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 Instruction for Authors

Table of Contents

1. General Guidelines
2. Types of Manuscript
3. Research and publication ethics
4. Peer Review Process
5. Review and Publication Fee
6. Copyright
7. Online Submission of Manuscript
8. Manuscript Preparation
9. Author's Checklist

1. General Guidelines

To submit a manuscript to the Annals of Clinical Neurophysiology (ACN), it is advised to first read the aims and scope section of this journal carefully, as it provides information on the category of papers it accepts. Manuscripts submitted to ACN should be prepared in accordance with the following instructions. ACN adheres completely to guidelines and best practices published by professional organizations, including Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) from ICMJE and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA (http://doaj.org/bestpractice) if otherwise not described below.

2. Types of Manuscript

This journal publishes full-length original papers, case reports, letters to the editor, invited reviews, images in clinical neurophysiology, and other articles commissioned by editorial board.

3. Research and publication ethics

For the policies on the research and publication ethics not stated in these instructions, ‘Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr/)’ or ‘Guidelines on good publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines)’ can be applied.

3-1. Statement of human and animal rights

Clinical research must comply with the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, as outlined in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised 2013) (available from: https://www.wma.net/policy). Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. For human subjects, identifiable information, such as patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, and other protected healthcare information, should not be disclosed. For animal subjects, the research should be performed based on the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.

3-2. Statement of informed consent and Institutional Review Board approval

Copies of written informed consent should be kept for studies on human subjects. For the clinical studies with human subjects, there should be a certificate, an agreement, or the approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author's affiliated institution. In addition, 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. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct. For research with animal subjects, studies should be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC).

3-3. Conflict of Interest statement

If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should disclose them in the manuscript. When submitting the manuscript, the author must attach the letter of conflict-of-interest statement (https://www.e-acn.org/authors/conflicts.php). Conflict of interest exists when an author or the author’s institution, reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence or bias his or her actions. Not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. On the other hand, the potential for conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, or of the science itself. Conflicts can occur for other reasons as well, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). If there is a disclosure, editors, reviewers, and reader can approach the manuscript after understanding the situation and the background of the completed research.

3-4. Registration of the clinical trial research

Any research that deals with a clinical trial should be registered with the primary national clinical trial registry site such as the Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CRIS, http://cris.nih.go.kr), other primary national registry sites accredited by the World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/) or ClinicalTrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov/), a service of the United States National Institutes of Health.

3-5. Authorship and author’s responsibility

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; 3) final approval of the version to be published; and 4) agreeing to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Authors should meet these 4 conditions. If the number of authors is equal to or greater than 2, there should be a list of each author's role in the submitted paper. Description of co-first authors or co-corresponding authors is also accepted if the corresponding author believes that such roles existed in contributing to the manuscript. Authors are responsible for the whole content of each article.

The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication. Authors are responsible for the whole content of each article.

3-6. Originality, plagiarism, and duplicate publication

All submitted manuscripts should be original and should not be in consideration by other scientific journals for publication. Any part of the accepted manuscript should not be duplicated in any other scientific journal without permission of the Editorial Board, although the figures and tables can be used freely if the original source is verified according to the Creative Commons Attribution License. It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from other journal that is not open access. If duplicate publication is attempted or occurs, the submitted manuscript will be rejected immediately.

3-7. Secondary publication

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the condition of secondary publication of the "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals" by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), available from http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html.

3-8. Manuscript Preparation

When the Journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as a redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, an ethical problem discovered with the submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and other issues, the resolving process will follow the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). Discussion and decisions on the suspected cases are carried out by the Editorial Board. ACN will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

3-9. Editorial responsibilities

The Editorial Board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of academic records; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and excluding plagiarized and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promoting the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.

4. Peer Review Process

All submitted manuscripts will be initially evaluated by more than two experts in accordance with the review and revision guidelines of The Korean Society of Clinical Neurophysiology. The acceptance criteria for all papers are based on the quality and originality of the research and its clinical and scientific significance. An initial decision will normally be made within 4 weeks of the receipt of a manuscript, and the reviewers’ comments will be sent to the corresponding authors. The corresponding author must indicate the alterations that have been made in response to the reviewers’ comments on an item-by-item basis. Failure to resubmit the revised manuscript within 8 weeks of the editorial decision will be regarded as a withdrawal.

5. Review and Publication Fee

The authors do not pay page charges or article processing charges.

6. Copyright

All published papers become the permanent property of The Korean Society of Clinical Neurophysiology, and must not be published elsewhere without written permission. A copyright transfer form should be submitted to the Editorial Office through the electronic submission system at (http://submit.e-acn.org) upon acceptance.

7. Online Submission of Manuscript

ACN offers a web-based manuscript submission and peer review system at http://submit.e-acn.org. Please review the instructions at that website carefully and take note of the further instructions provided at the top of the screen in each step. Submit your manuscript and all figures exactly as instructed in order to avoid a processing delay or failure. For assistance, please contact us via e-mail (acn.journal@e-acn.org), telephone (+82-10-6638-8130), or fax (+82-2-487-6330).

8. Manuscript Preparation
8-1. General Style
The manuscript must contain a title, abstract, main text, references, tables, and figure legends. The main body of the manuscript and all tables included in your submission must be provided in Microsoft (MS) Word format. The text must be written in double-spaced 12-point font, preferably in Times New Roman on A4-sized (21.0×29.7 cm) paper with a minimum of 2 cm margins on each side. The right margin should not be justified (i.e., left-justification only). Abbreviations should only be used for terms that are used at least twice, and should be defined separately on first use in the abstract and main text. All values should be expressed in SI units (The International System of Units). The page number should be indicated in the middle of the bottom of each page from the title page onwards. Do not submit the manuscript with automatic formatting features (e.g., when using EndNote, convert to plain text before submission).
8-2. Cover Letter
The cover letter accompanying the manuscript must specify the type of manuscript and include statements on ethical issues and conflicts of interest, and provide complete contact information for the corresponding author.
8-3. Author Information Page
The author information page should be uploaded as a separate file and it should contain all of the following information: title of the manuscript, the full names and ORCIDs (open researcher and contributor IDs) of all authors and their affiliations where the work was performed, a running title (less than 50 characters including spaces), and the contact information for the corresponding author including the complete postal address, telephone number, fax number, and email address. When there are multiple authors with multiple affiliations, these should be indicated using numbers as superscripts in the order of appearance (e.g., 1, 2, 3). Acknowledgements, sources of funding, and any conflicts of interest should be stated on this page under the applicable subheading.
8-4. Title
The title of the paper must be provided on the first page of the manuscript. The author names should not appear on this page.
8-5. Abstract
The Abstract must appear on a separate page and should be written. All original articles must include an Abstract that does not exceed 250 words, and be organized into Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Between three and six keywords should be provided at the bottom of the Abstract. Keywords can be selected by referring to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) published on the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/).
8-6. Main Text
The main body of the manuscript must be prepared under the following subheadings: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion. For each paragraph, (1) do not indent the first line, (2) ensure that it is separated from the previous paragraph by an additional vertical space, and (3) do not include any new-line or new-paragraph marks (except at the end of the paragraph). Although there is no set limit for the length of original articles, it is highly recommended that they be no longer than 4,000 words excluding the Abstract, tables, figure legends, and references. In the Introduction, state the purpose of the research in a concise and clear way, and only include details regarding the background that are related to the purpose. In the Materials and Methods, describe the materials (or subjects) and the methods in detail. The sources of the each apparatus or reagent used should be provided in detail: name of the company and its city, (state, for US-based companies), and country location. Articles describing research involving humans and animals must state in this section that the work was approved by the applicable institutional ethics committee or review board. The manuscript must also state that informed consent was obtained from the subjects, where applicable. The methods used for statistical analysis and criteria for statistical significance should also be described. The Results should be presented in a logical sequence, in terms of the text, tables, and illustrations. Do not repeat all of the data in the tables or figures in the text; instead describe only important points and trends. In the Discussion, observations pertaining to the results of the research and other related materials should be interpreted for the reader. Emphasize new and important observations, and do not simply repeat information that is already provided in the Introduction or Results.
8-7. Acknowledgements
If necessary, persons who have made substantial contributions but who have not met the criteria for authorship can be acknowledged in this section.
8-8. References
The references should be cited in the main text using Arabic numerals as superscripts (e.g., 3,7,10–12) that are numbered in the order cited. In the References section, the references should be numbered in their order of appearance in the text and listed as separate pages. There is no upper limit for the number of references in original papers, but this should preferably not exceed 40. List all of the authors when they are six or fewer; when there are seven or more, list only the first six and add “et al.”. If an article has been published online but has not yet been allocated issue or page numbers, the digital object identifier (DOI) should be supplied. Journal titles should be abbreviated in the style used in Index Medicus. Other types of references not described below should follow The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/). Do not reference papers that have not been accepted for publication; instead, these can be specified as unpublished data in the body of the text. Personal communications should only be mentioned in the main text. The EndNote reference style for ACN is specified on the homepage of this journal (http://www.e-acn.org).
Sample References
1) Journal articles:
Lee KS, Choi IS. A clinical study of brain tuberculomas based upon 20 case records. J Korean Neurol Assoc 1985;3:241–253.
Senderek J, Müller JS, Dusl M, Strom TM, Guergueltcheva V, Diepolder I, et al. Hexosamine biosynthetic pathway mutations cause neuromuscular transmission defect. Am J Hum Genet 2011;88:162–172.
2) Book:
Wyllie E. The treatment of epilepsy. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1997;97–98.
3) Book chapter:
Calne CB, Duvoision RFC, McGeer E. Speculation on the etiology of Parkinson’s disease. In: Hassler RG, Christ JF, eds. Advances in neurology. 2nd ed. Vol. 40. New York: Raven Press, 1984;353–360.
4) Online publication:
Scheidl E, Böhm J, Simó M, Rózsa C, Bereznai B, Kovács T, et al. Ultrasonography of MADSAM neuropathy: focal nerve enlargements at sites of existing and resolved conduction blocks. Neuromuscul Disord 2012 Apr 16. [Epub]. DOI:10.1016/j.nmd.2012.03.005.

5) Online resources:
Leiden Muscular Dystrophy Pages©. Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy [Internet]. Leiden, Netherlands: Center for Human and Clinical Genetics, Leiden University Medical Center; c2012 [accessed 2012 Jun 6]. Available from: http://www.dmd.nl/.
Neuromuscular Home Page. Chronic immune neuropathies: demyelinating [Internet]. Washington (MO, USA): Neuromuscular Disease Center, Washington University; c2012 [accessed 2012 Jun 7]. Available from: http://neuromuscular.wustl.edu/antibody/pnimdem.html.
8-9. Tables
Each table should be included as an MS Word table in order to ensure correct column alignment. Cite and number tables in the order they are mentioned in the text. There should be no more than five tables. Use horizontal lines only above and below column headings and at the bottom of a table; do not use vertical lines. If a nonstandard abbreviation is used in a table or a description is necessary, this information should appear as a table footnote annotated using superscripted lower-case letters (e.g., a, b, c) to the right of the part that needs explanation. The significance of observations, as determined by appropriate statistical analyses, should be indicated.
8-10. Figures
Cite figures in numerical order (e.g., Fig. 1, Fig. 2) as they appear in the text. Figures must be submitted as separate files saved in JPEG, TIFF, EPS, or PPT format (do not embed the figures in the MS Word manuscript file). Each image should have at least the following resolution: 600 dpi for line art (an image composed of lines and text), 300 dpi for halftone (a continuous-tone photograph that contains no text), or 600 dpi for combined line art and halftone. Photographs of recognizable persons should be accompanied by a signed release from the person or his/her legal guardian authorizing publication. Legends for figures must appear on a separate page at the end of the manuscript file.
8-11. Articles Other Than Original Manuscripts
The following types of articles are also accepted: invited review, editorial, case report, brief communication, letter to the editor, controversies in clinical neurophysiology, and images in clinical neurophysiology. The general guidelines for these publications follow those for original articles, except as described below.
Invited Review
An invited review is a contemplation focusing on a certain topic decided by the editorial board and published after the proofreading process. The Abstract is limited to up to 250 words. An invited review does not have a structured format. Commissioned articles are reviewed by the editorial board.
Special Articles
This category consists of articles that highlight and discuss issues of special interest to the readership. Special Articles will be written by leaders in the research community of clinical neurophysiology, pain, and autonomic medicine. In addition, one of the committees of Korean Society of Clinical Neurophysiology or Korean Society of Pain & Autonomic Disorders will be invited as the author or group of authors of special articles. These special articles are commissioned by the Editors.
Editorial
The editor-in-chief or members of the editorial board may present their opinions on articles published on the same volume and number of this journal. An editorial should be written with a title and text comprising no more than 400 words. Only one author is listed. There can be only one table or figure, and no more than five references.
Case Report
The Abstract of a case report should be no more than 80 words. Up to three keywords should be listed. The main text should be no more than 1,000 words. In the main text, first describe the general background and significance regarding the case with no subheading. The case and its related results are described under the subheading of “Case”, and authors’ opinions and speculations are described under “Discussion”. There should be no more than three tables and figures, and no more than ten references.
Letter to the Editor
Constructive criticisms and opinions on certain articles published in this journal within the last 6 months are accepted. The text is limited to 800 words, with no more than five references.
Images in Clinical Neurophysiology
Images in clinical neurophysiology include image materials with very unusual or rare features in the field of clinical neurophysiology. There can be up to 2 authors, with 300 words of text, 1 figure, and 3 references. No Abstract is required.
8-12. Authorʼs Role
List all authors along with their specific roles in the project and preparation of the manuscript.

8-13. Financial Disclosures
All submissions require financial disclosure of all authors. A statement that documents all funding sources and potential conflicts of interest from each author that relate to the research covered in the article submitted must be included on this page, regardless of date. This material will be printed with the published article.
8-14. Submission of Video
Any audio or video files for abstract or full text should be submitted after acceptance. Any kinds of audio file formats that support the HTML5 audio format are accepted including mp3, wav, or ogg. The video file formats that support HTML5 video are accepted including mp4, webM, or ogg.
9. Author's Checklist
□ Manuscript in MS Word format.
□ Cover letter from the corresponding author.
□ Written in double-spaced standard 12-point font.
□ Presented in the following order (for an original article): title page, Abstract and keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, tables, and figure legends.
□ All pages numbered consecutively, starting with the title page.
□ Author information page with article title, full name(s) and ORCIDs (open researcher and contributor IDs) of all author, affiliation(s), corresponding author’s e-mail and postal addresses, running title (less than 50 characteristics), and footnote (if any).
□ Up to 250 words, and up to 4,000 words in the main body of the manuscript (for an original article).
□ Up to six relevant MeSH keywords.
□ All tables and figures are referenced in numerical order in the main text.
□ Figure(s) provided as separate files in JPEG, TIFF, EPS, or PPT format at a high resolution.
□ References listed in the correct format. All references listed in the References section are cited in the text.
※ Contact Information of The Editor-in-Chief
Yoon-Ho Hong
Department of Neurology, Seoul National University (SNU) College of Medicine
SMG-SNU Boramae Medical Center
20 Boramaero-5-Gil, Dongjak-Gu, Seoul 07061, Republic of Korea
Tel: +82-2-2266-7238
Fax: +82-2-831-2826
E-mail: acn.journal@e-acn.org

※ Delegation
Other items that are not stated on this guideline follow the decision of the editorial board.

※ Supplementary Provisions
1) This guideline enforces from September 14th, 2001.
2) This guideline enforces from June 10th, 2008 (modification).
3) This guideline enforces from January 1st, 2012 (modification)
4) This guideline enforces from July 1st, 2013 (modification)
5) This guideline enforces from December 1st, 2016 (modification)
Editorial Office
Department of Neurology, Seoul National University (SNU) College of Medicine
SMG-SNU Boramae Medical Center
20 Boramaero-5-Gil, Dongjak-Gu, Seoul 07061, Republic of Korea
TEL : +82-2-2266-7238    FAX : +82-2-831-2826   E-mail: acn.journal@e-acn.org
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