Table of Contents

• General information
• Language
• Submission and Revision of Manuscript
• Manuscript Preparation
• Publication and Reprints

General information

1) Asian Journal of Pain is the official journal of the Korean Neuro-Pain Society, and published twice a year(May 30, October 30). This Journal publishes important papers covering the whole field of pain, including clinical and basic research, patient care, and health care policy. Studies on rare cases and technical notes of special instruments or equipment that might be useful to the field of pain management are also acceptable. Papers, to be accepted, will include original work(clinical and basic research), case reports, technical note, review articles, letters to the editor, etc. Review articles can be published upon specific request by the journal. Authors can publish special drafts with the approval from the editorial board. Case reports should be brief, and avoid an extensive review of the literature.

2) It should be assured that authors must not simultaneously submit an identical or similar paper for publication elsewhere. Multiple publication is acceptable only in the case of meeting the criteria of Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals(Ann Intern Med 108:258-265, 1988). Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with Uniform requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journal developed by International Com- mittee of Medical Journal Editors(February 2006).

Language

All manuscripts must be written in English. Authors should minimize the use of English abbreviations. Spell out all abbreviations at first occurrence, and then then introduce them by placing the abbreviation in parenthesis after the term being abbreviated. Abbreviation should be avoided as possible as one can. When it is used, full expression of the abbreviation following abbreviated word in parentheses should be given at first use. All units should be given in metric system (The International System of Units: SI units).

Submission and Revision of Manuscript

1) All papers must be submitted by corresponding author and then review process will be also achieved with corresponding author. Authors are requested to submit their papers electronically by e-mail(manuscript.ajp@gmail.com). Authors should send their articles in Microsoft(MS) Word (2007 or higher version). Authors, reviewers, and editors send and receive all correspondence by e-mail and no paper correspondence is necessary.

2) Upon submission of a manuscript, authors should send a copyright release/author agreement and author checklist form by Fax or e-mail to the editorial office. The copyright release/author agreement and author checklist will be sent to the corresponding authors by e-mail after submission.

Editorial Office
Junseok W Hur, M.D., Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief, Asian Journal of Pain
Editorial office Department of Neurosurgery, Korea University College of Medicine
73, Goryeodae-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02841, Korea
Tel: +82-2-920-5729
Fax: +82-2-929-0629
E-mail: ajp.editor.in.chief@gmail.com

3) Author information: The list of the authors in the ma- nuscript should include only those who were directly invol- ved in the process of the work. Authors can refer to the gui- deline by Harvard University in 1999 to find details on author- ship(http://www.hms.harvard.edu/integrity/authorship.html).

4) The manuscript should be composed of approximately 6,000 English words (not to exceed 10 pages of the journal) for clinical and laboratory studies, 3,000 English words for case reports and technical notes(not to exceed 5 pages of the journal). It should be composed of 600 English words for letters to the editor. Manuscript should be typed in A4 size white paper with double spaced(200%), and font size of 11 point or larger with margins of 3cm on each side.

5) The editorial board will make a decision on the approval for publication of the submitted manuscripts, and can request any further corrections, revisions, and deletions to the article text if necessary.

6) The price for all work requiring review, publishing, and re-printing of the paper will be determined by the editorial board.

7) Authors will receive English editorial comments from the journal upon acceptance of their paper. When the English correction is completed based on the comments, the accepted manuscript should be supplied as a file via e-mail(ajp.editor.in.chief@gmail.com). The file should include the name of first author, manuscript ID number, and title of manuscript.

Manuscript Preparation

1) Title page

The title page should be composed of external and internal title pages.

• a) The external title page should contain the article title, and full names of all authors with their institutional affiliations in English. The type of manuscript(laboratory Investigation, clinical article, case report) should be also addressed. When the work includes multiple authors with different affiliations, the institution where the research was mainly conducted should be spelled out first, then be followed by foot notes in superscript Arabic numerals beside the authors’ names to describe their affiliation in a consecutive order of the numbers. Then, mark the running head as not to exceed 65 characters in English. The external title page should also contain the address, TEL. and FAX. numbers, and e-mail address of the corresponding author at the bottom of the page, as well as information on the previous presentation of the manuscript in conferences and funding resources, if necessary.
• b) The internal title page should only contain the article title in English. The internal title page must not contain any information on the names and affiliations of the authors.

2) Manuscript format

The article should be organized in the order of title, abstract(Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion sec- tions should be included in Laboratory Investigation or Clinical Article, but are not necessary in other types of studies), introduction, materials and methods, results, dis- cussion, conclusions, references, tables, and figures or illustrations. In case reports, materials and methods and results can be replaced with cases.

3) Abstract

All manuscripts must contain an abstract. A list of Key Words, with a maximum of six items, should be included at the end of the abstract. The selection of Key Words should be based on Medical Subject Heading(MeSH) of Index Medicus and the Web site(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ mesh/MBrowser.html). The abstract should include brief descriptions on the objective, methods, results, and conclu- sion as well as a detailed description of the data. An abstract containing 400 words or less is required for original articles and 250 words for case reports. Abstracts for Labratory Inverstingation and Clinical Article should begin with the statement of the paper’s purpose and end with conclusions. Abstracts for other types of papers should begin with a brief and clear statement of the paper’s purpose, and be followed by appropriate details that support the conclusions of the paper.

4) Introduction

The introduction should address the purpose of the article concisely, and include background reports mainly relevant to the purpose of the paper(detailed review of the literature should be addressed in the discussion section).

5) Materials and Methods

Materials and Methods section should include sufficient details of the design, objects, and methods of the article in order, as well as the data analysis strategies and control of bias in the study. Enough details need to be addressed in the methodology section of an experimental study so that it can be further replicated by others. When reporting experiments with human subjects, the authors should indicate whether they received an approval from the Institutional Review Board for the study. When reporting experiments with animal subjects, the authors should indicate whether the handling of the animals was supervised by the research board of the affiliated institution or a similar one. Photographs disclosing patients must be accompanied by a signed release form from the patient or family permitting publication. We endorse the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki and expect that all investigations involving human materials have been performed in accordance with these principles. For animal experiment, “the Guiding Principles in the Care and Use of Animals” approved by the American Physiological Society have to be observed. Explanation of the experimental methods should be concise and sufficient for repetition by other qualified investigators. Procedures that have been published previously should not be described in detail.
However, new or significant modifications of previously published procedures need full descriptions. The sources of special chemicals or preparations should be given along with their location (name of company, city and state, and country). Method of statistical analyses and criteria of significance level should be described. In Case Reports, case history or case description replace the Materials and Methods section as well as Results section.
Please inform us the approved number of IRB when you submit the manuscript.

6) Results

The authors should describe logically their results of observations and analyses performed using methodology given in the previous section and provide actual data. For biometric measurements in which considerable amount of stochastic variation exists a statistical treatment should be used in principle. The result section should include sorely the findings of the current study, and not refer to previous reports. While an effort should be made to avoid overlapping descriptions by Tables and by main text, important trends and points in the Table should be described in the text. Experimental results should be described using Arabic numbers and the SI unit system.

7) Discussion

Discussions about the findings of the research and interpretations in relation to other studies are made. It is necessary to emphasize the new and critical findings of the study, not to repeat the results of the study presented in the previous sections. The meaning and limitation of observed facts should be described, and the conclusion should be related to the objective of the study only when it is supported by the results of the research. It is encouraged for the authors to use subheadings in the discussion section so that the readers can follow the logical flow of the authors’ thought.

8) Conclusion

The conclusion section should include a concise statement of the major findings of the study in accordance with the study purpose.

9) References

• a) Only references cited in text must appear in the reference list and marked in the form of superscript at the end of the sentences they were used in text(example: reference11,15,18)).
• b) All references should be alphabetized by the first author’s last name.
• c) When a work has six or less authors, cite the names of all authors. When a work has over six authors, cite the first six authors’ name followed by “et al.” Abbreviations for journal titles should be congruent with the style of Index Medicus. A journal title with one word does not need to be written out in abbreviation. The styles of references are as follows:
  <Journal>
  1.Lee LH, Shiu YH, Chiu YT, Lin LS, Wu CM, Wang YC, et al.: Epidemiologic study of head injuries in Taipei City, Taiwan. Chin Med J(Taipei) 50:219-225, 1992
  <Book>
  1.Conover WJ: Practical Nonparametric Statistics, ed
  2.New York: Jon Wiley & Sons, 1971, pp216-218
  
  <Article in a Book>
  1. Ojemann RG: Surgical management of bacterial intracranial aneurysms in Schmideck HH, Sweet HH (eds): Operative Neurosurgical Techniques. Indica- tions, Methods and Results, ed 2. Orlando: Grune & Stratton, 1988, Vol 2, pp997-1001

10) Tables, figures, and illustrations Tables and figure legends should be included below the references pages at the end of the paper, but figures should be submitted separately from the text of paper.

Table should be simple and should not duplicate information in figures. Title all tables and number them with arabic numerals in the order of their citation. Type each table on a separate sheet. Describe all abbreviations. Each column should have an appropriate heading, and if numerical measurements are given, the unit should be added to column heading. The significance of results should be indicated by appropriate statistical analysis. Table footnotes should be indicated with superscript markings. When remarks are used to explain items of the table, the markers should be given in the order of *, †, ‡, §, ||.

Photographs should be submitted individually(Namely, if Figure 1 is divided into A, B, C, and D, do not combine it into one, but submit each of them separately). Authors should submit figures in black and white if they want them to be printed in black and white. Authors are responsible for any additional costs of producing color figures.

Total file size of all figures should not exceed 5MB for review purpose. If your figures are more than 5MB in total, upload the figures after reducing the file size within 5MB. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, edi- torial office requests you to upload figure files of highest quality for printing.
The files should have following resolutions for printing: line art at 1200dpi, combination half-tones at 600dpi, and half-tones(gray scale or color without type or lettering) at 300dpi. If the quality of the photographs is considered as inappropriate for printing, re-submission of them can be requested by the journal.
Tables, graphs, figures, and photographs should be used only when necessary.

11) Letters to the editor

Authors can submit a sound critic or opinion for the specific article published in the journal, topic of general interest to neurosurgeons, personal view on a specific scientific issue, departmental announcements or changes, conference schedules, or other information of the clinical fields.

Author checklist

• 1) Before submitting the manuscript, authors should double-check all requirements noted in the agreement form regarding the registration and copyrights of their manuscript. A manuscript that does not fit the author instructions of the journal regarding format and references will be returned to the authors for further correction.
• 2)The page numbers in the manuscript should be counted from the page with the abstract, and the name and affiliation of the authors should not appear thereafter.

Review articles

• 1) The authors and topics for review articles will be selected by the editorial board. 2)Review articles should also undergo the review process.

Special articles

• 1) Special articles are devoted to providing updated reports by specialists in various fields or significant issues (e.g., history of the field) for the members of the society.
• 2) The authors and topics of special drafts will be assigned and specially requested by the editorial board.
• 3) The authors’ views in special drafts will be respected as much as possible.

Publication and Reprints

• 1) Once a manuscript is accepted for publication by the journal, it will be sent to the press, and page proofs will be sent to authors. Authors must respond to the page proofs as soon as possible after making necessary correc- tions of misspellings, and the location of the photographs, figures or tables. Authors can make corrections for only typing errors, and are not allowed to make any author alteration or substantive changes of the text. Proofs must be returned to the press within 72 hours of receipt. No response from the authors within this time frame will lead the publication of the proof read without corrections, and the editorial board is not responsible for any mistakes or errors occurring in this process.
• 2) A reprint order form should be filled out and returned to the press along with the page proofs.