Instructions for Authors

It is mandatory for the corresponding author to register with the USG journals electronic manuscript tracking system before submitting an article. All articles should be prepared according below mentioned instructions and submitted with the following files: Cover letter, manuscript, figures and tables including legends, supplementary files (if any).

The cover letter should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal and specify the type of article, title of the manuscript, summarize why it should be published and its value addition to the scientific literature.

In addition, the authors must state that the work is original and has not been published and is not submitted for publication anywhere else.

The following types of manuscripts can be considered for peer-reviewed publication in Journal of Neuroimaging in Psychiatry and Neurology:

Original Report: Original neuroimaging data relevant to psychiatry, neurology, cognition, behavior and emotion.

Review and Mini-review: Should be relevant to neuroimaging. Must provide novel perspective.

Negative Results: Neuroimaging data that did not validate the hypothesis examined but are still important either for making a concept or avoiding duplication of experiments will be included under this category. The manuscript should include the significance of negative data.

Perspective: This category is intended for the theoretical papers that provide a futuristic view of concepts or technologies.  Authors will be allowed to use their imagination in these manuscripts.

Hypothesis: Hypotheses developed in these manuscripts are expected to be based on existing data.

Letters to the Editor: Comments on manuscripts published in the journal in last 6 months will be included in this category.

Computational Neuroimaging: This category will include papers with original modeling and reviews or perspectives on modeling of neuroimaging data.

News and Discussion: This section will include news and discussion on technologies, concepts and data published elsewhere.

Rapid Publication: Authors submitting manuscripts under any of the above categories (except Review/Mini review) can request rapid publication if the early dissemination of information is important. If adequate justification is provided, these manuscripts will be reviewed and published within 7 days of initial submission.

Preliminary Data: Data of extreme interest may be published under this category

Case Report: This category will include interesting neuroimaging data that were acquired in a small number of patients.

Clinical Trial Registration: In order for clinical trial results to be considered for publication in our journal (which adhere to ICMJE standards), all clinical trials that start recruiting patients or volunteers must be registered with a public registry before the enrolment of the first subject. This ensures that everyone can find key information about every clinical trial whose principal aim is to shape medical decision-making.

The ICMJE accepts registration of clinical trials in the following registries: 

In addition to the above registries, starting in June 2007 the ICMJE will also accept registration in any of the primary registries that participate in the WHO International Clinical Trials Portal (see http://www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/index.html). 

USG accommodates a wide range of manuscript structures and considers manuscripts of any length with no restrictions for the number of words, figures, or the length of the supporting information.

All manuscripts should be typed in single column, double-spaced, and include line numbers and page numbers in order to facilitate the review process.

Generally for original research articles, manuscript file should include the following sections, in the below mentioned order: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results & Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Figure Legends, Table Legends and Supplementary files, if any. Figures and Tables must be submitted as separate files while submitting online through the editorial manager.

Authors may submit their manuscript files in Word (as .doc or .docx), LaTeX (as .pdf), or RTF format.

Units used in the manuscript must be in accordance with the International System of Units and standardized recommended nomenclature should be used as appropriate. Authors should refer to chemical compounds and biomolecules using systematic nomenclature, preferably using International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

For the manuscripts dealing with the microbial strains and cultures, the public culture collections (ATCC, ECACC, NCTC, NCIMB, MTCC, etc) deposition number should be provided. The PubChem compound identifier (CID) number from the NCBI PubChem Compound database should be provided, if chemical compounds are used for the research. The list of the chemical compounds (with PubChem CID) and the microbial strains (deposition number) should be listed below the keywords section.

Standard abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and defined upon first use in the text whereas non-standard abbreviations should be avoided unless they appear at least four times in the text. Authors must include the list of non-standard abbreviations at the end, immediately before the acknowledgments section of their manuscript. Equations should be inserted in editable format from the equation editor (MathType is highly recommended).

Manuscript file should contain the full article title and a short running title. The full title (maximum of 25 words) should be specific, concise and be a statement of the main finding or conclusion presented in the manuscript that can help the reader to decide whether they should read the text or not. Abbreviations should be avoided within the title. The running title should be a maximum of 6 words in length and should state the theme of the paper.

All author’s full names should be listed together with their respective affiliations which include the associated lab and / or department, university, or organization, city (pin or zip or post codes), state, country along with the phone numbers and email ids.
The abstract should:
  • Render the concept and significance of the work
  • Describe the main / primary objective of the study
  • Briefly outline how the study was done
  • Notify the important results / findings
  • Should not exceed 250 words in length
Authors should summarize the contents of the article in a pictorial form that clearly represent the work described in the article. Graphical abstracts (Illustration / Figure) should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system.
Five to ten keywords (includes terms for indexing) representing the main content of the article.
The introduction should illustrate the research objective addressing the problem and help the readers to understand the purpose and significance of the study. This section should include a brief review of the literature search to justify the importance of the study. Also, the section should end with a brief statement of what is being reported in the article.

The methods section should include the design of the study, methods and protocols, materials used (type of participants, if any), analytical procedures used and other information to allow other interested researchers to be able to reproduce your study.

For studies involving human or animal subjects, a statement detailing IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) /IRB (Institutional Review Board) and / or related ethical approval and consent should be included in the methods section. For further details of the journal's editorial policies and ethical guidelines please refer to USG Editorial Policies.

The results and discussion may be combined into a single section or presented separately. Results section should include the interpretations and / or extrapolations of the readings / results of the analytical procedures with statistical approach, where appropriate. Discussion should help understand the problem and how the outcome of this study advances the current system.

Together, this section should describe the results of the experiments and interpretation with the previous related studies discussing the hypothesis presented as the basis of the study and provides a succinct explanation of the implications of the findings.

Cite references in the text by name and year in parentheses. For e.g.,
Subject area covers many disciplines (Victor, 1981).
This assumption of theory was approved by John and Daniel (1996).
This technique was effectively proved and has been widely reported (Peter, 1991; Goodmann et al., 1995; Black and Smith, 2008; Mandal et al., 2012).
This section should clearly summarize the main conclusions of the research giving clear explanation of their importance and emphasizing on potential future directions.

Authors should provide a list of abbreviations used in the text, and they should be defined in the text at first use.

USG follows the recommendations by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors stating that all financial, commercial or other relationships that might be perceived by the academic community as representing a potential conflict of interest must be disclosed. If no such relationship exists, authors will be asked to declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any interests mentioned. For more details, see USG Editorial policies.

This is a section to acknowledge persons (specific colleagues, institutions, or agencies) who have made substantial contributions to the design, implementation, acquisition of the data, analysis and interpretation of results and / or who was involved in drafting or revising the manuscript, but who do not fulfill the criteria to be included as an author. A statement about the source (s) of funding including grant numbers should be included, if appropriate.

All citations in the text, figures or tables must be in the reference list and vice-versa. References must be listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, citations should be indicated by the reference number in square brackets. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Only published or accepted manuscripts should be included in the reference list.  For accepted but unpublished works, use in press instead of page numbers. Any inclusion of verbatim text must be contained in quotation marks and clearly reference the original source.

Examples of the USG reference style

Journal Article
Badgaiyan RD. 2012. Manipulation of the extrastriate frontal loop can resolve visual disability in blindsight patients. Med Hypotheses 79(6): 767-769.

Badgaiyan RD, Fischman AJ, Alpert NM. 2003. Striatal dopamine release during unrewarded motor task in human volunteers. Neuroreport 14(11): 1421-1424.

In press article
Badgaiyan RD, Weise S, Wack D, Vidal Melo M. 2014. Attenuation of regional cerebral blood flow during memory processing after coronary artery bypass surgery. Anesth Analg (In Press).

Article within conference proceedings
Badgaiyan RD. 2014. Single Scan Dynamic Molecular Imaging: An Emerging Neuroimaging Technique. First Conference on Neuroscience and Neurobiology Research, Singapore.


Complete book
Mauro Giacca. 2010. Gene Therapy. Springer Milan, Italy

Article or Book chapter within a book
Badgaiyan RD. 2014. Imaging Dopamine Neurotransmission in Live Human Brain. In: Progress in Brain Research: Dopamine (Vol 211), Eds: Diana M, Chiara GD, Spano P. Elsevier. 211: pp 167-184.

Link / URL
The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do]

Clinical trial registration record
Mendelow AD. 2006. Surgical Trial in Lobar Intracerebral Haemorrhage. Current Controlled Trials. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN22153967

Report of International Science Meets / Initiatives
World Health Organization Global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness. An informal consultation. WHO/PBL/97. 61. Geneva: WHO, 1997.

Figures and Tables files (including legends) must be submitted as separate files, not embedded in manuscript text. Legends should be included in the manuscript file and should be placed at the end of the manuscript. Legends are required to have a short title of 18 words or less and should describe the message of the figure or table. Legends should be preceded by the appropriate label, for example 'Figure 1' or 'Table 1'. Figure panels are referred to by bold capital letters in brackets: (A), (B), (C), (D), etc.

Tables: Tables should be created in Word, Excel or LaTeX and have a concise title. They must be primarily cell-based and editable. Graphics or colored fonts are not acceptable, instead bold or italic can be used to emphasize. Tables should be self-explanatory and include units in the column/row headings.

Figures: Figures should be of high-resolution files submitted in TIFF (or JPEG) or EPS (or PDF). Photos (both B/W and color) should be at least 300 dpi and line drawings 600 dpi. For certain scenarios such as need to print high-quality graphics, authors may be requested to submit higher resolution graphics.

 

Color Image Mode

Images must be submitted in the color mode RGB.

For drugs and devices, the generic names should be used. If required, the brand name or proprietary name (along with the name and address of the manufacturer) should be in parentheses, and defined in the manuscript at first use. Thereafter, the generic name should be used.

Chemical structures should be prepared using ChemDraw or other drawing programs and should select settings as close as possible according to the following given below:

Drawing settings: chain angle – 120 degrees; bond spacing - 18% of width; bond length - 14.4 pt; bold width - 2.0 pt; line width - 0.6 pt; margin width - 1.6 pt; hash spacing - 2.5 pt.

Text settings: Atom labels and captions font – Arial or Helvetica; size - 10 pt.

Authors are recommended to submit a 'mark image' that can be used to represent their article online in the journal homepage, table of contents, etc. Mark images should be single, high resolution, eye-catching image and ideally a cropped / full portion of image taken from the figures or raw images submitted as supporting information of the article. If no image is submitted, a figure from the paper will be designed as the mark image. Please do not submit any figures or photos that have been previously copyrighted unless you have explicit written permission from the copyright holder to publish.

For original full-length research articles and review articles, a synopsis are required which reflect in the content to represent their article online in the journal homepage, table of contents, etc. The content should specify the significance and emphasize the highlights of the research findings relative to the prior published studies or reports.

The data which is not of primary importance or cannot be included in the article because of its large size (array data, excel files, large size raw images etc.) or the current format (such as movies, raw data traces, power point presentations, etc.) can be uploaded as supplementary material during the submission procedure. The Supplementary Material can be uploaded as Figures (.FIG) and 3D imaging data (NIfTI), Data Sheet (word, excel, csv, fasta, pdf or zip files), Presentation (power point, pdf or zip files), Audio (mp3, wav or wma) or Movie (avi, divx, flv, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpg or wmv).

Authors should include all the necessary ethical guidelines and other guidelines for specific research areas in the manuscript accordingly.

USG reserves the right to reject the manuscripts publication that do not meet the technical or ethical standards (COPE) according to the editorial policies and retract publications if any breach and / or misconduct of ethical standards, dispute of interests comes to light during post-publication peer review process.

It is the sole responsibility of the authors to make sure that their research article does not include any plagiarized content and/or breach the ethical guidelines and the publishers are not responsible for any such scientific misconduct. USG vows to strictly adhere to all the policies and guidelines related to scientific publishing (as mentioned in the Publishing Policies and Guidelines section) and if any misconduct is detected at any time during the publication process, USG has the right to retract an article or publish erratum under the advice of the Editor-in-Chief.

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IC Value 2018
77.95

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