Table of Contents

• I. General Information
• II. Submission of Manuscript
• III. LANGUAGE
• Ⅳ. Manuscript Preparation
• Ⅴ. Peer Review Process
• Ⅵ. Publication and Charges
• Ⅶ. Ethical Guidelines

I. General Information

The Journal of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery is the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery's official journal and is published biannually on 30th June and 31st October. It launched in February 2005 Volume 1 and Number 1. The Journal of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery aims to allow neurosurgeons worldwide to enrich their knowledge of patient management, education, and clinical or experimental research and increase their professionalism. This journal publishes Laboratory Investigations, Clinical Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Technical Notes, and Letters to the Editor. Our field of interest involves geriatric-associated clinical neurosurgery (cerebrovascular disease, neuro-oncology, skull base neurosurgery, spine, functional neurosurgery, epilepsy, neuro-trauma, and peripheral nerve disease) and laboratory work in neuroscience. Any authors affiliated with an accredited biomedical institution may submit manuscripts.

II. Submission of Manuscript

• 1. Authors are requested to submit their papers electronically by using online manuscript submission available at https://submit.jksgn.org.
• 2. Corresponding author is responsible for submission and revision of the manuscripts. ID is required for processing and can be generated at the homepage.
• 3. All authors should sign on the Copyright Transfer Agreement and Conflict of Interest Disclosure Statement form to certify that the contents of the manuscript have not been published and are not being considered for publication elsewhere. If any research grant has been given by any private company or group, this information should be described on the form. All authors must sign their autograph by themselves. The form can be downloaded at the homepage of the Journal of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery (https://www.jksgn.org), and should be submitted at the time of paper submitting.
• 4. Regarding author information, the list of the authors in the manuscript should include only those who were directly involved in the process of the work. Authors can refer to the guideline by Harvard University in 1999 to find details on authorship (https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Sites/Ombuds/files/AUTHORSHIP%20GUIDELINES.pdf).
• 5. Decision for the publication of the submitted manuscript will be made solely by the editorial board.
• 6. Professional editing in English is recommended for non-native speakers. Editorial office may request an English editing. In cases of accepted manuscripts, we may provide copy editing and English proofreading free of charge.
• 7. All published papers become the permanent property of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery.
  Copyrights of all published materials are owned by the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery. Permission must be obtained from the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery for any commercial use of materials. Every author should sign the copyright transfer agreement forms.

III. LANGUAGE

All manuscripts must be written in English. Abbreviation should be avoided as possible as one can. When it is used, full expression of the abbreviation following abbreviated word in parentheses should be given at first use. All units should be given in metric system (The International System of Units: SI units).

IV. Manuscript Preparation

Authors should refer to Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

1. Title Page

• 1) The title pages must be composed of external and internal title pages.
• 2) The external title page must contain the article title, and full names of all authors with their institutional affiliations both. The type of manuscript (clinical articles, review articles, case reports, technical notes, and letters to the editor) should also be addressed. 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. Running head must be included consisting of no more than 65 characters/spaces.
  The external title page must 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.
• 3) The internal title page should only contain the article title. The internal title page must not contain any information on the names and affiliations of the authors.

2. Manuscript Format

• 1) The manuscript should be composed of no more than 5,000 English words for clinical and review articles, 3,000 English words case reports and technical notes except for references, tables, and figures. It should be composed of no more than 600 English words for letters to the editor.
• 2) The clinical articles should be organized in the order of title, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references, tables, and figures or illustrations. There should be no more than 40 references.
• 3) In case reports, materials and methods and results can be replaced with case report(s). The number of references should be 20 or less and the figure number 5 or less.
• 4) Manuscript format may vary in review articles. There should be no more than 100 references in review articles.
• 5) Text should be written in 11 point fonts with double line spacing.

3. Abstract

• 1) The abstract should include brief descriptions on the objective, methods, results, and conclusion as well as a detailed description of the data. An abstract containing 250 words or less is required for clinical articles and 200 words or less for review articles and case reports.
• 2) Abstract can be revised by the decision of editorial board, and some sentences can be modified as a result of revision.
• 3) A list of keywords, with a minimum of two items and maximum of six items, should be included at the end of the abstract.
• 4) The selection of keywords should be based on Medical Subject Heading (MeSH; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh).

4. 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.

5. Materials and Methods

• 1) The article should record research plans, objective, and methods in order, as well as the data analysis strategies and control of bias in the study. Enough details should be furnished for the reader to understand the method(s) without reference to another work in the study described.
• 2) When reporting experiments with human subjects, the authors must document the approval received from the local Institutional Review Board. 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 such. Approved number of IRB must be noted.
• 3) Photographs disclosing patients must be accompanied by a signed release form from the patient or family permitting publication.
• 4) Ensure correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors), and, unless inappropriate, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex and gender. If the study was done involving an exclusive population, for example in only one sex, authors should justify why, except in obvious cases (e.g., prostate cancer). Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity and justify their relevance.

6. Results

• 1) The authors should logically describe their results of observations and analyses performed using methodology given in the previous section and provide actual data.
• 2) For biometric measurements in which considerable amount of stochastic variation exists, a statistical evaluation is mandatory. The results must be sorely from the findings of the current study and not refer to any previous reports.
• 3) While an effort should be made to avoid overlapping descriptions by Tables and by main text, important trends and points in the Table should be described in the text.

7. 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.

8. Conclusion

The conclusion section should include a concise statement of the major findings of the study in accordance with the study purpose.

9. References

References should be ordered according to order of appearance in the text, using Vancouver style. Journal titles should be abbreviated in the style used in Medline. Unpublished data should preferably not be cited. Where this is unavoidable, however, the source should be placed in parentheses in the main text and such expressions as “personal opinion exchange” or “unpublished data” should be used. Other types of references not described below should follow Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine).

• The citation superscript style is as follows:
Reference number in the text, tables, and figures should in a bracket ([ ]). If two or more citation numbers are required, separate numbers with a comma (,) or a dash (–) (e.g., Boyes [1–3], Chapman [1,2,7]).

• Journal article

• 1. Choi YH, Pee YJ, Jang IT. Percutaneous vertebroplasty: can it be an alternative treatment option for thoracolumbar burst fractures? J Korean Soc Geriatr Neurosurg 2020;16:67–70.
• 2. Lee I, Park K, Jeong TS, et al. Clinical outcomes of diffuse axonal injury after traumatic brain injury according to magnetic resonance grading. J Korean Soc Geriatr Neurosurg 2020;16:71–7.
• 3. Faiver L, Hensler D, Rush SC, Kashlan O, Williamson CA, Rajajee V. Safety and efficacy of 23.4% sodium chloride administered via peripheral venous access for the treatment of cerebral herniation and intracranial pressure elevation. Neurocrit Care 2021 Jun 25 [Epub]. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12028-021-01248-7.

• Book chapter

• 4. Sweitzer S, Arruda J, DeLeo J. The cytokine challenge: methods for the detection of central cytokines in rodent models of persistent pain. In: Kruger L, editor. Methods in pain research. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2001. p. 109-32.

• Entire book

• 5. Atlas SW. Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain and spine. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2001.

• Website

• 6. National Cancer Institut. CANCERNET-PDQ [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Cancer Institute; 2016 [cited 2021 Jun 10]. Available from: https://www.cancer.gov/publications/pdq.
  
• 7. National Institue on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Drug use and viral infections (HIV, hepatitis) DrugFacts [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): NIDA; 2020 [cited 2021 Jan 5]. Available from: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug-use-viral-infections-hiv-hepatitis.

10. Tables

• 1) Tables should be created using the table formatting and editing feature of Microsoft Word. The title of the table must be noted. Tables cannot be submitted in a picture format.
• 2) Tables should be prepared in detail, in order to understand the contents of the manuscript without further reference.
• 3) Do not include vertical lines in table, and refer to the table formats in formal papers in Journal of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery.

11. Figures and Illustrations

• 1) Figures should have resolution of 300 dpi or above and should be submitted individually (Namely, if Figure 1 is divided into A, B, C and D, do not combine them into one, but submit each of them separately). Allowable file format for figures are JPG or TIF(TIFF) only.
• 2) Figures should be named according to figure name (example: Fig-1A.tif). If the quality of the photographs is considered as inappropriate for printing, resubmission of them can be requested by the journal.
• 3) Authors should submit figures in black and white if they want them to be printed in black and white. Authors are responsible for any additional costs of producing color figures (Additional cost for color printing is determined by the editorial board).
• 4) Line art should have resolution of 1,200 dpi or more in JPG or TIF format.

12. Author Check List

• 1) Before submitting the manuscript, authors should double-check all requirements noted in the agreement form regarding the registration and copyrights of their manuscript. A manuscript that does not fit the author instructions of the journal regarding format and references will be returned to the authors for further correction.
• 2) The page numbers in the manuscript should be counted from the page with the abstract, and the name and affiliation of the authors should not appear thereafter.
• 3) Author check list should be prepared, signed by corresponding author, submitted with manuscripts, and then registered online. Relevant forms can be downloaded at manuscript submission site.

V. Peer Review Process

All manuscripts are considered confidential. They are peer-reviewed by at least two anonymous reviewers selected by the Editor. The corresponding author is notified as soon as possible of the Editor’s decision to accept, reject, or ask for revisions. The average time interval for an initial review process that involves both editorial and peer reviews is approximately 1 month; occasionally, there are unavoidable delays, usually because a manuscript needs multiple reviews or several revisions. When manuscripts are returned for revision, a cover letter from the Editor provides directions that should be followed carefully. When submitting the revised manuscript, authors should include a Response Letter, which describes how the manuscript has been revised. A point-by-point response to the Editor should be included with the revised manuscript. Authors who plan to resubmit but cannot meet this deadline should contact the Editorial Office. Manuscripts held for revision will be retained for a maximum of 90 days. The revised manuscript and the author’s comments will be reviewed again. If a manuscript is completely acceptable, according to the criteria set forth in these instructions, it is scheduled for publication in the next available issue.
We neither guarantee the acceptance without review nor very short peer review times for unsolicited manuscripts. Commissioned manuscripts also are reviewed before publication.
We adopt double-blind peer review in which case, not only authors but also reviewers do not know each other.

VI. Publication and Charges

1. Publication

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication by the journal, it will be sent to the press, and page proofs will be sent to authors. Authors must respond to the page proofs as soon as possible after making necessary corrections of misspellings, and the location of the photographs, figures or tables. Authors can make corrections for only typing errors, and are not allowed to make any author alteration or substantive changes of the text. Proofs must be returned to the press within 72 hours of receipt. No response from the authors within this time frame will lead the publication of the proof read without corrections, and the editorial board will not be responsible for any mistakes or errors occurring in this process.

2. Charge

There is no author's submission fee or other publication related fee since every cost for the publication process is supported by the publisher.

Ⅶ. Ethical Guidelines

1. Research Ethics

• 1) All of the manuscripts should be prepared in strict observation of research and publication ethics guidelines recommended by the Council of Science Editors (CSE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) , World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE).
• 2) Any study including human subjects or human data must be reviewed and approved by a responsible institutional review board (IRB). Please refer to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/) for all investigations involving human materials. The editor of Journal of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery always request submission of copies of informed consents from human subjects in clinical studies or IRB approval documents.
• 3) Animal experiments also should be reviewed by an appropriate committee (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, IACUC) for the care and use of animals. Also studies with pathogens requiring a high degree of biosafety should pass review of a relevant committee (Institutional Biosafety Committee, IBC).

2. Conflict of Interest

• 1) The corresponding author of an article is asked to inform the Editor of the authors’ potential conflicts of interest possibly influencing their interpretation of data. A potential conflict of interest should be disclosed in the cover letter even when the authors are confident that their judgments have not been influenced in preparing the manuscript. Such conflicts may be financial support or private connections to pharmaceutical companies, political pressure from interest groups, or academic problems.
• 2) The Editor will decide whether the information on the conflict should be included in the published paper. Before publishing such information, the Editor will consult with the corresponding author. In particular, all sources of funding for a study should be explicitly stated. The Journal of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery asks referees to let its Editor know of any conflict of interest before reviewing a particular manuscript.

3. Journal Policies on Authorship and Contributorship

• 1) Authors are required to make clear of their contribution to their manuscript in cover letter. To be listed as an author one should have contributed substantially to all four categories established by the ICMJE: (1) conception and design, or acquisition, 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; and (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.
• 2) When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. Authors are responsible for replying to all questions asked by reviewers or editors that relate to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work. All persons who have made a substantial contribution, but who are not eligible as authors, should be named in the acknowledgments. Authors are expected to consider carefully the way authors should be listed and ordered before submitting their manuscripts, and to provide a definitive list of authors with their original submission. Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made before the manuscript has been accepted—and only if approved by the journal Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for requesting a change in the list of authors; and (b) written confirmation (by e-mail or letter) from all authors to say that they agree with the addition, removal, or rearrangement.

4. Redundant Publication and Plagiarism

• 1) Redundant publication is defined as “reporting (publishing or attempting to publish) substantially the same work more than once, without attribution of the original source(s)”. Characteristics of reports that are substantially similar include the following: (a) “at least one of the authors must be common to all reports (if there are no common authors, it is more likely plagiarism than redundant publication),” (b) “the subject or study populations are often the same or similar,” (c) “the methodology is typically identical or nearly so,” and (d) “the results and their interpretation generally vary little, if at all.”
• 2) When submitting a manuscript, authors should include a letter informing the editor of any potential overlap with other already published material or material being evaluated for publication and should also state how the manuscript submitted to Journal of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery differs substantially from this other material. If all or part of your patient population was previously reported, this should be mentioned in the Materials and Methods, with citation of the appropriate reference(s).
• 3) The editorial committee checks the similarity by using the iThenticate (http://www.ithenticate.com/) program for all submitted articles to prevent plagiarism. The editorial committee rejects the article suspected of plagiarism and asks the author to check whether it is plagiarized and make a resubmission.

5. Readership

It is primarily for clinicians and researchers who care patients with spine and spinal cord diseases. They are able to obtain tailored information to adopt for their research and practice. Its readership can be expanded to other positions: Researchers can get the recent topics of clinical research in spine and spinal cord field and detailed research methods; Clinicians in the field can get the new information and recent development for care of patients; Medical teacher can access and adopt a variety of data in medical education; Allied health professionals including nurses are able to get the recent information for care of patients with spine and spinal cord diseases; Medical health students can understand the recent trends of the field and interesting cases for their work; Policy makers are able to reflect the results of the articles to the nation-wide health care policies for patients with spine and spinal cord diseases; The public, especially family of patients with spine and spinal cord diseases are able to read the advancement in their family’s diseases so that they have a better knowledge on the diseases and a confidence in the clinicians’ devotion to their family.

6. Obligation to Register Clinical Trial

• 1) Clinical trial defined as “any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome” should be registered to the primary registry to be prior publication.
• 2) Journal of the Korean Society of Geriatric Neurosurgery accepts the registration in any of the primary registries that participate in the WHO International Clinical Trials Portal (http://www.who.int/ictrp/about/details/en/index.html) as well as https://www.anzctr.org.au/, www.clinicaltrials.gov, www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/index/htm and www.trialregister.nl. The clinical trial registration number shall be published at the end of the abstract.

7. Process for Identification of and Dealing with Allegations of Research Misconduct

When the Journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as a redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, an ethical problem discovered with the submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and other issues, the resolving process will follow the flowchart provided by the COPE (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The Editorial Board will discuss the suspected cases and reach a decision. We will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
Cases that require editorial expressions of concern or retraction shall follow the COPE flowcharts available from: http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts. If correction is needed, it will follow the ICMJE Recommendation for Corrections, Retractions, Republications and Version Control available from: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/corrections-and-version-control.html as follows:
Honest errors are a part of science and publishing and require publication of a correction when they are detected. Corrections are needed for errors of fact. Minimum standards are as follows: First, it shall publish a correction notice as soon as possible, detailing changes from and citing the original publication on both an electronic and numbered print page that is included in an electronic or a print Table of Contents to ensure proper indexing; Second, it shall post a new article version with details of the changes from the original version and the date(s) on which the changes were made through Crossmark; Third, it shall archive all prior versions of the article. This archive can be either directly accessible to readers; and Fourth, previous electronic versions shall prominently note that there are more recent versions of the article via Crossmark.

8. Handling Complaints and Appeals

The policy of the journal is primarily aimed at protecting the authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher of the journal. If not described below, the process of handling complaints and appeals follows the guidelines of the COPE (https://publicationethics.org/appeals).
• Who complains or makes an appeal? Submitters, authors, reviewers, and readers may register complaints and appeals in a variety of cases as follows: falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship dispute, conflict of interest, ethical treatment of animals, informed consent, bias or unfair/ inappropriate competitive acts, copyright, stolen data, defamation, and legal problem. If any individuals or institutions want to inform the cases, they can send a letter to editor through https://www.jksgn.org/about/contact.php. For the complaints or appeals, concrete data with answers to all factual questions (who, when, where, what, how, why) should be provided.
• Who is responsible to resolve and handle complaints and appeals?
The Editor, Editorial Board, or Editorial Office is responsible for them.
• What may be the consequence of remedy?

It depends on the type or degree of misconduct. The consequence of resolution will follow the guidelines of the COPE.

9. Postpublication Discussions and Corrections

The postpublication discussion is available through letter to the editor. If any readers have a concern on any articles published, they can submit letter to the editor on the articles. If there founds any errors or mistakes in the article, it can be corrected through errata, corrigenda, or retraction.