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Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 35, 2009. Register to receive future newsletters. 

Read the Editor in Chief's latest call for papers here.

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Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 18, 2009. Register to receive future newsletters.

Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 17, 2009.  Register to receive future newsletters.

Read the publisher's blog entry on JEN. 

Peer reviewers are sought. Click here to apply or to update your details. 

Check the Publisher's Blog for recent news

Journal overview

Aims and scope:

Journal of Experimental Neuroscience is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original papers on nervous system structure and function, from molecular to behavioral levels of inquiry. The five general areas of focus for the Journal of Experimental Neuroscience are:

1. Molecular, Cellular and Developmental;
2. Systems and Computational;
3. Cognitive and Behavioral;
4. Plasticity and Repair;
5. Diseases and Disorders.

All articles will be considered for publication; however, preferential consideration will be given to reports of significant interest to the broad neuroscience community. Mini- and full-length reviews are typically invited by the Editor-in-Chief, however, unsolicited work will be considered.

Indexing:

This journal is indexed by:

• OAIster
  

Editorial standards and procedures:

Submissions, excluding editorials, letters to the editor and dedications, will be peer reviewed by two reviewers.  Reviewers are required to provide fair, balanced and constructive reports.  

Under our Fairness in Peer Review Policy authors may appeal against reviewers' recommendations which are ill-founded, unobjective or unfair.  Appeals are considered by the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor.

Papers are not sent to peer reviewers following submission of a revised manuscript. Editorial decisions on re-submitted papers are based on the author's response to the initial peer review report.

National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy compliant:

As of April 7 2008, the US NIH Public Access Policy requires that all peer reviewed articles resulting from research carried out with NIH funding be deposited in the Pubmed Central archive.

If you are an NIH employee or grantee Libertas Academica will ensure that you comply with the policy by depositing your paper at Pubmed Central on your behalf. 

Information for authors

Call for papers:

Read the Editor in Chief's latest call for papers here.

Submission types accepted: 

• Original research articles.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. They may cover basic science and clinical reviews, ethics, pro/con debates, and equipment reviews.
• Commentaries: focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue.
• Hypotheses: articles that present an original hypothesis backed solely by previously published results rather than any new evidence. They should outline significant progress in thinking that would also be testable.
• Letters to the Editor: these can be either a re-analysis of a previously published article, or a response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication.
• Methodology articles: these discuss a new experimental method, test or procedure. The article must describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available. The method needs to have been well tested and ideally, but not necessarily, used in a way that proves its value.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research.
• Meeting reports: a report pertaining to activity at a meeting or conference Articles published in this journal are immediately available without delay upon publication and enjoy substantial visibility.
• Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association, or present an important adverse reaction. Case reports must meet appropriate ethical standards.

All submissions are subject to prompt, objective and fair peer review in compliance with our Fairness in Peer Review Policy.  Copyright in published articles remains with the author(s).  Authors are continually informed of the progress of their paper and our staff are friendly and responsive. 

One author recently wrote: "I would like to say that this is the most author-friendly editing process I have experienced in over 150 publications. Thank you most sincerely."

Criteria for publication: 

Publication is dependent on peer reviewers' judgement of papers.  Reviewers are asked to provide thoughtful and unbiased feedback to authors to ensure that the conclusions of papers are valid and manuscripts achieve reasonable standards of scholarliness and intelligibility. 

Previous work in the field must be acknowledged and papers should read without unreasonable difficulty.  Papers should fit comfortably within the scope of the journal.

Reviewers are asked to act in a fair, objective and constructive manner which maintains quality standards and helps authors to communicate their research.  They are instructed that in areas of genuinely novel research issues may be raised which cannot immediately be resolved and that absolutely rigorous validation of data may therefore not be possible. 

More information on the role of peer reviewers is available on the information for reviewers page.  Where authors consider that reviewers have made recommendations which are unreasonable, unobjective or ill-founded they may appeal them to the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor under our Fairness in Peer Review Policy.

Articles submitted to other journals:

We are willing to consider papers which have been peer reviewed by other journals but not accepted for publication. 

Services for authors:

Prior to peer review of your paper we can:

• Have your paper's reference style revised to meet our requirements,
• Have your paper's English revised by specialist English-speaking technical editors.

After peer review of your paper we can:

• Have your paper revised in accordance with peer reviewer's recommendations and have a summary of responses to the reviewers created by our specialist external substantive editors,
• Provide bound reprints of your article in colour or black and white ,
• Provide online-early rapid publication if your paper prior to typesetting.

What other authors have said:

Libertas Academica actively requests, receives and acts upon feedback from authors, readers and editorial boards.  Here's what some recent authors have said about us:

"Within a couple of days the reviewers had been procured and the manuscript was out."

"The communication between your staff and me has been terrific.  Whenever progress is made with the manuscript, I receive notice.  Quite honestly, I've never had such complete communication with a journal."

"LA is different, and hopefully represents a kind of scientific publication machinery that removes the hurdles from free flow of scientific thought."

Article processing fees:

All submissions to this journal are subject to an article processing fee if they are accepted for publication.  Article processing fees are used to fund the processing of your paper and development of the journal.  Article processing fees are the only compulsory charge you will face and do not vary according to word count, page count, colour figures or any other factor.  There is no additional charge for the author(s) to make any use of their article and no charge to readers to access it.

Full fee waivers are available for authors working in undeveloped nations and partial discounts of 20-50% are available to authors in other nations.  Authors must be able to verifiably demonstrate their suitability for a discount or waiver.  Availability of waivers and discounts is subject to monthly availability and is given at the publisher's discretion.  Waivers and discounts must be applied for prior to submission.  Neither are available after submission.

Register as a peer reviewer:

Do you wish to register as a peer reviewer?  Or are you already a registered peer reviewer but you need to update your contact details?   To register or update your details visit the peer reviewer registration form. 

Applicants must be able to demonstrate at least five years of continuous experience in the journal's subject area including at least two in the previous 24 months.

Editor in Chief profile

Dr. Raphael Pinaud is the Director of the Laboratory of Sensory Plasticity and Learning, and an Assistant Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, in the Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester, NY, USA. Dr. Pinaud received his Ph.D. from OHSU, in Portland, Oregon, USA. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Rochester, he was a Research Associate in the Department of Neurobiology at the Duke University Medical Center, in North Carolina, and a Research Fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children at the University of Toronto in Canada.

Dr. Pinaud has co-edited the books “Plasticity and the Visual System: From Genes to Circuits” (2005) and “Immediate Early Genes in Sensory Processing, Cognitive Performance and Neurological Disorders” (2006), both of which are published through Springer. He is the author of over 30 peer-reviewed papers and more than a dozen book chapters on central nervous system function. He has received a number of professional awards including the Society for Neuroscience's Axon Award, a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Award, the Killam Memorial Award, and an N. L. Tartar Award. Dr. Pinaud’s expertise is in the field of sensory neuroscience. His laboratory uses a multi-disciplinary research program to investigate the neural mechanisms of sensory processing and experience-dependent plasticity in the songbird auditory system and in the rodent visual system.

>> Dr Pinaud's latest call for papers

Editorial Board

Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, Ph.D.
Heather and Melanie Muss Professor, Department of Neurological Surgery and Institute for Regeneration Medicine, UCSF School of Medicine, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Lutgarde Arckens, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Biology, Animal Physiology and Neurobiology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

Yang Dan, Ph.D.
Professor of Neurobiology, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Timothy Ebner, M.D./Ph.D.
Professor and Head, Department of Neuroscience and Visscher Chair in Physiology, University of Minnesota, MN, USA.

Michael D. Ehlers, M.D./Ph.D.
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor, Department of Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA.

Howard Eichenbaum, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Psychology, Department of Psychology, and Director of the Center for Memory and Brain, and Center for Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.

Paul Frankland, Ph.D.
Canadian Research Chair in Cognitive Neurobiology and Scientist, Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, Canada.

Tamas F. Freund, Ph.D./D.Sc.
Director, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.

Henrique von Gersdorff, Ph.D.
Assistant Scientist, The Vollum Institute, Portland, OR, USA.

Stephen Grossberg, Ph.D.
Wang Professor and Chairman, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, and Director, Center for Adaptive Systems, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.

Takao Hensch, Ph.D.
Professor, Departments of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Neurology, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.

Jon Kaas, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.

Leonard Kaczmarek, Ph.D.
Professor, Departments of Pharmacology and Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.

Alfredo Kirkwood, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Mind/Brain Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Paulo Kofuji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.

Robert Malenka, M.D./Ph.D.
Pritzker Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, USA.

Isabelle Mansuy, Ph.D.
Associate Professor in Molecular and Cognitive Neurosciences, Brain Research Institute, Medical Faculty of the University of Zürich, and Department of Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, Switzerland.

Dennis O’Leary, Ph.D.
Professor, The Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA.

Remi Quirion, Ph.D.
Professor and Scientific Director, Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montreal, QC, Canada and Director, Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Ranulfo Romo, M.D./D.Sc.
Professor of Neuroscience and Head of the Department of Biophysics, Institute of Cellular Physiology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico.

Frédéric Saudou, Ph.D.
Director of Research, Institute Curie/UMR 146 CNRS, Orsay, France.

Sangram S. Sisodia, Ph.D.
Thomas Reynolds Sr. Family Professor of Neurosciences and Director, Center for Molecular Neurobiology, Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Peter Somogyi, PhD./D.Sc.
Professor of Neurobiology and Director, Medical Research Council Neuropharmacology Unit, University of Oxford, UK.

Thomas Südhof, M.D.
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA.

J. David Sweatt, Ph.D.
Evelyn F. McKnight Chair, Department of Neurobiology, and Director, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, USA.

Liisa Tremere, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.

Kazuyoshi Tsutsui, D.Sc.
Professor of Integrative Brain Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.

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