Journal Policies

Scope of the Journal
Open Access
Peer review process
Publication ethics
Data policy
ORCID IDs
Permission to reproduce figures and extracts
Material disclaimer
Manuscript preparation

Scope of the Journal

Neuroscience of Consciousness is an open access journal which publishes papers on the biological basis of consciousness, welcoming contributions from neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, computer science, and allied disciplines. Submissions can be empirical, methodological, theoretical, or philosophical, and need not directly address the biological basis of consciousness so long as the relevance to this topic is clear. As well as the primary phenomenon of consciousness itself, relevant topics include interactions between conscious and unconscious processes; selfhood; emotion; metacognition and higher-order consciousness; intention, volition, and agency; individual differences in consciousness; altered states of consciousness; disorders of consciousness in psychiatry and neurology; and consciousness in infants, non-human animals, and machines. Neuroscience of Consciousness will not normally publish papers proposing alternative physical foundations for consciousness.

The journal publishes research articles, registered reports, review articles, rapid communications, opinions, and ‘spotlight’ commentaries. We support Open Science Badges to acknowledge open science practices.

Open Access

Neuroscience of Consciousness 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, CC BY-NC licence - $2,251
CC BY, CC BY-NC licence member discount - 20%
CC BY, CC BY-NC licence – Spotlight Commentaries articles - $1,189
CC BY, CC BY-NC licence – Spotlight Commentaries articles member discount - 20%
CC BY, CC BY-NC licence – Erratum, Editorial, Corrigendum 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 you may be eligible for a discount to the open access charge based on society membership. Authors may be asked to prove eligibility for the member discount.

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

Neuroscience of Consciousness does not apply any additional charges, for example colour or excess pages. 

Peer review process

Neuroscience of Consciousness operates reviewer-anonymized peer review. All submissions to the journal are initially reviewed by one of the Editors. At this stage manuscripts may be rejected without peer review if it is felt that they are not of high enough priority or not relevant to the journal. This fast rejection process means that authors are given a quick decision and do not need to wait for the review process.

Manuscripts that are not instantly rejected are sent out for peer review, usually to two independent reviewers. Based on the feedback from these reviewers and the Editors’ judgment a decision is given on the manuscript. The average time from submission to first decision is 6 weeks.

If a paper is not acceptable in its present form, we will pass on suggestions for revisions to the author.

Co-reviewing 

Neuroscience of Consciousness welcomes co-reviewing. If you would like to have a mentee or junior colleague participate in the review under your supervision, please email the editorial office at [email protected] to confirm with the editorial team before accepting and progressing with the review. Be sure to note the co-reviewer’s participation in the relevant question field when you fill out the reviewer questionnaire. 

Web of Science Reviewer Recognition

Neuroscience of Consciousness partners with Web of Science Reviewer Recognition to recognize our expert peer reviewers and raise the status of peer review. Web of Science Reviewer Recognition is a free service for researchers to effortlessly track, verify and showcase their previously hidden reviewing and editorial contributions across all the world's journals, without compromising reviewer anonymity or infringing upon journal review models. With a Web of Science Researcher profile, researchers have access to verified evidence of their peer review and editorial contributions for inclusion in their CV, bio, and funding and promotion applications. 

When you submit a review for Neuroscience of Consciousness, you will be asked if you want to instantly add a verified record of that review to your Web of Science Researcher profile. If opted in, once you submit your review, details of your review details will first be confirmed by Web of Science (WoS) and you will then receive an email prompting you to claim your review via your WoS Researcher Profile. If you do not already have a WoS Researcher profile, you will receive an email asking you to create one before you can claim the review. After you've added your first review, you can choose to have all future reviews performed for Neuroscience of Consciousness automatically added to your profile. Simply enable the “Automatically add reviews for partnered journals” option in your profile settings. 

Register for a Web of Science Researcher Profile, or learn more about Web of Science Reviewer Recognition.

Publication ethics

Authors should observe high standards with respect to publication ethics as set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work without proper citation, and misappropriation of the work are all unacceptable practices. Any cases of ethical misconduct are treated very seriously and will be dealt with in accordance with the COPE guidelines.

Ethics Statement

Any study using human subjects or materials needs to state the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval and number, and any study using animals needs to state the Institutional Animal Care approval and number. Any other ethics approvals should also be listed. If no ethical approvals were required, please state this.

Authorship

All authors should have been involved in the writing of the manuscript at draft and any revision stages, and have read and approved the final version. Anyone who made major contributions to the writing of the manuscript should be listed as an author (e.g. “ghost writing” is prohibited by the journal). Any other individuals who made less substantive contributions to the study or the writing of the manuscript should be listed in the acknowledgement section. Any change in authorship (including author order) after the initial manuscript submission must be approved in writing by all authors.

Authorship and 'Umbrella' groups

Many large collaborative studies are organized under a group name which represents all the participants. All articles must have at least one named individual as author. Authors who wish to acknowledge the umbrella group from which the data originate should first list the author(s) of the article and follow this with 'on behalf of the GROUP NAME'. If necessary the names of the participants may be listed in the Acknowledgements section.

Originality

By submitting your manuscript to the journal it is understood that this it is an original manuscript and is unpublished work and is not under consideration elsewhere. Plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the author’s own work, in whole or in part without proper citation is not tolerated by the journal. Manuscripts submitted to the journal may be checked for originality using anti-plagiarism software.

Conflicts of interest

At the point of submission, each author should reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated – including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please consider the conflict of interest test: Is there any arrangement that would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after publication and you had not declared it?

Data policy

We strongly encourage authors to make the data underlying their published research freely available to others, wherever legally and ethically possible. We request that authors make the availability and location of their data clear in a data availability statement after the Acknowledgements section of the article. Please see our Manuscript Preparation Instructions.

Where specialised, subject-specific public repositories are available, we encourage authors to deposit their data in these. As an example, NeuroVault is suitable for MRI and PET studies. See bio sharing for a curated list of databases in the life sciences. Where it is not possible to upload data to a public repository, authors may also upload datasets as Supplementary Material with their paper for publication. Where none of these options are feasible, authors are required to make data their available upon reasonable request for the purposes of verification.

ORCID IDs

Neuroscience of Consciousness supports ORCID in creating unique identifiers for researchers. We believe that major advances in digital technology will come from linked open data and that linking the correct scientist with the correct output is part of that process. Authors must register for ORCID, and provide us with their identifier so that we can link to it. You can sign up through ScholarOne during submission, or at ORCID. Information on ORCID for authors. 

Permission to reproduce figures and extracts

In order to reproduce any third party material, including tables, figures, or images, in an article authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder and be compliant with any requirements the copyright holder may have pertaining to this reuse. When seeking to reproduce any kind of third party material authors should request the following:

•  non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the specified article and journal;
•  electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium;
•  the right to use the material for the life of the work; and
•  world-wide English-language rights.

Guidelines on clearing permissions.

Material disclaimer

The opinions expressed in Neuroscience of Consciousness are those of the authors and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors, the editorial board, Oxford University Press or the organization to which the authors are affiliated.

Manuscript preparation

For information on preparing your manuscript, please see our Manuscript preparation instructions page.