Enacted on October 2005
Revised on October 2011
Revised on January 2012
Revised on October 2015
Revised on October 2016

Korean Journal of Neurotrauma (KJNT) is an international, peer-reviewed biannually (30th April and 31th October) journal of medicine published in English. It is the official journal of the Korean Neurotraumatology Society. KJNT follows the Open Access journal policy. KJNT publishes important papers covering the whole field of neurosurgery, including basic or clinical studies in central and peripheral injuries. Also studies on rare cases and technical notes of special instruments or equipment that might be useful to the field of neurotraumatology are also acceptable.
 
 
MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION
 
Authors should submit manuscripts via the electronic manuscript management system (submit.kjnt.org) for KJNT. Manuscript should be submitted by the corresponding author, who should indicate the address, phone facsimile number, and e-mail address for correspondence in 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
    Prof. Sun-Chul Hwang, MD
    Korean Journal of Neurotrauma
    Depatrment of Neurosurgery, Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine
    170 Jomaru-ro Wonmi-gu, Bucheon 14584, Korea
    Tel: +82-32-621-5059
    Fax: +82-2-523-6812
    E-mail: schwangns@gmail.com
 
 
RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION ETHICS
 
Research Ethics
 
Manuscripts must be prepared in strict observation of research and publication ethics guidelines recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/), the Council of Science Editors (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME, http://www.wame.org) and the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE, http://www.kamje.or.kr/intro.php?body=publishing_ethics). Any study involving human subject or human data must be approved by a responsible Institutional Review Board (IRB). For the policies on the research and publication ethics not stated in this instructions, Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr/intro.php?body=publishing_ethics) and Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines). The KJNT will follow the guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, http://publicationethics.org/) for settlement of any misconduct.
 
 
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.nih.go.kr/, or other sites accredited by the WHO as listed at http://www.who.int/ictrp/en/.
 
 
Informed Consent
 
Copies of written informed consent and 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.
 
 
Conflict of Interest
 
The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of the data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connections to pharmaceutical companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated. These conflicts of interest must be included as a footnote on the title page or in the acknowledgement section. Corresponding author should certify the disclosure of any conflict of interest with his/her signature.
 
 
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 4 conditions. If the number of authors is greater than six, there should be a list of each author’s role for the submitted paper. 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
 
All submitted manuscripts should be original and should not be considered by other scientific journals for publication at the same time. No part of the accepted manuscript should be duplicated in any other scientific journal without the permission of the Editorial Board. The duplication will be checked through CrossCheck (http://app.ithenticate.com/) or eTBLAST (http://etest.vbi.vt.edu/etblast3/) 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. There will also be penalties for the authors. A letter of permission is required for any and all material that has been published previously. It is the responsibility of the author to request permission from the publisher for any material that is being reproduced. This requirement applies to text, illustrations, and tables.
 
 
Secondary Publication
 
It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/journals.html).
 
 
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 250,000 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.
  1. 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.
  2. 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 author’s 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 doublespaced. 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.
Copyright© Korean Neurotraumatology Society.
Editorial Office
#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@kjnt.org      Privacy Policy      Developed in M2PI