International Journal of Neonatology
Editorial Policies
The rules this journal applies to peer review, authorship, research ethics, data, the published record, and the rights authors keep. Each section states the requirement and what it means in practice.
On this page
01
Assessment
Peer review and decisions
How a manuscript is handled from arrival to decision, and the grounds on which that decision is made.
Screening
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
Review model
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
Decision criteria
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
Requesting double-blind review
Authors who want double-blind review should say so on submission and prepare an anonymized manuscript as set out in Instructions for Authors.
Reviewer selection
The handling editor selects reviewers for subject expertise and absence of conflicts. Authors may suggest reviewers or ask that particular reviewers be avoided, and the editor decides independently of those suggestions.
Contesting a decision
An author who wishes to contest a decision should write to the editorial office setting out the grounds; the request is considered by an editor who was not involved in the original decision. A decision is reconsidered on the scientific and editorial grounds raised.
02
Independence
Editorial independence
What a manuscript is judged on, and what it is never judged on.
Separation from payment and membership
Decisions remain independent of fees, services, membership, and editorial or reviewer roles.
The article processing charge is invoiced after acceptance and has no part in the assessment. Holding a membership, serving as an editor or reviewer, or purchasing an optional service confers no advantage in the review or acceptance of that person’s own work.
Recusal
Editors recuse themselves from decisions on their own submissions and on work by close collaborators; those manuscripts are handled by another editor, independently.
A manuscript is assessed on what it reports and how it was done. Nothing an author pays for, belongs to, or contributes to the journal changes that assessment.
03
Attribution
Authorship and contribution
Authorship records who is responsible for the work, so the criteria are about responsibility rather than seniority or courtesy.
Criteria
Every listed author meets all four ICMJE criteria: substantial contribution to conception, design, acquisition, analysis or interpretation; drafting or critically revising the work; approval of the version submitted; and agreement to be accountable for it.
Contributors who do not meet all four are named in the acknowledgments with their contribution described. Guest, gift and ghost authorship are forms of misconduct.
Changes to the author list
Any addition, removal or reordering after submission requires the written agreement of every author, with the reason given to the editorial office.
Collaborative and multicenter work
Where a study is reported on behalf of a research network or multicenter group, the group is named and the individuals accountable for the manuscript are identified, so that responsibility for the work is attributable.
Artificial-intelligence tools
An AI tool cannot be an author, because it cannot take responsibility for the work. Where such a tool has been used in preparing the manuscript, the authors disclose it and remain fully accountable for the content.
04
Disclosure
Conflicts of interest
A disclosed interest is a fact a reader can weigh. Disclosure is required of everyone involved in the manuscript, not only of authors.
Authors
Authors declare financial and personal relationships that could be seen to influence the work: funding and grant numbers, employment and consultancy, patent and licensing interests, equity, and paid advisory roles. A declaration appears in every published article, including where there is nothing to declare.
Commercial interests in neonatal care
Studies involving infant formula and nutritional products, respiratory devices and ventilators, monitoring equipment, or pharmaceuticals used in the newborn state the role of any commercial sponsor in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of the study.
Reviewers and editors
A reviewer or editor with a competing interest in a manuscript declines the assignment and tells the editorial office, which reassigns it.
05
Integrity
Research ethics
Requirements that depend on what the study did. A manuscript reports the approvals its own design required, and the journal asks for evidence of them.
Human participants and human material
Research involving human participants, human tissue or identifiable data requires approval from the responsible research ethics committee, with the committee named and the reference given, and documented informed consent.
Consent in newborn research
A newborn cannot consent, so consent is given by a parent or legal guardian and the manuscript states who gave it and when it was obtained. Where consent was deferred or sought in an emergency setting, the manuscript reports the approved procedure under which that was done.
Clinical trials
Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.
Identifiable infants
Photographs, imaging and case detail that could identify an infant or a family are published with written consent for publication from a parent or legal guardian, and that consent is stated in the article.
Animal studies
Work involving animals requires approval from the institutional animal care and use body, names the approving body and the protocol number, and reports housing, husbandry and humane endpoints.
Originality and similarity
Submissions are original and not under consideration elsewhere. Manuscripts are checked with similarity software, and the report is read by an editor in context rather than applied as an automatic threshold.
Misconduct
Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation and duplicate submission are misconduct. Allegations are investigated following the COPE flowcharts, the corresponding author is given the opportunity to respond, and the authors’ institution is informed where the case warrants it.
06
Evidence
Data availability and reporting
Neonatal findings often rest on small samples and closely defined populations, so the journal asks for both the statement and the detail behind it.
Data-availability statement
Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement.
The statement says where the data supporting the findings can be found, and under what conditions.
Restricted and identifiable data
Newborn data are frequently identifiable or subject to institutional restriction. Where data cannot be shared in full, the authors explain the restriction in the statement and describe how access may be sought. What supports a specific claim in the paper is expected to be available to an editor or reviewer who asks.
Reporting guidelines
Manuscripts follow the reporting guideline that matches the study design, including CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, CARE for case reports, STARD for diagnostic accuracy, SQUIRE for quality-improvement work, and ARRIVE for animal research. The completed checklist is submitted with the manuscript.
Defining the population
Because outcomes in the newborn turn on maturity and weight, manuscripts report gestational age and birth weight, how they were determined, and the age at which each outcome was assessed.
Statistical reporting
Methods state the analysis plan, how the sample size was arrived at, how missing data were handled, and the software and version used. Estimates are reported with confidence intervals rather than significance alone.
Code and supplementary material
Analysis code and parameter files are deposited in a repository that issues a persistent identifier, with the version used for the published results identified. Extended datasets, protocols and additional analyses may be submitted as supplementary files; they are assessed with the manuscript and published alongside the article.
07
The record
Corrections, retractions and concerns
A published article stays published. The record is amended by adding to it, so that what readers saw and what is now known are both visible.
Correction
An error that affects the record but not the conclusions is corrected by a correction notice, published as a citable item, linked in both directions with the article, and describing exactly what changed.
Retraction
Where the findings are unreliable, through error or through misconduct, the article is retracted. The retraction notice is published as a citable item, linked in both directions, states who is retracting the article and why, and the original article remains available and is marked as retracted.
Expression of concern
Where a serious question is unresolved and an investigation is continuing, the journal may publish an expression of concern linked to the article, and update or replace it when the matter is settled.
Raising a concern
Concerns about a published article, or about how a manuscript was handled, go to the editorial office at [email protected], with the article and the specific concern identified. The editorial office acknowledges the concern, examines it, and reports the outcome to the person who raised it.
Post-publication comments on methodology, interpretation or data are assessed in the same way, and a response is published where the matter warrants it.
08
Before publication
Withdrawal before publication
Withdrawing a manuscript that has been submitted but not yet published is governed by the publisher’s withdrawal policy. It applies in the same terms across the publisher’s journals, and it is reproduced here in full so that an author reading the policies does not have to leave the page to find it.
Before withdrawing
Authors should contact the editorial office promptly and wait for written confirmation before submitting the work elsewhere.
Withdrawal soon after submission
Manuscripts withdrawn within 3 days of submission are not subject to a withdrawal charge.
Withdrawal later in the process
Manuscripts withdrawn more than 3 days after submission incur a withdrawal charge equal to 30% of the journal’s APC.
Confirmation
Authors must receive official withdrawal confirmation before submitting the manuscript to another journal.
The same policy, with the journal’s charge, is on Article Processing Charges.
09
Rights
Copyright, licensing and reuse
Authors keep copyright in their work, and the license is what lets other researchers use it.
Copyright
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right to publish. No transfer of copyright is required.
License
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Anyone may copy, redistribute and adapt the material, for any purpose including commercial use, provided the original authors, the article title, the journal, and the DOI are credited and changes are indicated.
Self-archiving
Authors may deposit the published version in an institutional or subject repository and on a personal page immediately on publication, with no embargo, under the same license.
Preprints
Posting a preprint before submission is accepted and is not prior publication. Authors are asked to link the preprint to the published article once it appears, so that citations resolve to the version of record.
Third-party material
Figures, tables and substantial quotations taken from other work are included on the basis of an applicable license, permission from the rights holder where permission is required, or a lawful exception, and are attributed to the original source in the caption.
10
Continuity
Archiving and continuity
Each article is registered with a DOI, so a citation continues to resolve to it. The journal’s arrangements for long-term preservation, and the deposit route available to authors funded by the National Institutes of Health, are set out on the Indexing page together with the identifiers and discovery services that apply to this journal.
Related
Questions about these policies
Questions about any of these policies are welcome at [email protected].
- Instructions for AuthorsManuscript preparation, reporting requirements and the submission checklist.
- Article Processing ChargesThe charge, when it falls due, and the withdrawal terms.
- Editorial BoardThe editors responsible for the journal’s scholarly decisions.
The submission page carries the approved routes and the requirements that apply to each.
Digital preservation
This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish. Read our preservation policy.