About JNeurosci

Mission

To advance neuroscience research by publishing and widely disseminating the highly rigorous research representative of the breadth of neuroscience; to ensure the peer review system remains rapid and fair; and to provide outlets for discussion of neuroscience that are not available elsewhere, allowing for competing ideas, debate, and questions around neuroscience.

Aims and Scope

JNeurosci is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes papers on a broad range of topics of general interest to those working on the nervous system.

“When you think about the papers that will shape the field and change our understanding of neuroscience, we want those papers to come to the Journal of Neuroscience. We want to represent the ideas and voices of neuroscientists across disciplines, geographical boundaries and stages of development.”

– Marina Picciotto, Editor-in-Chief

 

 

Criteria

To warrant publication in JNeurosci, a manuscript must demonstrate that its findings are of interest to the neuroscience community.

For example, if your study was not directly focused on a neuron but an ion channel, you should explicitly state within the Significance Statement and Discussion why the results are of interest to the field of neuroscience.

If you are wondering whether your manuscript is appropriate for JNeurosci, you may request a presubmission inquiry and we will respond as quickly as possible.

JNeurosci Values

To support its mission, JNeurosci is committed to the following values:

  1. Scientific excellence and rigor: JNeurosci values scientific studies that reflect unbiased and repeatable experiments, methods, procedures, analysis, and reporting to advance the field of neuroscience.
    • Our commitment to scientific rigor is reflected in our policies, which are evaluated on an ongoing basis to respond to developments and standards in the field.
  2. Representation of the breadth of the neuroscience field: JNeurosci evolves with the field as it changes. Our categories have changed over the years to reflect the breadth of the field of neuroscience.
    • Currently, our topics of research are:
    • In addition to research articles, JNeurosci publishes features that provide a service to the field and to our readers.
      • Journal Clubs are written by students or post docs and provide a thoughtful overview on a current topic, as well as providing the author(s) a learning and authorship opportunity outside of a regular research manuscript.
    • Invited Articles:
      • Dual Perspectives are a pair of short, expert mini-reviews that provide opposing and/or complementary hypotheses related to an important question in neuroscience, written by proponents of each view.
      • TechSights provide broad reviews and evaluations of technical developments that are likely to have profound impacts on current and future neuroscience research.
      • Progressions explore scientific journeys that have commenced with papers published in JNeurosci.
      • Viewpoints provide an overview of a single topic in neuroscience that is introductory enough to be accessible to the broad readership of the Journal but broad enough to provide an interesting context for that topic.
      • Symposium and Mini-Symposium papers are invited short summaries or overviews of selected symposia and mini-symposia presented at the SfN Annual Meeting, and written by the speakers. Symposia are published each year corresponding with the SfN meeting, in the Journal’s special Annual Meeting issue.
  3. Diversity: JNeurosci is committed to ensuring diversity among the members of its editorial board and reviewers across gender, age, and geography.
    • We value our reviewers who generously contribute their time and expertise to serve the field. Each year, we like to recognize our top reviewers who helped to make JNeurosci successful for another year. Our Associate Editors are the most frequent and highly rated reviewers that review for the journal.
    • To engage new reviewers and provide training in fair, rigorous and constructive review, JNeurosci has initiated a reviewer training program to pair trainees with Associate Editors and other highly experienced reviewers.
  4. Prompt and effective dissemination of peer-reviewed science: JNeurosci is committed to publishing papers as quickly as possible, while maintaining scientific excellence and rigor.
    • Select Bibliometrics:
      • 2016 Journal Impact Factor: 5.988
      • Total Cites: 171,800
      • Citable Items: 1,014 articles
      • Eigenfactor Score: 0.319 (#1 out of 259 in Neuroscience Category)
      • h5-index: 114
      • h5-median: 139
    • Sources: 2016 Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate Analytics, 2017) and Google Scholar.
      • Publishing 50 weeks a year, one volume a year, the journal averages 48 days from acceptance to publication in an issue.
      • The PDF version is published online ahead of issue in the Early Release section an average of 17 days from acceptance.
      • We also work hard to provide a first decision quickly, with an average of 33 days from submission to first decision.
    • As an official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, JNeurosci provides the publishing venue that can reach the largest neuroscience community in the world.
    • Our communications team works actively to alert the press to articles published in the journals, which has resulted in recent research highlights featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Newsweek, TIME, HuffPost.
    • Selected authors in the journal are given the opportunity to write a lay summary of their work for our member-based community, Neuronline.
  5. Fair, constructive experience in peer-review: JNeurosci values the work of its authors and reviewers and is committed to providing a constructive experience in the evaluation of research.
    • Decisions are made by our journal editors who are active research scientists in the field. JNeurosci covers and works hard to represent the various sub-disciplines within the field, both in its published content and among the members of its editorial board and peer-reviewers.
  1. Working to understand the publishing needs of the field: JNeurosci and its editorial board scan the publishing landscape regularly, stay in touch with the readership and community, and respond to the changing publications environment.
    • JNeurosci values the exchange of scientific communication and uses technology to enhance communication within the scientific community and with the public.
    • For example, in 2016, we updated our platform to improve our user interface, making it responsive so it could be viewed from any device (e.g., mobile, iPad). The new platform allows us to host Extended Data in many formats that can be accessed directly from the online version of the article. The journal also provides Altmetrics to track the visibility of published articles in online and traditional media outlets.

History

The Journal of Neuroscience was first published on January 1, 1981, under the leadership of Maxwell Cowan as Editor-in-Chief, and included five section editors: Solomon Snyder, molecular neuroscience; Michael Bennett, cellular neuroscience; Gerald Fischbach, developmental neuroscience; Eric Kandel, behavioral neuroscience; and Edward Evarts and R.W. Guillery, neural systems.

JNeurosci was initially published through partnerships between the Society for Neuroscience and external publishers, including 10 years with Oxford University Press. JNeurosci was brought in-house to SfN for publication in 1996. To learn more about the beginning of The Journal of Neuroscience, read the section called Coming of Age: The Founding of The Journal of Neuroscience within the history of SfN.

Stay updated on the latest research: Sign up and manage your Alerts to receive email alerts of table of contents, searching, and article citation alerts for both issues and Early Release.

How to Obtain Permission to Reprint, Photocopy or Reuse Material

Permission Requests

Would you like to reuse material from JNeurosci? For articles published in 2015 and later, work becomes available to the public 6 months after publication to copy, distribute, or display under the CC-BY 4.0 license. You do not need to submit a permission request or pay a fee to use this material following 6 months after publication.

If the article was published in 2014 or earlier, and the request for permission is from:

  • an Original Author, you DO NOT need to obtain permission for any not-for-profit reuse of your own material (See Permissions Policy).
  • a Nonprofit Publisher, you should email a detailed request to jnpermissions@sfn.org.
  • a For-Profit Publisher, you should submit a permission order request through the Copyright Clearance Center. There will be a reuse fee.

For more information, see JNeurosci's Permissions Policy.

Reprints

Single copies of an individual article are available from Infotrieve at http://www.infotrieve.com.

Photocopies

JNeurosci is registered with the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923. Authorization to photocopy items for the internal or personal use of specific clients is granted by the Society for Neuroscience provided that the copier pay to the Center the $15.00 copy fee stated in the code on the first page of each article. Special requests, such as for general distribution, resale, advertising, and promotional purposes or for creating new works, should be directed to Journal Permissions, Society for Neuroscience, 1121 14th St., NW, Suite 1010, Washington, DC 20005, jnpermissions@sfn.org.