Instructions to Authors

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION

Authors should submit manuscripts via the electronic manuscript management system (submit.kjnt.org) for KJNT. Manuscripts should be submitted by the corresponding author, who should indicate the address, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail address for correspondence on the title page of the manuscript. The revised manuscript should be submitted through the same web system under the same identification numbers.

Queries concerning manuscript submission should be directed to:

Editor-in-Chief
Je Hoon Jeong, MD, PhD
Department of Neurosurgery, Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine

#407, Dong-A Villate 2nd Town
350, Seocho-daero, Seocho-gu, Seoul, 06631, Korea
TEL: +82-2-523-6811
FAX: +82-2-523-6812
E-mail: kjnt.editor@gmail.com

RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION ETHICS

All of the manuscripts should be prepared in strict observation of research and publication ethics guidelines recommended by the Council of Science Editors (CSE, http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/ (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/)), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org/ (http://www.icmje.org/)), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME, http://www.wame.org/ (http://www.wame.org/)) and the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE, http://www.kamje.or.kr/intro.php?body=eng_index (http://www.kamje.or.kr/intro.php?body=eng_index)) Korean Journal of Neurotrauma (KJNT) will follow the guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, http://publicationethics.org/ (http://publicationethics.org/)) for settlement of any misconduct. In case of suspected misconduct such as fabrication, falsification or duplication, each ethical issue is followed by recommended actions as advised by COPE guidelines and flowcharts. All reviewers have a responsibility to report to the Editor about any suspected issues with the manuscript. If the investigation proves scientific misconduct, publish a retraction of the article. If warranted, the authors should be invited to prepare the retraction, which should be submitted with an assignment of copyright statement that has been signed by all authors. If the paper has not been published then the Editor can always reject the paper. Instances of misconduct in the publication process will be shared with the editorial board of the Korean Journal of Neurotrauma (KJNT). The Editor may wish to impose sanctions, notify editors of other biomedical journals, and depending on the severity of the allegation, notify the author's institution. The KJNT will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when the misconduct is founded.

Clinical Trials

(1) Registration of Clinical Trial Research
It is recommended that any research that deals with a clinical trial be registered with a primary national clinical trial registration site, such as http://cris.cdc.go.kr/, or other sites accredited by the WHO as listed at http://www.who.int/ictrp/en/.
(2) Data Sharing Policy
KJNT accepts the ICMJE Recommendations for data sharing statement policy (http://icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). All manuscripts reporting clinical trial results should submit a data sharing statement following the ICMJE guidelines from 1 July 2018. KJNT follows the data sharing policy described in “Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials: A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors” (https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2017.32.7.1051).

Statement of Informed Consent and Institutional Review Board Approval

Copies of written informed consent and institutional review board (IRB) approval for clinical research should be kept. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct. In addition, for studies conducted with human subjects, the method by which informed consent was obtained from the participants (i.e., verbal or written) also needs to be stated in the Methods section.

Ex 1) This study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki and was performed according to ethics committee approval.
Ex 2) This study had institutional review board approval, and the need to obtain informed patient consent was waived.
Ex 3) This study had institutional review board approval, and all patients provided written informed consent.
Ex 4) Written informed consent was obtained from all patients, and the study protocol was approved by the institutional committee on human research, ensuring that it conformed to the ethical guidelines of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki.
Ex 5) This study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, and all patients provided written informed consent prior to enrollment.
Ex 6) Ethics approval and informed consent were obtained.
Ex 7) All animals were treated in accordance with the Guidelines for The Care and Use of Laboratory Animals as adopted by the OOO University. This study was approved by the institutional animal care and use committee of OOO.

Patient Photographic and Videographic Consent

Patients introduced in the manuscripts should be informed and aware that their photographs, videotapes, and other images (imaging records) will be released by the authors, and the authors should attach the Copyright Release Form available at the KJNT website (http://submit.kjnt.org/ or https://www.kjnt.org/index.php) including each patient’s signature.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights

Clinical research studies must state that all work was carried out in compliance with Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects outlined in the Helsinki Declaration in 1975 (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/ [last updated in July 2018]). Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration guidelines will not be considered for publication. Human subjects must not be identifiable. A patient’s name, initials, hospital number, date of birth, or other protected healthcare information must never be disclosed. Animal research studies must state that all work was conducted according to the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals must conform to the guidelines provided by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). A statement of IRB status and IACUC must be included in the Methods section.

Copyright and Licensing

(1) Copyright policy: Upon publication of the articles, all the copyrights are transferred to the Korean Neurotraumatolgy Society. Articles are accepted on the understanding that no substantial part other than the abstract has been or will be published elsewhere. A copyright transfer form should be submitted to the editorial office by faxing a copy to +82-2-523-6812, by regular mail, or by emailing the scanned copyright transfer form at the time of acceptance. It is identical to the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
(2) Licensing information: This is an open-access journal distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited for non-commercial purpose (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)).
(3) Supporting Information: This journal was supported by the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST) Grant funded by the Korean Government (MEST).

Authorship

Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content and 3) final approval of the version to be published. 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. Authors should meet these 1, 2, 3, and 4 conditions. In addition, an author should be accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done and should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. Authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their coauthors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged as contributors not be authors. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript. After the initial submission of a manuscript, any changes whatsoever in authorship (adding author(s), deleting author(s), or re-arranging the order of authors) must be explained by a letter to the editor from the authors concerned. This letter must be signed by all authors on the paper. Copyright assignment must be completed by every author.

Originality and Duplicate Publication

Redundant publication is defined as “reporting (publishing or attempting to publish) substantially the same work more than once, without attribution of the original source(s)”. A manuscript that is potentially redundant includes the following characteristics: (1) at least one of the authors has contributed to both or all reports (if there are no common authors, plagiarism is more likely than redundant publication); (2) the subject or study populations are often the same or similar; (3) the methodology is typically identical or nearly so and (4) the results and their interpretation generally vary little, if at all.
When submitting a manuscript, authors should include a letter informing the editor of any potential overlap with other already published material or material being evaluated for publication and should also state how the manuscript submitted to KJNT differs substantially from other materials. If all or part of your patient population was previously reported, this should be mentioned in the Methods, with citation of the appropriate reference(s). The duplication will be checked through CrossCheck (https://www.ithenticate.com/) before submission. If duplicate publication related to the papers of this journal is detected, the manuscripts may be rejected, the authors will be announced in the journal, and their institutes will be informed.

Secondary Publication

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the condition of secondary publication of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals by ICMJE available from http://www.icmje.org/.
ICMJE as follows:

• The authors have received approval from the editors of both journals (the editor concerned with the secondary publication must have access to the primary version).
• The priority for the primary publication is respected by a publication interval negotiated by editors of both journals and the authors.
• The paper for secondary publication is intended for a different group of readers; an abbreviated version could be sufficient.
• The secondary version faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the primary version.
• The secondary version informs readers, peers, and documenting agencies that the paper has been published in whole or in part elsewhere—for example, with a note that might read, "This article is based on a study first reported in the (journal title, with full reference)"—and the secondary version cites the primary reference.
• The title of the secondary publication should indicate that it is a secondary publication (complete or abridged republication or translation) of a primary publication. Of note, the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) does not consider translations as "republications" and does not cite or index them when the original article was published in a journal that is indexed in MEDLINE.

Preprint Policy

A preprint is a full draft research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer-reviewed. KJNT allows authors to submit the preprint to the journal. It is not treated as duplicate submission or duplicate publication. A DOI to that document must be provided so that reviewers and editors can evaluate the preprinted information and compare it with the submitted manuscript. The manuscript is accepted for publication, no revisions should be posted on the preprint server until the final manuscript is published online by KJNT, and any such revisions must not deviate from the final version of the manuscript published by KJNT. If your manuscript is accepted, KJNT will include this DOI with your published manuscript.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

KJNT reviews all manuscripts received. A manuscript is first reviewed for its format and then sent to the 2 most relevant investigators available for review of the contents. The editor selects peer referees from the Board's specialist database. Authors' names and affiliations are removed during peer review.

Acceptance of the manuscript is decided based on the critiques and recommended decision of the referees. A referee may recommend "acceptance" "minor revisions," " major revisions," or "rejection." If there is a marked discrepancy in the decisions between two referees or between the opinions of the author and referee(s), the Editor may send the manuscript to another referee for additional comments and a recommended decision. Three repeated decisions of "review again after revision" are regarded as a "rejection." The reviewed manuscripts are returned back to the corresponding author with comments and recommended revisions. Names and decisions of the referees are masked.

Revised manuscripts must be submitted online by the corresponding author. The corresponding author must indicate the alterations that have been made in response to the referees' comments item by item in a response note and the submitted original file with tracing. Failure to resubmit the revised manuscript within 8 weeks of the editorial decision is regarded as a withdrawal. The editorial office should be notified if additional time is needed or if an author chooses not to submit a revision. The editorial committee makes decisions concerning editing, revision, and acceptance or rejection, and editing may include shortening an article, reducing the number of illustrations or tables, or changing the paper's format or the order of the manuscript.

Authors can track the progress of a manuscript on the journal's website. Articles that are accepted for publication are moved from the "Manuscripts Accepted" to the "Manuscripts in Publication" section of the journal’s website.

COPYRIGHTS AND CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION LICENSE

Copyrights of all published materials are owned by the Korean Neurotraumatology Society and must not be published elsewhere without written permission. They also follow the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License available from: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

PUBLICATION PROCESSING CHARGES

Upon submission of a manuscript, the author should send a copy of deposit confirmation to below account number with corresponding author's name on it. The processing charge for one article is 400,000 Korean won regardless of the type of article.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Publication Type

KJNT publishes editorials, review articles, original work (clinical and laboratory research), case reports, letters to the editor, special article and etc.

1. Editorials are invited perspectives on an area of neurotrauma, dealing with very active fields of research, current surgical interests, fresh insights, and debates. Editorials should not exceed 600 words, excluding references, tables, and figures.
2. Review articles provide a concise review of a subject of importance to neurotrauma researchers written by an invited expert in neurotrauma. Manuscripts include a Title page, Unstructured abstract and Keywords, Main text (Introduction, Manuscript body, Conclusion), Conflict of interest, Acknowledgments (if necessary), References, Tables, Figures, and Legends. Review articles should not exceed 60,000 words and 100 references.
3. Original articles are papers reporting the results of clinical investigations, which are sufficiently well documented to be acceptable to critical readers. The manuscript for original articles should be organized in the following order: Title page, Structured abstract and Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conflict of interest, Acknowledgments (if necessary), References, Tables, Figures, and Legends. Original articles should not exceed 40,000 words and 35 references.
4. Case reports/ideas and innovations deal with clinical cases of surgical interest or innovation. The manuscript sequence for a Case report is Title page, Unstructured abstract and Keywords, Introduction, Case Report, Discussion, Conflict of interest, Acknowledgments (if necessary), References, Tables, Figures, and Legends. The case report and idea innovation should not exceed 20,000 words and 20 references. The abstracts should be unstructured and its length should not exceed 250 words.
5. 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.
6. 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. The authors' views in special drafts will be respected as much as possible.

General Guidelines

The manuscript must be written in English only.
The main document with the manuscript text and tables should be prepared with in an MS Word format (doc or docx).
The text of the manuscript, including tables and their footnotes and figure legends, must be double-spaced and in standard 11-point font on A4 size.

• Drug and chemical names should be stated in standard chemical or generic nomenclature.
• Units of measure should be presented according to the International System (SI) of Units. All units must be preceded by one space except angle (°), percentage (%) and temperature (°C).
• Descriptions of genes or related structures in a manuscript should include the names and official symbols provided by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) or the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee.
• Statistical expression: mean and standard deviation should be described as mean±SD, and mean and standard error as mean±SE. p-values should be described as p<0.05 or p=0.003.
• Generic and brand name of medicine: for medicine, use generic names. If a brand name should be used, insert it in parentheses after the generic name.

Reporting Guidelines for Specific Study Designs

For the specific study design, such as randomized control studies, studies of diagnostic accuracy, meta-analyses, observational studies, and non-randomized studies, it is recommended that the authors follow the reporting guidelines listed in the following table.

Initiative	Type of Study	Sources
CONSORT	Randomized controlled trials	http://consort-statement.org/
STARD	Studies of diagnostic accuracy	http://www.stard-statement.org/
PRISMA	Preferred reporting items of systematic reviews and meta-analyses	http://prisma-statement.org/
STROBE	Observational studies in epidemiology	http://www.strobe-statement.org/
MOOSE	Meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology	http://www.consort-statement.org/downloads/consort-statement

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION FORMAT

Title Page

The title page should be composed of external and internal title pages.

• a) 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 (review article, laboratory study, clinical research, and case report) should be also addressed. The title should be less than 50 words with well understandable topic. When the work includes multiple authors with different affiliations, the institution where the research was mainly conducted should be spelled out first, and 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. 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. Then, mark the running head as not to exceed 65 characters in English.
• b) 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.

Abstract and Keywords

All manuscripts must contain an abstract. The abstract should be concise, less than 250 words and describe concisely the Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion, in a structured format. Abstract for case report and review should be unstructured and its length should not exceed 200 words. 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 (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).

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).

Materials and Methods

Materials and Methods section should include sufficient details of the design, objects, and methods of the article in order, as well as the data analysis strategies and control of bias in the study. Enough details need to be addressed in the methodology section of an experimental study so that it can be further replicated by others. When reporting experiment with human subjects, the authors should indicate whether they received an approval from the IRB 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 experimentation, "the Guiding Principles in the Care and Use of Animals" approved by the American Physiological Society, must have been observed. An explanation of the experimental methods should be concise and sufficient for repetition by other qualified investigators. Procedures that have been published previously should not describe 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, state, or country). Method of statistical analyses and criteria of significance level should be described.

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 description by Tables and by main text, important trends and points in the Table should be described in the text. Experimental results should be described using Arabic numbers and the SI unit system.

Discussion

Discussions about the findings of the research and interpretations in relation to other studies are made. It is necessary to emphasize the new and critical findings of the study, 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.

Conclusion

The conclusion section should include a concise statement of the major findings of the study in accordance with the study purpose.

References

• a) 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: reference11,15-18)). If other author's name is used on manuscript, the reference list must be marked right after the name (example: Majd et al.14) reported an overall recurrent fracture rate of 10%).
• b) All references should be alphabetized by the first author's last name. If there were same first authors last name, then the order will be followed by the second author's name.
• c) 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>

1) Yang SM, Park HK, Cho SJ, Chang JC, Park SQ, Kim RS. The current analysis of the risk factors for bone graft infection after cranioplasty. Korean J Neurotrauma 9:57-63, 2013
2) Meirowsky AM, Caveness WF, Dillon JD, Rish BL, Mohr JP, Kistler JP, et al. Cerebrospinal fluid fistulas complicating missile wounds of the brain. J Neurosurg 54:44-48, 1981

<Book>

3) Winn HR. Youmans neurological surgery, ed 5. Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders Company, 2004

<Book Chapter>

4) Knightly JJ, Pulliam MW. Military head injuries in Narayan RK (ed): Neurotrauma. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, pp891-902, 1996

<Website>

5) World Health Organization, The International Spinal Cord Society. International perspectives on spinal cord injury. Geneva, CH: World Health Organization, 2013 (http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/94192/1/WHO_NMH_VIP_13.03_eng.pdf?ua=1) [Accessed October 1, 2015]

Tables

Tables should be typed double-spaced on separate pages within manuscript, and they should be titled and numbered in Arabic numerals in the order of their first citation in the text. Each column should be given a short heading. Only the first letter of the first word in each row and column should be capital letters. If numerical measurements are given, the unit of measurement should be included in the each heading. The statistical significance of observed differences in the data should be indicated by the appropriate statistical analysis. All abbreviations should be defined in footnotes. For special remarks, superscripts *, †, ‡, §, ∥, ¶, **, ††, ‡‡... should be used.

Figures

The author is responsible for submitting prints that are of sufficient quality to permit accurate reproduction, and for approving the final color galley proof. All photographs should be correctly exposed and sharply focused. The entire expense of reproducing color photographs will be charged to the author; current estimates for color reproduction can be obtained from the Editorial Office. KJNT assumes no responsibility for the quality of the photography as it appears in the Journal. Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photographs should contrast with the background. A legend for each light microscopic photograph should include name of stain and magnification (e.g., H&E, ×400); electron microscopic photography should have an internal scale marker. All kinds of figures may be reduced, enlarged, or trimmed for publication by the editor. All the legends for figures should be double-spaced. Do not use a separate sheet for each legend. Figure legends should describe briefly the data shown, explain any abbreviations or reference points in the photograph. The figures should be numbered in the form Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3. Related figures should be combined into one figure, with each subfigure denoted by the letters, A, B, C, and so on, following the Arabic number of the main figure (e.g., Figure 1A; Figure 1B and C; Figure 1A-C). Figures should be submitted as Tiff or EPS file format. If the only possible file format is JPEG, it must be in highest quality with minimum compression. It is recommended to size original figure widths to 4 inches wide.

The minimum requirements for digital resolution are:

- 300 DPI/PPI for picture-only photographs.

- 600 DPI/PPI for photographs containing pictures and line elements, e.g., text labels, thin lines, arrows.

- 900 DPI/PPI for black and white images, such as line drawings or graphs.

MANUSCRIPTS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Accepted manuscript will be converted to PDF format. The PDF file will be dispatched to the author for proofreading. Any changes should be returned within 72 hours after receipt of the PDF files. No significant changes should be made to alter the interpretation of the results. Only minor changes, such as correcting typographical errors or critical changes to maintain article's accuracy, are allowed. If there are too many changes during the author's proofreading process, those changes will not be accepted and the paper can be considered for re-submission. Authors should do their best to ensure the accuracy of the proofs. After the publication, if there are critical errors, they should be corrected as Corrigendum or Erratum.