Author Guidelines

ACNR (Advances in Clinical Neuroscience and Rehabilitation) is a peer-reviewed open access neurology journal, based in the UK and with international readership. We aim to keep busy practicing neurologists and rehabilitation specialists up-to-date with the latest advances in their fields, including areas of neurology and neuroscience outside their main area of sub-specialty interest.

ACNR is a member of Crossref and is indexed by the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and Google Scholar, offering quality assurance for authors and readers. We are also able to add articles to PubMed Central on an author’s behalf, if their article is based on output funded by any of the organisations on this list.

Authors should follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Contents

• Aims & Scope
  • Clinical Articles: Length; Abstract; References
  • Systematic Reviews
  • Case Reports
• Authorship
• Biographical Information
• Conflict of Interest
• Copyright & Licensing
• Fees/Charges
• Figures
• Pictures & Illustrations
• Patient Consent and Confidentiality
• Plagiarism
• Proofs
• Peer Review
• Self-Archiving Policy
• What to send
• Where to send it

Are you looking for editorial support to help with journal or congress submissions? Contact Optimal Editorial Services who can offer independent advice.

For any other queries, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Aims & Scope

The major content of ACNR is short reviews commissioned independently by our editorial team, from leading UK and international experts.

However, we also consider unsolicited articles. ACNR focuses on emerging knowledge about clinical neuroscience, neurology, rehabilitation and therapeutics, as well as evidence-based analysis of neurological practice – often in areas where definitive evidence and consensus is lacking. Read our About section for more information. We do not publish animal research studies.

We recommend that, before submitting an article, you familiarise yourself with ACNR’s style and content by reading the journal, either in print or online, if you have not already done so.

ACNR prioritises review articles, but will consider original research articles and systematic reviews where appropriate. Please contact the Publisher Rachael Hansford with any pre-submission enquiries.

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Clinical Articles

Length

The length of the article will be agreed between the Contributor and Editor. Unless otherwise stated the length should be between 1200-1500 words.

Abstract

The article should begin with a short unstructured abstract. 

References

Please restrict the number of references cited to a maximum of 15 and, if references are available online, please supply a link. References should be numbered within the text in brackets e.g. [1]. Please follow this style:

[1] Garrard P, Maloney LM, Hodges JR, Patterson K. The Effects of very early Alzheimer’s disease on the characteristics of writing by a renowned author. Brain 2005;128:250-60. 

In addition, please provide links to individual doi’s in your references. These can be easily found by pasting your reference list into Crossref.

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Systematic Reviews

ACNR will consider publishing Systematic Reviews, but potential contributors are encouraged to contact the Editors to ensure that the topic is of interest to the journal. Systematic Reviews should clearly define the research question in terms of population, interventions, comparators, outcomes and study designs (PICOS), and state which reporting guidelines were used in the study. They follow the basic structure of abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, references, and tables and figures as appropriate. In addition, they should have the following format:

• The article should be subtitled “A Systematic Review”
• Max 2500 words
• Max 50 references
• ≤5 tables and/or figures
• A PRISMA-style flow diagram should be included 
• Include a table with ratings of the quality of the studies/evidence
• Key Points

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Case Reports

View more information on submitting Case Reports.

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Figures

Figures should be supplied in an electronic format at a suitable size for printing with the following resolutions: 600 dots per inch (dpi) for line drawings and combinations; 300 dpi for greyscale and colour. Please ensure that the prepared electronic image files print at a legible size and are of a high quality for print publication.

Pictures/Illustrations

These should be of good quality and preferably supplied as digital images – saved as .jpg, .tif or .gif files, scanned at 300 dpi at around 6×4 inches in size. If appropriate, please indicate where the picture may be cropped. Where appropriate please include a caption.

Biographical Information

The Contributor should supply their full name, qualifications, post held, institution and a short bio-data (approx 50 words), detailing areas of professional interest, publications, previous posts. The contributor should also supply a head and shoulders photograph of themselves. These images should be of reasonable quality.

We would also like a link to your ORCID profile where possible.

Where there are multiple authors, please ensure the lead author is listed first. If you wish, you can supply a statement of author contributions.

What to send

Articles should be supplied via e-mail to anna@acnr.co.uk. Large files can be sent free of charge via wetransfer.com. We can accept a variety of formats including Word, but if in doubt simply save the document as a plain text file. 

You can also supply keywords for us to use in search engine optimisation.

Where to send it

Contributions should be sent to Anna Phelps, anna@acnr.co.uk or via wetransfer.com or similar.

The ACNR article has had such far reaching impact. We have been inundated with enquiries about the tool since publication.  

Manoj Sivan, Associate Clinical Professor, Leeds, UK

Authorship

 We follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) principles of authorship. Authorship should be based on the following four criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
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.

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT cannot be cited as authors. An attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Any use of an LLM should be properly documented in an appropriate part of the manuscript.

Copyright & Licensing

Authors retain the copyright and publishing rights on their published articles without restrictions.

Articles in ACNR are published under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Work submitted for publication must be original, previously unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. If previously published figures, tables, or parts of text are to be included, the copyright-holder’s permission must have been obtained prior to submission.

Conflict of Interest

Authors are responsible for disclosing all conflicts of interest in their manuscript including financial, consultant, institutional, personal and other relationships between themselves and others that might bias their work. All source of funding should be acknowledged in the manuscript. To prevent ambiguity, any possible conflict of interest, financial or otherwise, related to the submitted article must be clearly indicated on the manuscript and if there is no conflict of interest this should be explicitly stated as “none declared”.

As confirmation, please complete our disclosure form.

Fees/Charges

ACNR is fully open access. In addition, there are no submission, article processing or other charges for authors or their institutions when publishing with ACNR. Find out how ACNR is funded.

Patient Consent and Confidentiality

Any article that contains personal medical information about an identifiable living individual requires the patient’s explicit consent before it can be published. This means the patient is required to sign our consent form after having read the article. A patient’s anonymity must be protected and any experimental data related to human subjects must have been obtained with consent and subject to the ethical guidelines of the author’s institutions. Authors should remove patients’ names and other identifying information from figures. If any identifying details appear in text, tables, and/or figures, the author must provide proof of informed consent obtained from the patient. Photographs with bars placed over eyes of patients should not be used in publication unless written consent has been obtained from the patient. 

Download our Patient Consent form.

Peer Review

Once you have submitted your article, the editors will review to decide whether it is appropriate for ACNR.

If your article is accepted by our editors, it will be sent to at least two peer reviewers, who may suggest amendments. ACNR operates single anonymised peer review, where the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author. The Editors also reserve the right to alter or amend the contribution. If this happens, we will return the article to you for reconsideration and re-submission in its amended form.

Articles submitted by members of the ACNR editorial board are subject to the same peer review process, but an individual editor will have no input or influence on the peer review process or publication decision for their own article.

Find out more about our peer review process (PDF).

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as “The reuse of someone else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source.”

Plagiarism can be said to have clearly occurred when large blocks of text have been cut and pasted without appropriate and unambiguous attribution.  Care must also be taken to ensure appropriate attribution and citation when paraphrasing and summarising the work of others, and when re-using text from an author’s own previous publication (self-plagiarism).

Such manuscripts will not be considered for publication in ACNR.

ACNR uses online plagiarism checking tools such as Duplichecker and Grammarly and assesses any suspected plagiarism on a case by case basis, following COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines.

If plagiarism is discovered pre-publication, we may reject the article, or return it to the author and ask them to rewrite the copied content and cite the appropriate references.

If plagiarism is discovered post-publication, we may correct or retract the article as appropriate.

Proofs

All manuscripts will undergo some editorial modification, so it is important to check proofs carefully. PDF page proofs and a link to the online article will be sent via e-mail to the corresponding author for checking. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked and returned within 48 hours. Corrections should be returned by annotated PDF or e-mail.

Self-Archiving Policy

Authors of articles published in ACNR are permitted to self-archive the pre-print and the accepted version of their article (post peer review), as well as the publisher’s version (PDF).

• On author’s personal website, institutional website or institutional repository.
• Source must be acknowledged, with link provided to publisher version.
• Authors retain copyright
• Authors may post articles in PubMed Central and mirror sites, website, institutional website or institutional repository.
• Authors may post on networks such as ResearchGate and Mendeley
• Author’s post-print must be released with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License

This policy is registered with SHERPA/RoMEO.

The ACNR team was very helpful and efficient throughout the process, so thank you!  

Mitchell Lycett, Dept of Neurology, North Shore Hospital, Australia