Brain Communications Instructions to authors

Journal information

Brain Communications is an open-access, international, editorially independent, peer-reviewed journal that welcomes both direct submissions and manuscripts transferred from our sister journal Brain. We publish high-quality (robust) preclinical and clinical studies related to neurological or psychiatric disease or maintaining brain/nervous system health and resilience.

Our aims are:

• Rapid, fair, open access publication of high-quality, peer-reviewed papers in the scope of the journal
• Be a “force for good” in the translational neuroscience field by facilitating a high standard of rigour and transparency and promoting career development of neuroscientists and the wider neuroscience field both in our articles and by supporting the charity the Guarantors of Brain with our article charges. 
• Author-friendly publication model encompassing flexible article lengths and easy submission.

Submission to Brain Communications is via our online submission site. For support and more information please contact the Brain Communications Editorial Office by email at [email protected]

Open Access

Brain Communications is a fully open access journal, and all articles are published in the journal under an open access licence immediately upon publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.

Details of the open access licences and open access charges.

CC BY licence - £3,051
CC BY licence - Registered Reports (Stage 1) - £1,525
CC BY licence - Editorial, Letter to Editor, Scientific Commentaries, Registered Reports (Stage 2) articles - £0

Corresponding authors based in countries and regions, that are part of the developing countries initiative are eligible for a full waiver of publishing fees in our fully open access journals. For further details, please see our APC Waiver Policy.

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.

Please note that some article types may have different rates for open access.

Manuscript categories

Brain Communications publishes the following article types:

All word count limits exclude abstract, title page, tables, figure legends and references.

At Brain Communications, we do not typically consider case studies or case series, in line with our commitment to publish rigorous research studies. With human or animal studies with very small numbers of subjects, it is difficult to draw robust conclusions and the results may not generalize to larger populations.    

We do not routinely consider Mendelian randomisation studies unless these are part of a broader study that also leverages newly generated clinical, epidemiological and/or experimental data. 

Peer review

Brain Communications conducts rigorous and constructive single-blind peer review. All papers submitted to Brain Communications are seen by one or more of the scientists on our Editorial Board. Papers that are not within the scope of the journal or are not in line with our policies on scientific rigour may be rejected at this stage (typically within a few days of submission). Suitable articles are sent by a member of the Editorial Board to at least two experts for peer review. We ask our reviewers for constructive, fair feedback within 2 weeks. Following review, the Editorial Board member and the Editor examine the feedback from review and will contact the author with the decision to accept, reject, or ask for a revision of the work. The time needed to identify qualified reviewers who are available can vary considerably. The time from submission to first decision of papers sent for peer review is approximately 2 months.

As part of our efforts to increase transparency in the field and to highlight the enormous contribution of peer reviewers, we will ask authors and reviewers if they are willing to publish the reviewer comments as supplemental data along with accepted papers. These can be anonymous or if reviewers wish, they can include reviewer names. This publication of peer reviews is completely optional and will not affect the decision to accept manuscripts.

Manuscript preparation

To submit a manuscript, the following are required on our submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/braincom

Manuscript: A word processing file (for example .doc and .docx) including title, authors and affiliations, abstract, main text, data availability statement, funding information, competing interests, references, and figure legends. For ease of peer review, we encourage embedding figures, legends, and tables in the main manuscript file.

Original articles should usually be structured as follows: Introduction, Materials and methods (including Statistical analysis), Results, Discussion, Data Availability, Acknowledgements, Funding, Competing interests, References

Display items (optional): These include figures, tables, and boxes. If the article is accepted for publication, we require high resolution display items to be uploaded separately (see the section on Figures below for further detail), in addition to the manuscript file.

Supplementary material: We encourage uploading raw data as supplementary material or where appropriate, linking to a data repository. As a guideline, a maximum of 10 files is acceptable to make up the Supplementary material unit for the article. We recommend consolidating multiple supplementary elements into a single file where this would make the reader/reviewer experience simpler. The maximum size per file should not exceed 15 MB.

Graphical abstract: If accepted, we require a graphical abstract for original articles, reviews and registered reports summarizing your article. A graphical abstract is a visual representation of the central finding or methodology of the paper. Authors should strive to make the graphical abstract informative, interesting, visually appealing, and straightforward. Please avoid abbreviations except for current accepted gene symbols. As well as appearing in the article and in the journal’s online table of contents, the graphical abstract will be used on social media. It must not contain any elements for which you do not hold the copyright, such as figures or images from other articles or websites etc.

The technical requirements for graphical abstracts are:

Size of the submitted image: 120mm x 120mm (300-600dpi) or 3000 x 3000 pixels
Font of any text: Arial 12-16 pt (smaller fonts will not be legible online)
File type: .tif or .pdf
Aspect ration: 1:1 preferred​

Abbreviated summary: Please supply an abbreviated summary of your article of no more than 50 words. Please avoid abbreviations except for current accepted gene symbols. The summary should be written in the third person (e.g. Author et al. report that …’) and should be accessible to the non-specialist. In the event of acceptance, an edited version of this summary may be used to draw attention to the paper in the online table of contents and on social media. It should therefore capture the main purpose and conclusions of the work.

Reporting guidelines checklist: Depending on the type of data in the article, the corresponding reporting guidelines checklist is required. See Reporting Guidelines below.

Manuscript formatting

For initial submission, we are flexible about the formatting of your manuscript as long as it contains the essential information detailed above. If accepted, the following formatting is needed for publication of the paper:

Title

Manuscripts must be submitted with both a full title (maximum of 100 characters) and a short running title (maximum of 40 characters). We do not allow any abbreviations in titles, except for current accepted gene symbols.

Authors and affiliations

All author names should be listed on the title page, in the form: First name, middle initial, last name (e.g. John E. Smith). If authors have a registered ORCID iD, this should be entered into the user’s record in the submission system prior to manuscript submission. Each author should list an associated affiliation and its location, including the country. One author should be designated as the corresponding author, and his/her full postal address and e-mail address should be provided.

Authorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. The order in which names appear should be a joint decision by the co-authors. Each author must have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based on substantial contribution to conception and design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of data. All authors should be involved in drafting the article or revising it critically for intellectual content and must have read and approved the final version of the manuscript. Authors must list their names on the title page and should comply with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship.

Brain Communications  supports the World Association of Medical Editors’ recommendations on chatbots and scholarly manuscripts. If an artificial intelligence (AI) such as a chatbot or similar program is used in the development of a paper for Brain Communications, the following is required:

• A Large Language Model (LLM), chatbot, or other AI cannot be credited as an author, as authorship requires that the author be accountable for the submitted/published work, and artificial intelligence cannot fulfil this requirement of authorship;
• Authors listed on the paper must review the content generated by the LLM and take full responsibility for it, as they would for any other content within the submitted/published work;
• The use of LLM tools must be documented in the Methods, Acknowledgments, or another appropriate section of the paper.

Consortia or working group authors may be listed by indexing services. In order to be indexed as collaborators, the names of the consortium or working group members should be listed in an Appendix in the main text document, before the reference list. The consortium or working group should also be included in the main author list.

Abstract

For Original Articles, Registered Reports, Review Articles and Field Potential submissions, please include an abstract containing up to 400 words. The abstract must summarize the paper in full, including background, methods, results and conclusion; however, these subtitles should not be included. Details such as the number of subjects, number of controls, the age range of patients and their gender should be included if appropriate. Statistical evidence to support your main conclusions should also be included here if space permits. No abbreviations should appear in the abstract, except for current accepted gene symbols and accepted abbreviations (see below). Scientific Commentaries, Editorials and Letters to the Editor do not have an abstract.

Keywords and abbreviations

Please list keywords of your choice, up to a maximum of five, directly below the abstract.

Aim to make your paper reader-friendly to those outside your field, avoiding all abbreviations where possible. The Editor reserves the right to replace abbreviations with their full meaning. Do not abbreviate the name of a disease unless it is unwieldy and complicated: Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and Huntington’s disease etc. should not be abbreviated.

The following abbreviations do not need to be defined: AIDS; AMPA; ANOVA; ATP; A,T,C,G; CNS; CSF; CT; DNA; ECG; EEG; EMG; GABA; HIV; MRI; NMDA; PET; PCR; RNA. Any other abbreviation used in the paper must be defined. Abbreviations used only once in the text or those better known by their abbreviated form, can be written as e.g. NADH (reduced nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide).

Abbreviations for scientific units should conform to the Système Internationale (SI units). The statistical guidelines advocated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (Ann Intern Med 1988; 108: 266-73) should be followed.

Numbers

Numbers one to nine should be written in full, unless followed by a unit, e.g. five mice, 6 days, seven patients with Parkinson’s disease, 8 ml.

Main text

Sections should include, in order: Introduction, Materials and methods (including Statistical analysis), Results, Discussion, Data availability, Acknowledgements, Funding, Competing interests, References. Review articles can contain subheadings of your choice.

Headings and subheadings should be no more than 100 characters in length. A guide to in-text citations is given below.

Footnotes to the main text should not be used.

The main text should be saved as a Word file. PDF and LaTeX files are not acceptable. Legends for figures should be listed at the end of the main body of the manuscript. If possible, Supplementary figures and legends should be supplied together in a single PDF file.

Gene nomenclature

Authors should use approved gene nomenclature where available. Authors proposing a new gene nomenclature should contact the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee.

For human genes, please use symbols approved by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC). HGNC nomenclature can be queried. The species listed below all have gene nomenclature committees. Please use the nomenclature they have approved by searching for gene symbols at the following links:

Mouse
Rat
Gene symbols and names in all other mammals (and usually all vertebrates) should follow the same nomenclature as the human gene.

It can be difficult for readers to determine whether authors are referring to a gene or its corresponding protein, therefore it is important to use accepted conventions for gene and protein symbols. Symbols for genes should be italicized (IGF1), whereas symbols for proteins are not italicized (IGF1). Gene names that are written out in full are not italicized (insulin-like growth factor 1).

Authors should check each gene/protein name and symbol in their paper even if it has been published previously. Genes and their corresponding proteins often have different names and symbols and sometimes you may find that the approved gene/protein name or symbol has been updated. Brain Communications prefers that the same symbol is used for genes and proteins; however, where proteins are more widely known by an alternative name/symbol, then the encoding gene, where possible, should be referred to e.g. ‘TRAIL (encoded by TNFSF10)’. Synonyms can be referred to using ‘also known as’ or ‘previously known as’ e.g. TARDBP (previously known as TDP-43). Thereafter, use the current approved symbol and not the previous designation.

Brain Communications allows the use of gene symbols in the abstract and headings. For clarity, it is best to be consistent in the use of either the full gene name, or the symbol throughout the text, but use of either is acceptable.

Statistical analyses

Authors are expected to apply the most appropriate statistical tools for data analysis, and it is acceptable to present results from frequentist, information-theory, and Bayesian approaches in the same manuscript. Authors should include a section at the end of the ‘Materials and methods’ section, with the heading ‘Statistical analysis’ and describe procedures used to evaluate fit of the model to the data, such as goodness-of-fit tests, inspection of residuals, or tests of model assumptions. For results of statistical tests, authors should report the experimental unit, statistical test that was applied (e.g. two-sample t-test, analysis of covariance), the test statistic (e.g. t, U, F, r), degrees of freedom as subscripts to the test statistic,¹ and the exact probability value (P). Please indicate whether statistical tests were one- or two-tailed, and the alpha-level that was used to determine significance (e.g. P < 0.05). A 95% confidence interval for the size of each effect is encouraged.² Post hoc power tests are discouraged. We do not accept t-test or equivalent for comparing two groups when there are more than two conditions in an experiment. For this type of comparison, we suggest ANOVA, or linear models with post-hoc comparison or post-hoc p-value corrections (Holm, Bonferroni, etc).

Authors should specify how blinding and randomization were achieved. If either blinding or randomization was not performed, justification should be given. Details of a priori sample size calculations should be presented (including power to be achieved, alpha, the source of means and standard deviations involved in the calculation, and effect size). This is important because a statistical result is more likely to be a false positive or false negative result when the study has low power.³ Pseudo-replication should be minimized at the design stage.¹ We do not accept analyses where individual cells are the experimental unit when there is likely to be biological variability between animals, culture replicates, etc.  For this type of data, we require either that a mean or median is taken per animal/culture replicate followed by statistical analyses, or that more sophisticated analyses are performed such as mixed effects modelling which can account for random effects.

1. Lazic SE. The problem of pseudoreplication in neuroscientific studies: is it affecting your analysis? BMC Neurosci. 2010;11:5.

2. Halsey LG, Curran-Everett D, Vowler SL, Drummond GB. The fickle P value generates irreproducible results. Nat Methods. 2015;12(3):179-85.

3. Button KS, Ioannidis JP, Mokrysz C, Nosek BA, Flint J, Robinson ES, et al. Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2013;14(5):365-76.

Data availability

To promote data transparency, Brain Communications requires a data availability statement. This should be included at the end of the article before the reference list under a separate 'Data availability' subheading. New software and/or algorithms essential to the conclusions of the submitted manuscript should be included in this data availability statement, and source code for any specialized, in-house scripts or programs, that are necessary for the reproduction of results, must be deposited in a public repository (e.g. GitHub), or uploaded as Supplementary material.

Please see our data policy for further information and examples of data availability statement templates.

Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section.

Funding

All sources of funding must be disclosed at the end of the main text under a separate heading ‘Funding’. In order to meet funding requirements, authors are required to name their funding sources, or state if there are none, during the submission process. Please give the names of funding bodies in full (rather than using abbreviations). For further information on this process or to find out more about the CHORUS initiative please click here.

Patient consent

Papers reporting experiments on patients or healthy volunteers must record the fact that the subjects’ consent was obtained according to the Declaration of Helsinki and that it has been approved by the ethical committee of the institution in which the work was performed. Consent must be recorded when photographs or videos of patients are shown or other details are given that could lead to identification of these individuals.

Competing interests

In the interests of transparency, Brain Communications requires authors to declare any competing financial and/or non-financial interests in relation to the work described. The corresponding author is responsible for submitting a competing interests statement on behalf of all authors of the paper. This should be included in the relevant section during submission, and in the main text document, before the references, under a separate ‘Competing interests’ heading. If there are no competing interests to disclose, the author should state that ‘The authors report no competing interests’. For further information on competing interests, please click here.

At initial submission, the corresponding author must declare if the Editor-in-Chief, or an Editorial Board Member of the Journal is an author of, or contributor to, the manuscript. Another editor without a conflict of interest will oversee the peer review and decision-making process.

Appendix

The names of any Consortium or Working Group members should be listed in an Appendix.

References

In-text citations

Brain Communications uses numerical citations in-text, based on the AMA Reference Style (11th Edition). Numbered references should be superscripted and placed after the period, quotation mark, comma, or parentheses. They should, however, be placed inside semicolons and colons.

Do not leave a space between the last letter or punctuation mark and the superscripted number.

Citations should be numbered sequentially. Once you have given a source a number, it will keep that number throughout the paper. Use commas to show that more than one work is being cited, and use hyphens for several works that would be numbered sequentially:

• These side effects can have implications for the patient's mental health, as numerous studies have shown.^1,3,6-9

If including an author in the text of a sentence, use the author surname(s) followed by the citation number:

• Smith¹ reported on the survey.
• Smith and Watson² reported on the survey.
• Smith et al.³ reported on the survey.

Reference list

Bibliographic references should be limited to essential literature. References should be listed at the end of the paper in numerical order. Author names are listed to a maximum of six. For papers with more than six authors, the first three should be listed, followed by ‘et al.’.

For helpful examples of reference formatting please see common examples in the table below. Any manuscript with an incorrectly formatted reference list will be returned to the author.

References to papers ‘in preparation’ or ‘submitted’ are not acceptable; if ‘in press’, the name of the journal or book must be given. Reference citations should not include ‘personal communications’ or other inaccessible information; information derived from personal communications or from unpublished work by the authors should be referred to in the text.

When articles are published online there are automatic links from the reference section of each article to cited articles in PubMed. This is a useful feature for readers, but is only possible if the references are accurate. It is the responsibility of the author to ensure the accuracy of the references in the submitted article. Downloading references directly from PubMed is highly recommended.

Tables

Each table should be self-explanatory and include a brief descriptive title. Tables must be supplied in Word format to enable editing. Please avoid abbreviating words in tables unless already defined in the text. Abbreviations must be listed below the table if used.

Tables should not exceed one journal page. Please use our table template to check whether your table is likely to fit onto one page. Larger tables that are more than one page in length should be uploaded as Supplementary material. Supplementary tables containing large amounts of text can be summarized in a smaller table for publication in the article.

Boxes

Boxes are encouraged in Reviews. They are similar to tables, but contain more lengthy text, and may contain paragraphs, in up to two columns. Each box should include a brief descriptive title and must be supplied in Word format to enable editing. Please avoid abbreviating words in boxes unless already defined in the text. Abbreviations must be listed below the box if used.

Figures

For review, the images you upload will automatically be converted to PDF and HTML for reviewers to download. Please label and number your figures and figure legends clearly. In the text, refer to figures as Fig. 1, Fig. 2A, Fig. 2B, Supplementary Fig. 1 etc. Each figure should be given a short heading, which will be published in bold font.

For publication, you will be required to supply separate high resolution files for each image: at least 300 dpi for colour or black and white photographs, or half-tone (grey-shaded) artwork or at least 600 dpi for line drawings (including all graphs and line diagrams). TIFF files are preferred. Please submit images at a size that allows the reader to see detail.

Figures should fit comfortably onto one page of the journal in typeset PDF format, with all text and symbols large enough to be read easily without magnification. The PDF version is set on page dimensions of 216mm width by 279mm height, in a 2 column-layout: consider these dimensions when deciding on figure size, panel layout, and lettering.

Figures will be reproduced at the provided size in the HTML version of the published article, but consider the display seen on recent published articles in the journal at normal screen sizes when selecting a font size for the figure: 12pt is recommended as a minimum.

For useful information on preparing your figures for publication, click here.

Requirements:

• All micrographs must carry a magnification bar.
• Each figure must have a short title.
• Legends for figures should be listed at the end of the main text document.
• For all graphs and plots, please provide details in the figure legend of the statistical analysis performed: test used, N, relevant test statistic (for example F or t values for ANOVAs and t-tests), exact P values, the experimental unit (N= mice, cells, wells, plate downs, etc) and the number of data-points for each group analysed.
• Abbreviations and symbols used in a figure must be defined in the figure legend unless they have been used and defined in the main text.
• In laying out figure panels, avoid unnecessary empty space or clutter. Identify figure panels with capital letters (A, B, etc. without brackets or points) in 12 pt at the final figure size. Panels should be ordered from left to right and then from top to bottom
• Keys to symbols should be as simple as possible.
• Note that the use of red and green figures is particularly problematic for approximately 5% of the male population and should be avoided. Advice on the preparation of colour-friendly figures is provided at http://jfly.iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp/html/manuals/pdf/color_blind.pdf.
• Axes should not extend beyond the range of the data. Use leading zeros on decimals (e.g. 0.1).
• Solid symbols are preferable to open symbols except to indicate data overlap. Circles, squares, diamonds and triangles are preferable to crosses. Symbols and lines should be distinguishable when the figure is reduced, and no smaller than 5 and 0.5 pt, respectively at the final size.
• Continuously distributed data should be displayed either by showing all data points or by using box-and-whisker plots, with all elements (e.g. median, interquartile interval, minimum, maximum) defined in the legend.
• Bar charts with a single bar or with a bar indicating 100% should be avoided. Keep bar width to the minimum required for legibility.
• Where n<10, each data point should be shown in the graph.
• Avoid using different shades of grey or colours that are close in hue to identify different symbols or columns in a bar chart. Colour should be used sparingly to identify different categories of data, and red and green should not be used together in graphs. Avoid shadows and unnecessary 3D effects.

Figure accessibility and alt text

Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

Alt text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, and photographs. 

Alt text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

Image manipulation

Image manipulation beyond minimal processing (for instance, to add arrows to a micrograph) is strictly forbidden. Unprocessed data and metadata files must be archived by the author(s) in case they are requested by the editorial team or reviewers during manuscript evaluation. This requirement for archiving data and metadata for images is particularly important because readers occasionally highlight issues with images after publication, and authors may be required to respond to such queries via the Editor. All digitized images submitted with the final version of the manuscript must be of high quality.

All images must accurately represent the original data in line with the latest standards now expected by the research community. Please list in the ‘Materials and methods’ section all tools and software used to acquire images, including image gathering settings and any required processing manipulations.

Single images created from separately acquired images (e.g. different times or from different locations) are not permitted unless it is clearly stated in the legend that the combined image is, for example, time-averaged data or a time-lapse sequence. If comparative images are required in one figure then separate images must be demarcated in the whole figure and described in the legend.

Changing contrast or brightness may be acceptable when it is applied evenly over the whole image including over the controls. Reducing or increasing contrast to hide data is forbidden. Processing to emphasize a region in an image to the detriment of other regions is inappropriate, particularly where an attempt is made to reinforce significance of experimental data relative to the control.

Use of cloning and healing tools, such as those available in Photoshop, or any feature that deliberately obscures manipulations, is considered inappropriate. Where such tools are used by necessity, for example to remove identifying data about patients from an image, then this should be explicitly mentioned in the figure legend.

Electrophoretic gels and blots

Brain Communications allows cropped gels and blots in the main paper only if they improve understanding of the data reported. Cropping must be indicated in the image and mentioned in the figure legend. The figure legend should refer to the full-length gels and/or blots which are to be made available as Supplementary material.

All gels must include positive and negative controls, as well as molecular size markers; where these are not visible in the cropped figure then such controls must show clearly in the expanded Supplementary material.

Please provide a citation for characterized antibodies. Where a citation is not yet available, then a detailed characterization demonstrating the specificity of the antibody and the range of reactivity of the reagent in the assay, should be supplied as Supplementary material. Brain Communications recommends submission of data and linking with an antibody profile database (e.g. Antibodypedia, 1DegreeBio).

While Brain Communications discourages quantitative comparisons between samples on different gels/blots, if this is part of the experiment reported, then the legend must state that the samples derive from the same experiment and that gels/blots were processed in parallel. Sliced images that compare lanes that were non-adjacent in the original gel must have a dark line delineating the boundary between the gels. Loading controls (e.g. GAPDH, actin, total protein stain) must be run on the same blot. Sample processing controls run on different gels must be identified as such, and distinctly from loading controls.

Cropped gels/blots in the paper must retain important bands, and Brain Communications recommends at least six band widths above and below the band under investigation.

Overexposure may mask additional bands and high-contrast gels and blots are therefore discouraged. Grey backgrounds are expected as the norm. If high contrast is unavoidable then multiple exposures should be presented in the Supplementary material. For quantitative comparisons, appropriate reagents, controls and imaging methods with linear signal ranges should be used.

Supplementary material

Supporting material that is not essential for inclusion in the main text of the article, but would nevertheless benefit the reader, can be made available by the publisher, linked to the article. The material should not be essential to understanding the conclusions of the paper, but should contain data that are additional or complementary and directly relevant to the article content. Such information might include more detailed methods, extended datasets/data analysis, or additional figures.

All text and figures must be provided in suitable electronic formats. All material to be considered as supplementary material must be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for peer review. It cannot be altered or replaced after the paper has been accepted for publication. Please indicate clearly the material intended as Supplementary material upon submission. Also ensure that the Supplementary material is referred to in the main manuscript where necessary (Supplementary Fig. 1; Supplementary Table 1).

Please note that Supplementary material will not be edited, so ensure that it is clearly and succinctly presented, that the style of terms conforms with the rest of the paper, and that there are no tracked changes. Also ensure that the presentation will work on any internet browser.

As a guideline, a maximum of 10 files is acceptable to make up the Supplementary material unit for the article. We recommend consolidating multiple supplementary elements into a single file where this would make the reader/reviewer experience simpler. The maximum size per file should not exceed 15 MB. If possible, please combine all supplementary data files in a single PDF file, with supplementary figures and legends supplied together.

• Provide sound clips in .mp3 format
• Provide video clips in .mpg or .mp4 format.
• If video files are too large to be uploaded onto the submission site, please contact the Editorial Office ([email protected]).

We do not send out proofs of the supplementary material, and authors need to ensure that these files are correct before submitting their paper.

Video abstracts

Following acceptance, we encourage authors to create a short video abstract to promote their manuscript. The video should be a maximum of 5 minutes long and should explain the science and clinical context or implications of the work, with the help of animations. Creating a video abstract is not compulsory but it does help to promote your published manuscript. The videos are posted on both the Brain website and Brain YouTube channel. For examples and inspiration, please look at existing videos on our web​site​ and YouTube channel.

Reporting guidelines

Authors reporting studies with human or animal subjects should prepare their manuscripts in accordance with the appropriate guidelines and/or checklist, and include the checklist (and flow diagram, if applicable) the submission. For example:

ARRIVE checklist for all animal studies
STROBE checklist for cohort, case-control and cross-sectional studies
CONSORT checklist for randomized trials
STREGA checklist for genetic association studies

For further information on reporting guidelines, authors should consult the EQUATOR Network website, which maintains a useful, up-to-date list of guidelines as they are published, with links to articles and checklists.

Clinical/randomised trials

Reports of randomised trials must conform to the revised CONSORT guidelines and should be submitted with their protocols, registration details and completed CONSORT checklist.

Observational studies

The STROBE statement should be used when reporting observational research.

Animal studies

The ARRIVE guidelines must be followed for animal studies. Experiments with animals should be performed in accordance with the legal requirements of the relevant local or national authority and the name of the authorizing body should be stated in the paper. Procedures should be such that experimental animals do not suffer unnecessarily. The text of the paper should include experimental details of the procedure and of anaesthetics used. The journal reserves the right to reject papers where the ethical aspects are, in the Editor’s opinion, open to doubt.

Permissions

For queries regarding rights and permissions to use Brain Communications material please see Oxford Journals Permissions. Authors may use their own figures in other publications provided that the original paper in Brain Communications is cited.

Advance access

Advance access enables us to publish accepted papers online soon after they have been accepted. Manuscripts are then copyedited, typeset, proofed out, and corrected. Once the manuscripts are finalized, the uncorrected manuscripts are taken off the Advance Access page and the final corrected article is published as part of the current issue.

Appearance in advance access constitutes publication. The official publication date appears beneath the title of each manuscript article just before its digital object identifier (DOI).

Papers published in advance access are citeable using the DOI and publication date.

What is a DOI?

A digital object identifier (DOI) is an automatically generated unique identifier for intellectual property in the digital environment, e.g. 10.1093/braincomms/fcaa106. It appears on the proof and in the final print and online versions of the manuscript.

Appeals

We wish to provide our authors with fair and well- informed decisions. If you have significant reason to believe that the editorial process has not achieved this, please write to the Editorial Office ([email protected]) to request an appeal form. All appeals will be dealt with through the Editorial Office by email only. Under no circumstances should authors telephone our Editorial Board members regarding manuscripts, nor approach an Associate Editor who has handled the paper in question. The Editor will respond to all appeals.

Plagiarism and scientific misconduct

Plagiarism is the use of others' published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without due reference or permission and/or their presentation as new and original points. Plagiarism is serious scientific misconduct and will be dealt with accordingly. Text may be checked for passages plagiarized from other publications at the Editor’s discretion. The Editor reserves the right to inspect raw data.

Duplicate publication

Authors may not send the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently. If this occurs, the Editor may return the paper without review, reject the paper, contact the Editor of the other journal(s) in question and/or contact the authors’ employer. If a member of the Editorial Board learns that work under consideration has previously been published in whole or in part, the Editor may return the paper without review, reject the paper, announce the duplication publicly in an editorial and/or contact the authors’ employers. Authors retain the right to make their original un-refereed manuscript available on free public preprint servers (see Self-archiving Policy for more information).

If work that makes up more than 10% of the manuscript submitted to Brain Communications has been published elsewhere, please provide a copy of the published article so that we can make a judgement on the amount of overlap without delay.  

Disclaimer

Statements of fact and opinion in published articles are those of the respective authors and contributors and not of Brain Communications or OUP. Neither OUP nor Brain Communications make any representations, express or implied, in respect of the accuracy of the material in this journal and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. The reader should make his/her own evaluation as to the appropriateness or otherwise of any experimental technique described.