1. EDITORIAL ETHICS AND CONFLICT OF INTEREST.
The article must be signed by all the authors, indicating the presence or absence of a conflict of interest (on the letterhead of the institution). A conflict of interest is not an obstacle to the consideration of the work, and if present, it must be indicated. If the supervisor of the work is not among the authors, his or her visa is required. When submitting the article, you should specify whether the article is a fragment of a dissertation work.
The article must be signed by all the authors.
It is forbidden to send to the Editorial Office works previously published or sent for publication in other editions. When submitting a manuscript, the authors are responsible for disclosing their financial and other conflicting interests that may have an impact on their work. In case of sponsorship, authors should indicate the sponsor's role in determining the structure of the study, collecting, analyzing and interpreting data, and deciding to publish the results. If the sources of funding were not involved in such actions, this should also be noted in the attached referral form (see above).

The journal has the following sections:

1) Lead articles and editorials;

2) Original articles;

3) Reviews and lectures;

4) Clinical cases;

5) Discussions;

6) Historical essays;

7) Clinical guidelines;

8) Information about scheduled conferences, symposia, congresses;

9) Anniversaries.

The Editorial Board provides expert evaluation (review) of the manuscripts. Based on two written reviews and the Editorial Board's opinion, the manuscript is accepted for publication, rejected, or returned to the author (s) for revision. The Editorial Board reserves the right to publish articles accepted for publication in the form and in the order that is optimal for the journal.
Informed consent.
It is prohibited to publish any information that makes it possible to identify the patient (to indicate his name, initials, numbers of medical histories in photographs, when compiling written descriptions and pedigrees), except in cases where it is of great scientific value and the patient (his or her parents or guardians) has given informed written consent to this. When obtaining consent, this should be reported in the published article.

Ethical requirements and rules applicable to publications:

1. The author must submit an original scientific work for publication;

2. In the final decision on the issue of publication, the choice should be based on the scientific and practical significance of the research, considerations of fairness, professional and scientific ethics;

3. The article must contain the necessary references to the information or fragments of works of other authors used, in order to exclude plagiarism and violations of professional ethics;

4. The scientific archive of the author, on which the research and work are based, must be available for consideration, if necessary, for a period of at least 2 years;

5. Submission of the manuscript of the work to more than one journal at the same time for publication is not allowed and is considered as a violation of professional and scientific ethics;

6. In the case of using data related to the identity and private life of patients, permission from patients must be obtained, and in the case of children or incapacitated patients - permission from their parents or guardians should be obtained;

7. When publishing studies that come into contact with the examination of patients and healthy people the norms and rules of the Declaration of Helsinki adopted in 1964 must be observed, with the additions of 1975, 1981, 1989, 1996, 2000, 2002,2004, 2008 and 2013;

8. When using data with animal experiments, the principle of humane treatment of the experimental animals must be observed;

9. When discussing the work and reviewing it, complete confidentiality must be observed;

10. If the author refuses to publish the work, it is prohibited to use the material of the work in the journal by the reviewers and members of the Editorial Board in scientific articles and research prior to the publication of the original work;

11. When reviewing, the scientific significance of the work must be taken into account, only;

12. The review must be carried out in conditions of total anonymity of the work;

13. When reviewing, "objections" and "criticism" must be reasoned, and if necessary - contain adequate references to the literature sources used;

14. It is unacceptable to criticize the author's personality and is considered a violation of ethics;

15. The review of the work must be completed within the deadline set by the journal;

16. Critical comments must be directed to the author;

17. The work must provide the methodology for obtaining the data contained in the article, so that when necessary they could be reproduced

These rules are an adapted text from the common requirements and rules of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines ).
The author is responsible for the correctness of the bibliographic data.

Rules for reviewing manuscripts (articles) sent to the Editorial Office of the journal:

1. The manuscript of the article received by the Editorial Office is considered by the executive secretary in terms of compliance with the journal's profile and design requirements.
2. The manuscript sent to the Editorial Office must be accompanied by a letter written by the authors.
3. The article is sent for review to two or, if necessary, three reviewers – members of the Editorial Board, or, if necessary, other specialists with adequate experience in the specific scientific field. Experts working in the same division or subsidiary where the work was performed cannot be involved in the review process.
4. The article must be submitted to the reviewer anonymously without specifying information about the authors. The review also must be sent from the Editorial Board to the author anonymously without disclosing the reviewer. By mutual agreement the author and the reviewer can also communicate without the help of the Editorial Board, if this is necessary for work on the manuscript and there are no obstacles of a personal or other nature specified by them or the editor.
5. Reviewers are notified that the submitted manuscripts are intellectual property of the authors and refer to information that is not subject to disclosure. Reviewers do not have the right to take advantage of knowledge about the content of the work before its publication.
6. The review must contain a comprehensive analysis of the scientific and methodological merits and imperfections of the article and constructive comments on the revision of the article.
7. The reviewer must evaluate:
* Relevance of the content of the article: does the level of what is described in the article correspond to the current problems in neurosurgery and related disciplines;
* Novelty, significance and originality of the scientific and practical conclusions of the article;
* Completeness and reliability of the information provided;
* Correctness and accuracy of terminology, definitions and wording,
* Compliance with the norms and rules of professional ethics.

8. The review should include clear recommendations on the article:
* Accept without changes,
* Accept with minor changes,
* Adopt with major changes,
* Reject.

9. The review must be sent to the Executive Secretary within a period not exceeding 1 month from the date of receipt of the manuscript by the reviewer.

10. If the review contains recommendations for correction and revision of the article, it must be sent to the author with a suggestion to take into account the recommendations when preparing a new version of the article or reasonably refuse them. The article must be returned in a corrected form within 1 month. The revised manuscript must be accompanied by a letter from the author containing answers to the questions and explanatory comments regarding the changes made in the article. The article reworked by the author must be sent for review to the same reviewer who made critical comments.

11. If the reviewer did not recommend the article for publication, the Editorial Board may send the article back to the author for revision, taking into account the comments made, and also to another reviewer. The text of a negative review must be sent to the author.

12. Manuscripts that have received contradictory reviews must be sent for additional peer review. If two negative reviews are received for a manuscript, it is rejected.

13. The decision on publication after reviewing is made by the Editor-in-Chief/Deputy Editor-in-Chief, and - if necessary - by the entire Editorial Board. The Executive Secretary informs the author about the decision made.

14. The maximum period of review between the dates of receipt of the manuscript by the Editorial Board and the decision of the Editorial Board must not exceed 2 months.

15. All changes in the text of the manuscript (article) before publication are agreed with the author.

16. Reviews and correspondence with authors are kept in the Editorial Office for at least 5 years from the date of publication of the articles and information (copies of reviews) can be provided upon requests to the expert councils of the Higher Attestation Commission, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.

17. Reviewers are not paid, all work of the Editorial Board, Editorial Council and reviewers is gratuitous.

According to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals

(http://www.icmje.org/index.html)

2. The Editorial Board reserves the right to shorten and edit the accepted works. The date of registration of the article is the time of receipt of the final (revised in accordance with the comments of the Editorial Board or reviewer) version of the article.

3. There is no fee for the publication of manuscripts.

4. SUBMISSION OF ARTICLES

Materials should be sent to the Editorial Office:

Polenov Neurosurgical Institute, 191014, Saint Petersburg, ul. Mayakovskogo, d. 12

Tel. / Fax: (812) 273-85-52, 273-81-34

Electronic versions should be sent via e-mail to:

[email protected]

Contact person: Konstantin Kukanov.

The Editorial Board corresponds with the authors via e-mail.

5. REQUIREMENTS FOR IMAGES

Images must be attached as separate files in TIFF, JPEG, or PNG formats. Illustrations created or processed by Microsoft Office tools (in WORD, POWER POINT programs) must be attached to a file of the appropriate format (doc, docx, ppt files). Each file must be named by the figure number (for example: Fig-1, Fig-2a, Fig-2b, etc.). When sending them via e-mail, all the image files must be packed in one zip or rar archive folder. In the text of the article, captions to images and photos must be grouped together at the end of the article. Each image should have a title and a transcript of all abbreviations. In the captions to the graphs, the symbols on the axes of abscissa and ordinate, and units of measurement must be indicated, each curve must be explained. The captions to the microphotographs should specify the method of coloring and. All illustrations must be of high quality. The photos should have sufficient resolution, and the numbers and letters should be clearly readable at the size in which the illustration will be printed in the journal.

Captions to images, notes, and symbols in the images must be sent in Russian and English!

6. TEXT
Articles should be typed in Times New Roman or Arial (14 pt size, 1.5 spaced, left margin set at 3 cm, other margins – 2 cm). Pages should be enumerated. Automatic hyphenation is not allowed. An article SHOULD NOT EXCEED 18 pages (including illustrations, tables, an abstract and references), review or advisory letter – 3 pages. The TITLE PAGE should bear: 1) title of the article; 2) author's surname and initials; 3) complete name of the author's place of work in the nominative case with obligatory indication of its status (an abbreviation before the name) and affiliation; 4) city, country. In case of multiple authorship a numerical footnote should be applied to each author's surname indicating his/her place of work. If all authors work in the same organization it is not necessary to cite their place of work for each of them. This information should be presented in both Russian and English. It is recommended that the authors' surnames are spelled as in their previous publications or transliterated in accordance with the BSI standards (British Standards Institution), see http://ru.translit.net/?account=bsi . As to organizations, the official English name should be provided.
A separate page should contain additional information on each of the authors as required by the Russian Science Citation Index: surname, first and patronymic names in Russian and transliterated, e-mail and postal address of the organization for correspondence with the authors (can be one for all authors). For better correspondence, please, provide contacts of one of the authors, including e-mail and mobile phone number. Also you must specify the ORCID for the author who submits the article, and preferably for each author of the article. If there is no ORCID number, you need to obtain it by registering at https://orcid.org/ . We recommend to check the correct spelling of the institution's name on the site https://grid.ac .
The COMPOSITION of an original article should be the following: an abstract and key words (in both Russian and English), give the ORCID of all authors and a list of abbreviations, short introduction describing the current state of the problem, aim, material and methods, results and
discussion, enumerated findings or conclusion, references. The article should be brief and clear. It should not contain long historical reviews or reiterations.
The manuscript can be supplemented by a glossary (for unobvious terminology).
Besides generally accepted abbreviations and acronyms of units of measurement as well as physical, chemical, and mathematical quantities and terms (e.g. DNA), one can introduce abbreviations of own expressions frequently used in the article. All abbreviations introduced by the author are to be expanded at first mention. Simple words must not be contracted, even if they are often repeated in the text.
Drug doses, units of measurement, and other numerical values should be provided in accordance with the International System of Units (SI).

7. AUTHOR'S SUMMARY (ABSTRACT)
An abstract is the basic information source for Russian and foreign information systems and databases. Despite its necessary brevity, an abstract, like a business card, is meant to be exhaustive. Judging from the abstract, the editor decides whether or not the article is worth reviewing. After the article is published, most potential readers (up to 95% by some estimates) will not read beyond the abstract. Thus, it should be able to explain the essence of the study to the reader and entice him/her into obtaining a copy of the full paper for more details. The size of the abstract depends on the amount of information in the article, its scientific value and/or practical importance, however, has to lie within the range of 200-250 words.
Structured abstract
A structured abstract is an essential part of any scientific article that contains experimental or quasi-experimental results, empirical evidence, or systematic review. Its informative value is usually higher than that of an ordinary unstructured abstract. It may be also easier to read and remember. Moreover, a structured abstract ensures higher visibility of the article in international databases, which ultimately influences its citation potential.
A structured abstract should include five sections in chronological order: Rationale, Aim, Methods, Results, and Discussion.
RATIONALE – a brief (1-3 sentences) description of the problem that necessitated the study.
The problem can be characterized by its scale, mediated effects, and/or lack of scientific knowledge.
AIM – this section is to define the primary aim, or the main question of the study. Please, note that the aim should be as concrete as possible without boiling down to overall comparisons.
METHODS – this section is meant to provide the following information: 1) subject details (like whether the participants were diseased or healthy), 2) control group details if any, 3) inclusion criteria, 4) performed interventions, 5) study site and 6) duration, 7) outcomes (including measures that can be taken to determine their correspondence with the primary aim) and 8) evaluation methods. The necessity of specifying statistical tests and software will be addressed individually by the editor.
RESULTS – this section should provide further details on study participants (such as the number of those enrolled and those who completed the study as well as some major characteristics of the latter) and evaluate the outcomes that correspond with the primary aim. It is possible to present the results from 2-3 subgroups divided by age, sex, clinical features, etc. Adverse effects, if any, must be reported. Statistical measures (p value) should be given with an accuracy of three decimal places. When investigating multi-criteria relationships (e.g. one dependant and several independent variables), please, provide the results of multifactorial analyses.
CONCLUSION – a summary of study results that correspond with its primary aim (1-3 sentences). Authors are advised to avoid excessive generalization and balance their appraisal of positive and negative effects of an intervention.
A structured abstract should not exceed 250 words. Appropriateness of a larger abstract is discussed individually.
Commercial names of medical products are not allowed in the abstract. Randomized trial
When reporting the results of a randomized trial, the CONSORT Statement should be complied with. Thus, an abstract is to include the following sections:
– study DESIGN
– METHODS
participants
interventions
objectives or study hypotheses
outcomes
randomization sequence generation
blinding (masking) (if applicable)
– RESULTS
number of randomized participants
numbers analyzed
outcomes and estimation (at the primary endpoint)
adverse events
– CONCLUSION
– study number (registration number; e.g. at clinicaltrials.com)
– funding source
Systematic review
Abstracts of systematic reviews should follow PRISMA recommendations (for reviewing randomized trials) and include the following sections:
– AIM or OBJECTIVES
– METHODS
inclusion criteria
data sources
study eligibility criteria
– RESULTS
review of relevant studies
synthesis of results
effect and sensitivity analysis
– DISCUSSION
summary of evidence and analysis (consistency, accuracy, generalizability, risk of bias) interpretation of results
– funding source
– study number (registration number; e.g. at clinicaltrials.com)
Unstructured abstract
Non-systemic reviews, case reports, and opinion articles usually have unstructured abstracts.
Narrative logic should, however, remain: one proceeds from presenting the problem to suggesting a solution and describing own results. Unstructured abstracts should not exceed 150 words.
Keywords should reflect the topic of the article. One can use some particular terms from the text, key terms in the field, or other relevant expressions able to improve search results. It is not recommended to repeat words from the title.
8. TABLES DESIGN. All tables should be enumerated and named. Clipped words are not allowed. Data in the table must be coincident with corresponding data in the text and treated statistically. The tables may be given either in the text, or on separate pages.
Signatures and all text data must be sent in Russian and English!
9. REFERENCE LISTS are to be prepared in accordance with the Uniform Requirements for
Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals of the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE). Reference accuracy guarantees that the citations will be taken into account when assessing scientific public activity of the corresponding authors and their host organizations.
The maximum number of references for original articles is 30, literature reviews – 60, lectures and other materials – 15. Besides fundamental works, the list should include relevant publications over the last 5 years.
References should be numbered and ordered sequentially as they appear in the text. In-text reference numbers should be in square brackets.
References to unpublished works are not allowed.
According to new reference guidelines that consider requirements of Web of Science and Scopus indices, bibliographic descriptions for Non-Latin References should be provided in not only their source languages, but also in Latin.
Thus, in order to be included in citation indices and DOI-CrossRef system, reference lists should be displayed as described below.
For example:
Литература/References
1. Медведев Б.И., Сюндюкова Е.Г., Сашенков С.Л. Плацентарная экспрессия эритропоэтина при преэклампсии. Российский вестник акушера-гинеколога. 2015;15:1:4-8. [Medvedev BI, Syundyukova EG, Sashenkov SL. Placental expression of erythropoietin in preeclampsia. Rossiiskii vestnik akushera-ginekologa. 2015;15:1:4-8. (In Russ.).] https://doi.org/10.17116/rosakush20151514-8
2. Matsumoto K, Nakamaru M, Obara H, Hayashi S, Harada H, Kitajima M, Shirasugi N, Nouga K. Surgical Strategy for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm with Concurrent Symptomatic Malignancy. World Journal of Surgery. 1999;23(3):248-251. https://doi.org/10.1007/pl00013189 When referencing a journal article, always include the DOI (Digital Object Identifier in the CrossRef system). DOI search should be done at http://search.crossref.org/ or
https://www.citethisforme.com . To start the search, type in the English title of the article. The latter website is able to provide you with not only the DOI, but also a full bibliographic description in AMA style. One should keep in mind that most journal articles (including many Russian- language ones) published after 2013 are registered in the CrossRef system and have a DOI.
Preparing Russian-language references for importation into international citation indices.
1. Journal articles.
Authors' surnames and initials as well as the English title of the article should be identical to those in the original publication. Journal name that follows should be transliterated according to the BSI standard (can be done automatically at http://ru.translit.net/?account=bsi ). Then come publication details (year, volume, issue, and pages). Source language should be indicated in parentheses. At the end of the description, the DOI should be given (if available). For example:... [Belaia Z, Rozhinskaia L, Mel'nichenko G, Sitkin I, Dzeranova L, Marova E, Vaks V, Vorontsov A, Il'in A, Kolesnikova G, Dedov I. The role of prolactin gradient and normalized ACTH/prolactin ratio in the improvement of sensitivity and specificity of selective blood sampling from inferior petrosal sinuses for differential diagnostics of ACTH-dependent hypercorticism. Problemy endokrinologii. 2013;59(4):3-10. (In Russ.).] https://doi.org/10.14341/probl20135943-10
One should not cite journal articles that have no English title. Citations from theses, theses abstracts, conference proceedings, etc. are not allowed.
2. All other sources should be transliterated according to the BSI standards but preserving their original stylesheets. Source language should be indicated in parentheses at the end of the description. Example: Gilyarevskii S.R. Miokardity: sovremennye podkhody k diagnostike i lecheniyu. M.: Media Sfera; 2008. (In Russ.).
Footnote: If the source was translated into English, please, indicate the translation, and not transliteration.
Please pay attention! The only correct form of doi-link:
https://doi.org/10.5468/ogs.2016.59.1.1
Do not use «doi:», «dx.doi.org», etc. Within the link only hyphen is used.
There is no dot after doi and URL!
For all your bibliographic entries, regardless the source language, please, apply the AMA Reference Style ( http://www.amamanualofstyle.com ).

10. For original articles with multiple authors please indicate on a separate page each
author's contribution to:

– study concept and design,
– data collecting and handling,
– statistical data analysis,
– writing,
– editing.

Example:

Authors: A.S. Ivanov, N.T. Petrov, K.I. Sidorov
Author's contribution:
Study concept and design – A.S. Ivanov, K.I. Sidorov
Data collecting and handling – N.T. Petrov
Statistical data analysis – N.T. Petrov
Text writing – K.I. Sidorov
Editing – A.S. Ivanov

The Editorial Office can be contacted as follows:
Zhurnal Voprosy neirokhirurgii
16, 4th Tverskaya-Yamskaya str., 125047, Moscow, Russia
E-mail: [email protected]