editor.njn@gmail.com / journal@nsn.org.ng for more details.
PUBLICATION ETHICS FOR AUTHORS
The Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience expects that the work described in articles submitted for publication must be original and not published or submitted to another journal at the same time. It should conform to the uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals (http://www.icmje.org). This must be stated in the cover letter upon submission of the manuscript to the journal.
The submitted manuscript must contain experiments that conform to ethical standards. Where published materials are used, they should be appropriately cited; where permission is required, it is the responsibility of the authors to obtain the same. The Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience will not accept any published work, except where it was published as a pre-print or just in an abstract form. The authors must also certify that formal approval to conduct the experiments described has been obtained from the relevant institutional ethical committee with the ethical number quoted.
Humans: In experiments involving humans, written and signed consent by individuals to participate in the study and to have their data published must be obtained by the authors. If such individuals are minors or adults unable to make informed decisions, a guardian is expected to give such consent. Authors must also declare that all experiments on human subjects were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and that all procedures were carried out with the adequate understanding and written consent of the subjects.
Animal Studies: If the studies deal with animal experiments, authors must certify that formal approval to conduct the experiments described was obtained from the relevant institutional ethical committee with the ethical number cited. The authors must also attest that all efforts were made to minimise the number of animals used and their suffering. Authors must further certify that the study was carried out in accordance with either the National Institute of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH Publications No. 80-23) revised 1996, the UK Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and associated guidelines, or the European Communities Council Directive of 24 November 1986 (86/609/EEC).
The journal reserves the right to refuse manuscripts in which the appropriate and ethical use of human or animal subjects is questionable. Grants and Financial Support Authors are required to state the sources of financial support for the project, along with numbers (where applicable). If no funding was received, then authors should state: ‘Nil'. Conflict of Interest All authors are required to disclose any financial and personal relationships with any persons, company, or commercial entity that may have an interest in the subject matter of the study or the materials discussed in the manuscript or could inappropriately bias the reports. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications and registrations, and grants or other funding. A manuscript must include a section "Conflict of Interest" with a statement stating the conflict (if any). This has to come after the conclusion subsection of the main body of the article. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, then authors should state, 'None declared'. The disclosures will be held in confidence while the manuscript is under review and will not influence the editorial decision. Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the disclosures will appear in the article as a “conflict of interest.”.
Authors Contribution The authors' contribution to the article or research must be clearly defined. Using the authors’ initials will add to the blind rule of the journal. This should be included in the manuscript after the ‘Conflict of Interest’ subsection. The following will guide authorship: Anyone who has made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work. Agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work and ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. For contributors who do not meet the requirements for authorship, it is advised that they be mentioned in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section. The corresponding author(s) of each work is to handle the correspondence during the publication process and confirm their authority to act on behalf of all co-authors in matters relating to the publication and development of the manuscript and to act as a point of contact for all inquiries post-publication. This also applies to the publication of all supplementary material. The corresponding author is also responsible for obtaining such agreements and for informing the co-authors of the manuscript’s status throughout the submission, review, and publication processes. PUBLICATION PRACTICE AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT
Ethical Practice The Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience considers integrity, transparency, and academic quality as principles expected of all categories of persons associated with the journal. This has made the Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience adopt the ethical guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to allow our editors and publishers to maintain the highest publishing ethical standards. The COPE guidelines can be accessed at https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines.
Editorial Process The Editor-in-Chief has the final authority to accept or reject an article. However, the editorial team’s input is vital for this. This responsibility is exercised taking only into consideration the relevance of the work to the Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience and the quality of the content. The latter consideration takes into account the quality of the methods, the validity of the experiments, and the quality of the conclusions. In instances where errors are found even after publication, articles must either be corrected or retracted. Where there is a conflict of interest with respect to an article, the editor or editors recuse themselves and are not parties to accept or reject such an article.
Peer Review The confidentiality of all submitted manuscripts is of importance to the editorial team and is guaranteed to the authors, reviewers, and publisher. A double-blind review is adhered to during the peer review process.
Ethical Conduct of Reviewers Reviewers are usually nominated anonymously and maintained as such throughout the cycle of a particular article. Every reviewer is expected to provide his or her recommendation based on an evidential, informed, and unbiased standpoint. If the selected reviewer feels unable to review the paper thoroughly or cannot promptly review the paper, the reviewer should inform the editor and withdraw from the peer review process of the paper. Reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors, and/or the research funders. This includes exercising confidentiality with respect to all reviewed articles. Reviewers are at liberty to point out relevant published work that has not been cited.
Plagiarism The similarity and plagiarism rates of all published works and works in development are usually carried out for all articles that are to be published in the Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience. Plagiarism is the act of using another’s words, data, ideas, and materials without their expressed acknowledgement and permission.
The Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience reserves the right to check all submissions through appropriate plagiarism checking tools and exercises a zero-tolerance policy on plagiarism in respect of any and all publications. Submissions containing suspected plagiarism, in whole or in part, will be rejected. Any articles discovered to have been plagiarised post-publication will be retracted.
Salami Slicing, Duplicate, and Redundant Publication The Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience does not encourage “salami-slicing” or divided publishing. This is the act of fragmenting data into the smallest publishable units, where the authors seek to publish parts of a study as several articles instead of a single article.
The Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience also does not encourage duplicate or redundant publication. This is when research, or substantial parts of it, is published more than once by the author(s) without appropriate cross-referencing or justification for the overlap. This can be in the same language or a different language.
Furthermore, any works pending submission or publication must not be under consideration with any other publication, be it a journal, book, or other form of press.
Retractions, Corrections, and Expressions of Concern The Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience will consider retractions, corrections, or expressions of concern in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines. If an author is found to have made an error, the journal will issue a corrigendum. If the journal is found to have made an error, they will issue an erratum. However, substantive corrections will be carried out in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines: https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines.
Copyright and licencing Copyrights for articles are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Authors have the right to reuse, republish, archive, and distribute their own articles after publication. The journal or publisher is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. This journal is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
