Submissions

Author Guidelines

Journal Format

The manuscript should be written in font size 11 and double-spaced using the Arial font type. Only e-copies of the manuscript are accepted. A4 paper e-copies with margins of 30 mm are accepted for submission. The quality of the images (if any) must meet the standards of the journal and be editable. All pages should be numbered consecutively in the bottom right corner, beginning with the title page. Groupings for the experiments must be named (i.e., “groups 1, 2, or A, B” is not acceptable). Rather, it should be control (X and Y groups), depending on what the research entails. All manuscripts must be written using British English spellings.

Submission and Fees

Only e-copies of manuscripts are acceptable and can be submitted online through the journal website: Nigerian Journal of Neuroscience or as a single file sent through the email address editor.njn@gmail.com. A cover letter should accompany every manuscript. The pages should be numbered in sequence, starting with the title page. All submitted manuscripts must be accompanied by a statement of ethical board approval for the study in the Materials and Methods section. A processing fee is payable upon acceptance for publication of each submitted manuscript. Once a paper is reviewed and accepted, an article processing fee of NGN 50,000 for Nigerian authors and USD100 for foreign authors, will be charged, and payment will be received before the paper is published. These fees will be determined by the editorial board from time to time. Authors are kindly requested to confirm the current article processing charge before the submission of the manuscript. Hard copy printing now attracts additional costs of NGN 15,000 for the authors; However, this is not applicable to the online publication. In instances that hard copies of the journal are to be sent to authors, authors will also be responsible for the cost of the postage.

Title Page

The title should be concise, with 15 to 20 words. This should be accompanied by a short, running title of not more than 50 characters (including spaces). The names of authors and institutional affiliations should be provided. The format for the author’s names should be first name, middle name (if any), and surname. The name, contact address, e-mail address, and phone number of the corresponding author should be clearly indicated. Authors are encouraged to provide, in addition, a consistent digital identifier such as an ORCID or Web of Science Researcher ID.

Authors are expected to carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide a definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the Editor-in-Chief. To request such a change, the Editor-in-Chief must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in the author’s list; and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal, or rearrangement. In the case of the addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.

Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor-in-Chief consider the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the editor will result in a corrigendum.

Abstract

The abstract should be a double-spaced, single-continuous paragraph and not longer than 250 words. This should include an introductory sentence, the aim of the study, a brief summary of materials and methods, results of significance, and a conclusion. The abstract should not contain any references, tables, figures, or undefined abbreviations. A maximum of six key words should also be provided.

Manuscript Proper

The manuscript should contain the following sections, or subsections: Title page; Abstract page; Introduction, Materials, and Methods; Results; Discussion; Conclusion; Declaration [Acknowledgement(s); Grants and Financial Support; Conflict of Interest; Ethical Approval; Consent to Participate and Publish Data; Authors’ contribution; The Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence]; and References in that order.

Paragraphs and Headings

Each paragraph should be longer than a single sentence but not longer than one manuscript page. The levels of headings should accurately reflect the organisation of the paper. All headings at the same level should appear in the same format.

 Abbreviations

Unnecessary abbreviations should be eliminated, and any necessary ones should be explained. Abbreviations in tables and figures should be explained in the table notes and figure captions or legends.

Statistics

All Greek letters, especially the most common mathematical symbols, need to be identified in the manuscript. All non-Greek letters that are used as statistical symbols for algebraic variables should be in italics.

Units of Measurement

The journal adopts the International System of Units (SI) or metric system, except for measurements of time, which have no metric equivalents.

Declaration

Acknowledgements

All individuals who provided help during the research should be listed here. This also includes organisations, or corporate bodies.

Grants and Financial Support

Authors should declare any financial support received from persons or organisations for the purpose of the research and/or preparation of the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

All authors must disclose any financial or personal relationships they have with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence their work. Such potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, or grants. Authors must disclose a summary declaration of interest statement in the manuscript. If there are no conflicts of interest to declare, then 'None declared' should be stated.

Ethical Approval

Where the research involves human subjects, authors should ensure that it is carried out in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans. The manuscript should contain a statement that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and have been approved by the appropriate institutional committee(s). This statement should contain the reference number of the ethical approval(s) obtained. Authors should also include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects.

All animal experiments should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and be carried out in accordance with the U.K. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, 1986, and associated guidelines, the EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments, or the National Research Council's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. The authors should clearly indicate in the manuscript that such guidelines have been followed.

Consent to Participate and Publish Data

Studies on humans require informed consent for the collection of data and for the publication of the same. This should be documented in the manuscript. It is the responsibility of authors to obtain appropriate consents, permissions, and releases. Written consents will be retained by the authors.

Authors’ Contribution

For transparency, authors are encouraged to submit an author statement outlining their individual contributions to the paper using the relevant credit roles: conceptualisation, data acquisition, data analysis, methodology, resources, supervision, validation, visualisation, roles/writing (original draft), and writing (review and editing). Authorship statements should be formatted with the authors’ initials and credit role(s).

The Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Authors need to declare where generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies are used in the writing process. This does not apply to the use of AI tools to analyse data or draw as part of the research process. Authors are only to use these technologies to improve readability and language.

References

All references should be cited both in text and in the references list. Only published or ‘in press’ articles from journals, books, and published reports should be listed. The journal also requires that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely. Data citations should include a persistent identifier, such as a DOI, in the reference list using the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers, including DOIs, should be expressed as full URLs. The journal citation and referencing are in Harvard style. References should be cited in the text by name and year in round parentheses with no punctuation between, for example, (Daniel and Vincent, 1997).

All in-text citations should be listed in the references list at the end of the manuscript. In instances of more than six authors, only the first six authors should be listed, and subsequently, et al. should be used. Citations should be listed in alphabetical order. The cited journal titles should be written in standard abbreviated format.

Examples of reference formats:

Book

(1 author)

Neville, C. (2010). The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism. 2nd Ed. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

(2 or more authors)

Maduka, I. and Olaniran, A. (2002). Nicotine and the Neonate Brain. 3rd Ed., Ibadan: Prentice Hall.

Bradbury, I., Boyle, J., and Morse, A. (2002). Scientific Principles for Physical Geographers. 5th Ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall.

(Editor(s))

Fontana-Giusti, G. (ed.) (2008). Designing Cities for People: Social, Environmental, and Psychological Sustainability. 3rd Ed. London: Earthscan.

Chapter in an edited book

Marshall, W. A. (1975). The Child as a Mirror of His Brain’s Development. In Sants, J. and Butcher, H. J. (eds.). Development Psychology. 3rd Ed. Aylesbury, Bucks: Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd. pp. 23–35.

Corporate authors (groups, committees, companies) Includes publications by government departments and committees:

Great Britain, Department of Energy. (1977) Tidal Power Barrages in the Severn Trent Estuary: Recent Evidence on Their Feasibility. London: (Energy Papers 23)

E-Book

Sadler, P. (2003). Strategic Management. [online]. Sterling, VA: Kogan Page. Available from:

http://www.netlibrary.com/reader [Accessed: 6th May 2012].

Journal Article

(Printed)

Ekong, M.B. (2017). Perfusion fixation: a vital process for neuroanatomical research. Nig J Neurosci. 8(2): 39–43.

Trefts, K. and Blacksee, S. (2000) Did you hear the one about Boolean operators? Incorporating comedy into the library induction. Ref Serv Rev. 28 (4): 369–378.

(Electronic/online)

Wilson, J. (1995). Enter the Cyberpunk Librarian: Future directions in cyberspace. Library Review. [online] Emerald Database 44 (8):63–72. Available from: http://www.emeraldinsight.com. [Accessed: January 30, 2012]

Newspaper (online)

Randerson, J. (2008). Researchers find fish that can count up to four. The Guardian. [Online] 26 February, p. 14. Available from: http://theguardian.co.uk. [Accessed: 22nd May 2012].

Website

BBC News (2008). Factory gloom is the worst since 1980. [Online] Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7681569.stm. [Accessed: 19th June 2012].

Tables and Figures

Tables and figures are to be incorporated within the manuscript as close as possible to where they are first mentioned and numbered with Arabic numerals. There is only one table or figure per page. Every table column should have a heading. Only the top, second, and last horizontal lines should be in the table. All vertical table lines should be omitted. Each figure must be labelled with the correct figure number and short title (figures for a particular experiment should be grouped together as one, differentiated by letters).

All figures and tables mentioned in the text must be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned. The acceptable file format for figures is JPEG. The editorial office may request a TIFF format of a figure after the paper is accepted. The greyscale must be a minimum of 300 dpi.

Permission to Use Published Material

It is entirely the responsibility of the authors to obtain permission from other journal publishing houses to use copyrighted materials. Articles are published open access and are under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as the appropriate credit is given to the original author(s) and the source, provides a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicates if changes were made. The images or other third-party material in articles are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Galley Proof

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the galley proof of the manuscript will be sent to the author for final corrections before publication. At this stage, no major revision will be allowed, or the authors will incur an additional cost. Publication is first done online, with a PDF copy sent to the corresponding author. The printed copy is made available thereafter.