Editorial Policy

Policy at a Glance

1. Authorship and Acknowledgements

Authorship Criteria

JHNR follows the four authorship criteria described by ICMJE. Each person listed as an author should meet all of the following criteria:

1. Make a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of its data.
2. Draft the manuscript or review it critically for important intellectual content.
3. Approve the final version to be published.
4. Accept accountability for the work and help resolve questions about the accuracy or integrity of any part of it.

All persons who meet these criteria should be identified as authors. Individuals who do not meet all four criteria should not be listed as authors.

Acknowledgements

Contributors who assisted the work but do not qualify for authorship should be acknowledged, with their roles described where appropriate. Funding bodies, institutions, and organizations that provided financial, technical, administrative, or other support should also be identified. Authors should obtain permission from individuals who are named in the acknowledgements because their inclusion may be interpreted as endorsement of the work.

2. Changes in Authorship

A request to add, remove, or rearrange authors must be submitted by the corresponding author from the email address registered with the journal. The request must explain the reason for the change and include written agreement from all listed authors and from any author being added or removed.

• Before publication: the editor will review the request before the editorial or production process continues.
• After publication: an approved change will normally require a formal correction notice linked to the published article.
• Disputed authorship: when the authors cannot reach agreement, JHNR may refer the matter to the relevant institution because editors do not adjudicate authorship disputes.

3. Manuscript Submission

Authors should review the Author Guidelines, journal scope, manuscript template, and applicable policies before submission. Manuscripts should be prepared in the required format and submitted only through the official JHNR submission system.

• All listed authors must meet the authorship criteria and approve the submitted version.
• The corresponding author must provide accurate names, affiliations, email addresses, and other information requested by the journal.
• Authors should describe individual contributions where requested by the journal.
• The manuscript must include funding information and a conflict-of-interest declaration.
• Ethics approval, informed consent, clinical trial registration, data availability, and AI-use declarations must be provided when applicable.
• The blinded manuscript file should not contain information that unnecessarily reveals the authors' identities.

4. Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest may arise when a financial, professional, institutional, academic, or personal relationship could influence—or reasonably appear to influence—a person's judgment in the research and publication process.

• Authors must disclose relationships, activities, and sources of support that may be relevant to the submitted work.
• Reviewers must disclose relevant conflicts before accepting a review invitation and should decline when impartial review may not be possible.
• Editors and editorial board members must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where a relevant conflict exists. The manuscript will be assigned to another qualified editor.

5. Confidentiality

A submitted manuscript and its associated files are confidential. JHNR shares them only with people involved in editorial assessment, peer review, production, publication, or the resolution of a publication-ethics concern. These people may include editorial staff, editors, invited reviewers, authors involved in correspondence, production staff, and authorized representatives of relevant institutions.

Editors and reviewers must not use unpublished information for personal advantage or disclose it outside the editorial process. Manuscripts, review reports, author details, and editorial correspondence must not be uploaded to public or third-party generative AI services where confidentiality cannot be assured.

When misconduct is suspected, relevant information may be shared confidentially with the publisher, journal ethics advisers, research institutions, funders, or other bodies able to investigate the matter. JHNR will refer to applicable COPE guidance when deciding how to proceed.

6. Peer Review

The editorial office takes reasonable steps to remove names, affiliations, contact details, acknowledgements, conflict statements, and other direct identifiers before review when these details are submitted separately. Authors are also responsible for preparing a blinded manuscript. Complete anonymity cannot be guaranteed when a manuscript contains self-citations, distinctive datasets, registered protocols, preprints, or other publicly identifiable information.

Manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening are assigned to editorial board members or external reviewers with relevant subject expertise. Reviewers assess the manuscript using the journal's review criteria and provide recommendations to the handling editor. Reviewer comments inform, but do not determine, the editorial decision.

Reviewers should provide objective, specific, and respectful comments; protect confidentiality; disclose conflicts; and complete reviews within the agreed period. JHNR may provide acknowledgement of completed reviews where this service is available.

7. Editors, Editorial Boards, and Editorial Independence

Editorial Responsibilities

Editors are responsible for managing peer review and making editorial decisions. Decisions should consider the journal's scope, the manuscript's content and ethical compliance, reviewer reports, and the authors' responses. Editors and editorial board members are expected to follow this policy and relevant COPE guidance.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions must be made independently of commercial, institutional, political, or personal interests. The publisher, journal owner, sponsors, and other parties must not direct the acceptance or rejection of an individual manuscript. Concerns about inappropriate interference should be reported to the publisher or the journal's designated ethics contact for review.

8. Editorial Board Membership

Prospective editorial board members should hold a doctoral degree, have expertise relevant to the aims and scope of JHNR, and demonstrate appropriate research, publication, or peer-review experience. Applicants should be able to allocate sufficient time to evaluate assigned manuscripts and contribute to the journal's editorial work.

Applicants should submit the journal's editorial board membership form and a current curriculum vitae. Applications are assessed by the Editor-in-Chief or a designated editor. Appointment is based on the journal's needs, the applicant's subject expertise, publication record, reviewing experience, availability, and declared conflicts of interest.

Board membership is reviewed periodically. Members may be asked to update their profile or curriculum vitae. A member may be removed following sustained inactivity, inability to perform assigned duties, an unresolved conflict, or a breach of journal policy.

9. Research and Publication Misconduct

Potential misconduct includes violations of this policy, other JHNR policies, research ethics requirements, or relevant guidance from COPE, ICMJE, WAME, and STM. Examples include fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, inappropriate image or data manipulation, duplicate submission, redundant publication, undisclosed conflicts, authorship misrepresentation, citation manipulation, and interference with peer review or editorial decisions.

Allegations will be assessed confidentially and without presuming that misconduct has occurred. The person or persons concerned will normally be given an opportunity to respond. When appropriate, JHNR may seek information from authors, reviewers, editors, institutions, funders, or other relevant bodies and may follow the applicable COPE flowchart or guidance.

Depending on the evidence and the stage of publication, an outcome may include no further action, a request for clarification or correction, rejection, replacement of a reviewer or editor, notification to an institution, publication of a correction or expression of concern, or retraction. Actions will be selected to protect the accuracy of the scholarly record and ensure fair treatment of the parties involved.

10. Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

JHNR may correct, update, or retract published content when necessary to maintain an accurate publication record. The editor will consider the nature, extent, and effect of the issue before deciding on the appropriate notice.

A substantive post-publication change will be explained in a dated notice. The notice and article will be linked to one another, and the publication record will be retained. Retracted articles will remain identifiable as retracted rather than being removed, except in rare circumstances where removal is required for legal, privacy, or public-safety reasons.

JHNR will consider current COPE retraction guidance and other applicable publication-ethics guidance when handling these cases.