This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site https://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/sab to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Stress and Brain will be reviewed.

As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

1 Open Access

Stress and Brain is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC license and will be hosted online in perpetuity.

Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of article processing charges which are paid by Tsinghua University Press, thus authors don’t need to pay any article processing charges. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal either.

The authors hold the full copyrights of their own papers.

2 Article publishing charge (APC)

This journal is financially supported by Tsinghua University Press and therefore does NOT charge an article processing charge for open access publication.

3 What do we publish?

3.1 Article types
Stress and Brain publishes original research article, review, and opinion.

Research article

• This category is for full-length reports on original research.
• A structured abstract of no more than 300 words is required.
• Manuscripts in this category should use the following structure: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions.

Review

• This category is for reviews of major topics related to intercommunications between stress and nervous system, both synthetic and narrative reviews.
• An unstructured abstract of no more than 200 words is required.

Opinion

• This category is for standards, guidelines, expert consensus in related subjects.

Editorial (Invited Only)

• This category is opinion or perspective on the content of Cancer Innovation or of relevance to the field of stress and nervous system.

4 Preparing your manuscript

4.1 Formats

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word.

4.2 Artwork, figures, and other graphics

Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.

4.3 Supplementary material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g., datasets, podcasts, videos, and images) alongside the full-text of the article. These will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. 

5 Submitting your manuscript

5.1 How to submit your manuscript

Stress and Brain is hosted on a website based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/sab to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. 

5.2 Title, keywords, and abstracts

Please supply a title, an abstract and keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google.

5.3 Information required for completing your submission

Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including E-mail, mailing address, and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

5.4 Permissions
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.

6 On acceptance and publication

If your article is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been accepted, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 14 working days.

6.1 Production

The production editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will made available to the corresponding author via our E-mail to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. Please note that if there are any changes to the author list at this stage all authors will be required to complete and sign a form authorizing the change.

6.2 Online publication

One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all.

6.3 Promoting your article
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible.

7 Archive

The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of the published content in Stress and Brain.

8 Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to the Stress and Brain editorial office as follows:

Yu Sun, Editorial Office Director, stressbrain@tup.tsinghua.edu.cn

1 Peer review policy

The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. Stress and Brain utilizes a single-blind peer review process in which the reviewer’s name and information is withheld from the author. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief who then makes the final decision.

2 Authorship

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

1. Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data.
2. Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content.
3. Approved the version to be published.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
   Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.

3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

3.1 Third party submissions

Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

•  Disclose the kind of editorial assistance, e.g., name, company, and the level of input .
•  Identify each entity that paid for this assistance.
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via a third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g., conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, we reserve the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

3.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company, and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.

Stress and Brain requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

4 Declaration of conflicting interests                   

It is the policy of Stress and Brain to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.

For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.

5 Research ethics and patient consent

Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the Methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.

For research articles, authors are also required to state in the Methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative.

Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants

All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The journal has adopted the Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare for Veterinary Journals published by the International Association of Veterinary Editors.

6 Clinical trials

Stress and Brain conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

7 Reporting guidelines

The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

8 Data

We are committed to facilitating openness, transparency, and reproducibility of research. Stress and Brain requires authors to share their research data in a suitable public repository as a condition of publication. This is subject to ethical considerations and in such cases the journal editor may grant an exception and authors should contact the Editorial Office at zhaoqy@tup.tsinghua.edu.cn. Authors are also required to include a data accessibility statement in their manuscript file and to follow data citation principles.

1 Publication ethics

We are committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors.

1.1 Plagiarism

Stress and Brain and TUP take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software, iThenticate. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in Stress and Brain. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication.

2 Contributor’s publishing agreement

Before publication we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Stress and Brain publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to reuse the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. 

Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request.