published, a written informed consent should be obtained from the authors, and acknowledgments and declarations should be openly stated.

· When publishing research papers or academic contributions, medical researchers should abide by related regulations. Medical researchers cannot be authors on a published research paper when they do not participate in conducting the research or contribute to the writing of the paper.

· Medical researchers, as supervisors or leaders of a research project, should take full responsibility for guiding students or leading members to perform scientific research and assume responsibility for dishonorable events occurring during the study or writing of scientific papers.

· The original images, data (including computer databases), records, and samples involved in producing medical research papers should be kept in a secure storage area for potential recheck.Any errors or faults appearing in medical research achievements should be admitted and corrected publicly by the medical researchers.

· When performing collaborative scientific research, medical researchers should comply with good faith duty or contract, and authorship credit for publishing research papers or books,applying for patents, and acquiring awards should be based on substantial contribution.

· Medical researchers should have a scientific attitude and social responsibility and avoid false statements and news hyperbole in academic communication, achievement generalization, and popular science propaganda. Medical researchers should treat academic criticism and questions from peer reviewers with respect.

Requirements for ethical issues related to animal experiments

· Medical researchers should abide by international guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals, the Weatherall report on the use of non-human primates in research (2006), and The National Centre for the Replacement,Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs).

· The authors' institutional animal care and use committee that approved the animal experiments and the associated permit number(s) should be stated in research papers.

· The methods section of NRR papers reporting results of animal research must include required ethics statements, such as “The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of ABC (permit number XXXX). All surgery was performed under sodium pentobarbital anesthesia, and all efforts were made to minimize animal pain,distress, and death.” Guidelines for euthanasia methods approved by NRR for use in animal experiments is shown in Table 1.

· Data and methods appearing in NRR papers that are used to support conclusions should be shared for replication of the results by others. Original experimental data or DOI numbers registeredin international databases should be provided upon submission to facilitate reference by peer reviewers and other readers.

Table 1 Euthanasia methods in animal experiments

· Original data from studies involving genes, proteins, mutants and diseases should be registered on international public databases, and the registered identifier should be provided upon submission. The international public databases suggested by NRR include figshare or re3data.

· A small amount of data or certain special data may be submitted as attachments to the research paper for publication in the supplementary data section online.

· For data harvested from other open-access means, the source must be indicated. -Studies involving animal experiments should be reported according to ARRIVE guidelines (https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines).

Requirements for ethical issues related to clinical trials

· All studies performed using the human body or involving human samples should be registered in an international clinical trials registry platform, such as www.clinicaltrials.gov, prior to participant recruitment. The registry platform and register identifier should be provided upon submission and included in the abstract of the manuscript.

· The ethics committee that approved the trial and the associated permit number(s) should be stated in research papers. Clinical trial manuscripts submitted with no indication that ethical guidelines were followed will not be accepted by NRR. In addition, whether participants gave informed consent should be indicated.

· Clinical trial manuscripts should be written according to the specifications presented at www.equator-network.org.Additionally, self-assessment checklists and a flow chart should be provided upon submission.

Patient consent privacy

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc.,and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian, wherever applicable) gives informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients' names from figures unless they have obtained informed consent from the patients. The journal abides by ICMJE guidelines: 1. Authors, not the journals nor the publisher, need to obtain the patient consent form before the publication and have the form properly archived. The consent forms are not to be uploaded with the cover letter or sent through email to editorial or publisher offices. 2. If the manuscript contains patient images that preclude anonymity, or a description that has obvious indication to the identity of the patient,a statement about obtaining informed patient consent should be indicated in the manuscript.

Plagiarism

· All NRR papers will be screened twice using Crosscheck to verify originality,once after submission and again prior to publication. NRR papers will be likely screened more times if they do not pass the prior two screening procedures. The screening results will be provided to the authors.

· Each NRR paper should be original,with a similarity index of ＜ 5% against any single paper in the database and with a total similarity index of ＜ 20%against all papers in the database.

· Similarity between new submitted NRR manuscript and the papers previously published by the same research team or author should be no more than 50%

· No retracted articles should be cited.

· For dishonorable events anonymously or non-anonymously reported, editors will contact the corresponding author of the paper with the issue and provide the results to the person who reported the event.

· For dishonorable events including redundant (duplicate) publication,suspected plagiarism, and undisclosed conflicts of interest, NRR will abide by the regulations suggested by COPE guidelines (http://publicationethics.org/resources).

Corrections and retractions

NRR publishes corrections, retractions,and expressions of concern as appropriate, and as quickly as possible. We follow the ICMJE and COPE guidelines where applicable.

Corrections: A notice of correction will be issued by NRR to document and correct substantial errors that appear in online articles when these errors significantly affect the content or understanding of the work reported (e.g.,error in data presentation or analysis)or when the error affects the publication's metadata (e.g., misspelling of an author's name). In these cases, NRR will publish a correction that will be linked to the original article. In very rare cases,we may choose to correct the article itself and re-post it online. If that course is taken, a correction notice will also be created to document the changes to the original article.

Author-initiated retractions: NRR will retract an article at the authors' request at any time unless it is under review for a possible violation of Responsible Conduct Regarding Scientific Communications. At the authors' option,the retraction notice may simply state that the article has been retracted at the authors' request. Alternatively, the authors may provide a brief explanation of the error(s) prompting the retraction.However, statements of retraction may not assign blame to specific authors or laboratories.

Editorial retractions: The editors reserve the right to retract an article at any time after publication without the consent of the authors if an investigation by an appropriate authority reveals a violation of NRR's Ethics Policy.

To request a correction/retraction,please contact the editorial office directly at szb@nrren.org .

Data Audibility

NRR encourages to upload original experimental data on Figshare prior to or after publication, including original data, images, or tables. Such open access of data will increase study transparency,accelerate the scientific research pace,and establish a credible system of scientific research.

Figshare is an internationally respected original data hosting and management database that can upload,store, and share study data. With the permission of open-access copyright,the authors can display and share their data, which facilitates retrieval, reading,downloading, and sharing.

Data-sharing statement in clinical trials

Manuscripts submitted to NRR that report the results of clinical trials must contain a data-sharing statement as in Table 2.

Open-Access Publication

NRR is co-published by MedKnow, a global open access medical publisher.Therefore, NRR applies the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License to works we publish. This license allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

Anyone interested in reading your research can get free access to your paper at our official website (www.nrronline.org) or PubMed Central.

Open-Access Service Fees

Authors of invited papers may, at the discretion of the editorial committee,be granted complete waivers for the open-access service fee.

When a paper is accepted for publication, the authors will be issued an invoice for payment of the open-access service fee. The open-access service fee is used to pay for online open access, development and maintenance of the editing and reviewing system, and data processing for exposure on Google Scholar, iPhone,iPad and Android smartphones, as well as for PubMed indexing and CrossRef presentation. The open-access service fee will, at the discretion of the editorial committee, be reduced or waived for manuscripts from low-income countries according to the quality of manuscript.Consideration of research articles is not related to author's ability to pay the fee.The cost for language modification is billed separately.

Copyright/Permissions after Publication

The publisher retains all rights concerning assembling, printing, reproducing,translating, disseminating, exhibiting,publishing, retrieving and indexing part or all of the contents of the article.

After signing transfer of copyright with the journal, the authors retain the rights.

In not-for-profit circumstances, when cited appropriately, the use, dissemination and reproduction of part or all of the contents of the article is permitted.

Reprints/Subscriptions

We are committed to providing two journal copies and five high-quality reprints to authors for free with a variety of customizations and delivery options available. Reprints can be purchased as print or electronic reprints and as translated articles, and will be customized to your specific requirements and shrinkwrapped.

Dissemination after Publication

Once the paper is published, it will be scheduled for dissemination to NRR's editorial board members, peer reviewers, authors, readers, and academic experts in the field of neural regeneration via e-Newslettter.

After publication, the papers online can be rapidly retrieved and exposed via Google Scholar, iPhone, iPad and Android smart phones.

Contract Us

English website:

http://www.nrronline.org/

Chinese website:

http://www.sjzsyj.org/

Submission website:

http://nrr.edmgr.com/

Telephone: +86(24)23380576/

+86-13804998773

By Mail: Editorial Office of NRR, Shen

yang PO Box 10001, Shenyang 110180,

Liaoning Province, China

Author inquiries: bwb01@nrren.org

WeChat Official Account: sjzsyj_nrr

Table 2 Examples of Data Sharing Statements That Fulfill These ICMJE Requirements*