Submissions

Author Guidelines

Categories of papers

The following categories of papers are considered:

• Original Papers
• Reviews
• Opinion Pieces
• Flashbacks
• Reflections
• Case Reports
• Letters
• Abstracts

Original Papers usually consist of Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements and References, but depending on the nature of the paper the authors may wish to use other subheadings.

Reviews should cover a topic that is broad and topical enough to attract the interest of a wide variety of readers.

Opinion Pieces are papers where the author(s) have strong views on an issue in clinical or experimental neuropathology. Arguments in favor or against their opinion should be discussed based on scientific evidence. These viewpoint papers are meant to stimulate discussion.

Flashback papers deal with important findings in the history of neuropathology, such as the first description of a disease, typically including access to scanned original histological slides by virtual microscopy and discussing historical background and impact on contemporary neuroscience.

Reflections are papers written by retired colleagues who reflect with some distance and a personal flavor on highlights and setbacks, likes and dislikes of scientific/diagnostic/teaching career, the role of mentors, colleagues and students, development of neuropathology over the past decades, speculations on future developments, threats, prospects, work-life balance, hobbies and recreation, life after retirement, suggestions for younger colleagues, and much more.

Letters include not more than two figures and/or tables and less than 1,500 words (including references, tables and legends). They do not have an abstract. Letters may include experimental data or describe novel findings on single or a few clinical cases.

Case Reports are papers on single, neuropathologically interesting cases. For scientific or educational reasons case reports are longer than letters. We strongly recommend that authors who would like to submit a case report take a look at the CARE writing guidelines while preparing the manuscript and go through the CARE Checklist before making their submission.

If authors feel that a paper does not correspond to any of these categories, they may wish to submit as "Other" and we´ll find (or establish) an appropriate category.

Editorial Procedure

Papers are undergoing prompt initial review by the editors. Referees will usually be invited within 24 hours, and they are given 14 days for reviews. Authors may suggest or exclude referees, but there is no need to do so. During handling of manuscripts the editors follow the suggestions and guidance of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). In case of any problems that cannot be clarified by the editors, the authors may wish to approach the ombudsman.

Journal Policies

Submission of a paper implies that all authors agree with our journal policies.

Formatting Papers

We refrain from excessive and obsessive regulations on how papers should be formatted. However, a few regulations are useful and should be considered.

The title page should include an informative title, full names and affiliations of all authors, and address, telephone number and e-mail address of the corresponding author.

The abstract usually consists of less than 300 words and is followed by up to 6 key words.

References in the article text (in-text citations) should be cited using numbers (e.g., [1][2]…) instead of last names (e.g., Smith, 2022). Furthermore, please verify that all references are cited in the text, and that all citations in the text are included in the list of references. Otherwise, references can be formatted according to any style, but formatting should be consistent throughout the paper. A doi should be added (if available) to each reference (regardless of consistency). 

Figures should be numbered and have a legend. Resolution of 300 dpi is usually sufficient. Higher resolutions may be included as electronic supplementary material if useful.

Virtual slides can be submitted, as well. Click here to see an example of a paper with embedded virtual slides for virtual microscopy. Please make sure to check this list of formats that are supported for embedding virtual slides. Please get in touch with the Editorial Office (info@freeneuropathology.org) to deposit large files of up to 30 GB.

Manuscript file

Manuscript text, tables and figures should be submitted in a single Word file (up to 30 MB in size). Figures should be presented together with legends and may be inserted within the text at the appropriate positions or grouped at the end. To facilitate reviewing, pages should be numbered.