The following Journal Publication Guidelines have been approved by the Publications Committee of the American Headache Society (herein ‘the Society’) on December 31st, 2008. These policies are intended for use by authors, reviewers, editors and Society staff.

The Publication Guidelines are intended to ensure appropriate professional conduct regarding the publishing process of the Society’s journal, Headache: the Journal of Head and Face Pain. Any cases involving the possible transgression of a policy outlined in this document may warrant a referral to the AHS Publications Committee.

AHS Publication Guidelines

1. Study Design and Ethics
2. Authorship/Responsibilities of Authors
3. Conflicts of Interest
4. Peer Review
5. Editorial Decisions
6. Originality, Prior Publication and Duplicate Submission
7. Access to Data
8. Indemnification

1. Study Design and Ethics

A: Reporting Checklists

Reporting checklists are an ordered array of best practice stipulations on reporting research methods and findings. Headache supports several of these guidelines and their intention to provide clear and transparent reporting.

Authors will be required to upload the appropriate reporting guideline checklist during the submission process. A manuscript will not be sent for peer review until the appropriate checklist has been completed. If a checklist cannot be completed in its entirety, authors must explain why this is not possible.

B: Clinical Trial Registration

Headache requires the registration of all clinical trials at one or more of the following approved registries:

1. www.clinicaltrials.gov
2. isrctn.org
3. www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/index/htm
4. www.actr.org.au
5. www.trialregister.nl

For the purposes of defining what is meant by a trial, the Society adopts the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' definition:

…any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. The trial must have at least one prospectively assigned concurrent control or comparison group in order to trigger the requirement for registration.

Authors will be required to provide clinical-trial registry and trial number information at the point of submission of a manuscript, where appropriate. Investigators should register at, or prior to, patient enrollment. This policy will be effective for any clinical trial with an enrollment after 1st January, 2009. Failure to disclosure this information may result in the automatic rejection of the submitted manuscript.

C: Informed Consent

A patient’s right to privacy must be respected at all times. Please ensure all proper steps for informed consent have been made. You must ensure identifying information has been removed from all written descriptions, and photographic or other figurative or tabular depictions.

If disclosure is unavoidable, the author must present proof of the patient’s approval of identifying information. Authors must, in such circumstances present a fully-typeset, production proof-copy of the manuscript to the patient prior to publication and provide additional evidence in the form of a written statement confirming the patient has seen the final proof of the article intended for publication and has granted approval. Failure to provide proof will result in the automatic rejection of the paper. Headache shall in no way be held responsible for any disclosures of identifying information – responsibility rests solely with the submitting author.

D: Protection of Human Subjects in Research/Animal Experiments

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.

Authors must clearly state in their manuscript that the research project outlined in their submission received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval and identify the approving body. Should the author fail to disclose IRB approval information, the manuscript will be rejected immediately with no option to resubmit. For those investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed and referenced explicitly in a submission.

Authors will be required to submit information on Institutional Review Board approval as part of the submission process within the online submission and review system. Authors must ensure, however, that information on IRB approval is stated explicitly in the Methodology section of their manuscript.

For experiments on animals, authors must state in their manuscript that a particular institution granted approval and that procedures involving animals conform to the ILAR Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (1996 and later editions) of the Institute of Laboratory Animal Research. Individual country policies on the ethical treatment of animals must meet, or exceed, the standards applied in the United States.

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2. Authorship and the Responsibilities of Authors

A: Authorship – a definition and other considerations

i) Author Contribution
Headache subscribes to the International Committee on Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendation regarding the criteria for authorship outlined below.

Authorship credit should be based on:

1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published.

Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3

Other individuals involved with the research project but who do not meet criteria for authorship must be named in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group does not justify authorship. Honorary authorship is not acceptable.

A Statement of Authorship must be signed by the Submitting or Corresponding Author as part of the Headache Author Declaration Form dispatched with all ‘acceptance for publication’ letters from the Editor-in-Chief.

The journal will publish the Statement of Authorship at the end of each manuscript, before the reference section.

It is the responsibility of the Submitting or Corresponding author to ensure the Statement of Authorship has been completed correctly. Headache accepts no responsibility for an incorrect Statement. In the event of a dispute of authorship, the author that signed the Authorship Guarantee Statement (see below, also a part of the Author Declaration Form) must take full responsibility for any error in the author listing.

ii) Medical Writers
Medical writers must be listed as an author if they have contributed the following effort:

• Drafted the manuscript
• Revised it for intellectual content

iii) Author Order
Headache requires that any request to change the order of authors is accompanied with a letter signed by all authors agreeing to the change. If the manuscript has not been published in either a print or online format, the editorial office will attempt to correct the order. Once published, the author order is set and the journal will not publish an erratum to clarify the error. It is the responsibility of the Corresponding Author to check their typeset proofs to confirm the order is correct.

The editorial office will use the order of authors as supplied on the title page during submission.

iv) Addition/removal of Authors
Changes in authorship after initial submission will require a written agreement from all authors. Such changes typically include, but are not limited to, the addition or subtraction of authors. Such agreement must outline why the change is being made. Once a manuscript is published changes to authorship can only be made in the event of an error in the production process introduced either by the Headache editorial office or the publisher and its respective vendors. It is the responsibility of the Corresponding Author to check their typeset proofs to confirm all authors were appropriately identified.

In the event of an individual establishing post-publication that they have been included as an author on a paper without their consent, they must first alert the Headache editorial office. Such a case represents a serious breach of ethical standards and will be referred to the AHS Publications Committee.

v) Multi-center studies
Headache follows the ICMJE policy on multi-center studies:

When a large, multi-center, 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 defined above. When submitting a group-authored manuscript, the Corresponding Author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and should clearly identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Headache will list other members of the group in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. The National Library of Medicine indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript.

B: Author Responsibilities

i) Author Guarantee
Authors will twice be required to guarantee the integrity of their submission based upon the affirmation of the Headache Author Guarantee Statement.

The first Author Guarantee will be provided by the Submitting Author. This statement will be part of the manuscript submission process at the online submission site and will require the checking of a box confirming affirmation of the Author Guarantee Statement. For the purposes of establishing a guarantee of the integrity of the article, the checking of a box in support of the Author Guarantee Statement will represent the electronic equivalent of a hand-written signature.

Either the Submitting or Corresponding author will also be asked to sign the Author Guarantee Statement as part of the Author Declaration Form, sent once a manuscript has been accepted for publication. In the case of multi-authored manuscripts, Authors should determine before submission who will assume responsibility for the guarantee of the integrity of the paper.

The Author Guarantee Statement includes the following principles:

1) The manuscript contains original material that will not be submitted elsewhere concurrently
2) All authors have contributed to the work and are familiar with the primary data; each has read the final manuscript, and approved its contents
3) All authors have agreed to have their name added to the paper
4) The manuscript is free of falsification, fabrication, plagiarism and self-plagiarism. All applicable principles of scientific integrity, including ethical treatment of human subjects and humane treatment of animals, have been followed. In signing this form you testify that an appropriate institutional or public board approved the protocols for human or animal subject use
5) All funding sources that supported the work are acknowledged. Any potential conflicts of interest on the part of any authors have been supplied as part of the submission process. By signing this form you agree you will examine typeset proofs as supplied by the publisher prior to publication to ensure all relevant financial disclosures and other potential conflicts of interest have been accurately included within the manuscript
6) You have followed all the requirements for submission as requested in the Instructions for Authors and set forth in the AHS Journal Publication Guidelines

All authors must take responsibility for the accuracy of the manuscript, with the Guarantor (signatory of the Author Guarantee Statement) taking responsibility for the manuscript on behalf of all authors. In the event of the signatories of the Author Guarantee Statement differing between the version signed at submission (the Submitting Author) and after acceptance of the manuscript (this may be the Corresponding Author), the signatory of the Author Guarantee Statement after acceptance (as part of the Author Declaration Form) shall supersede the version of the Author Guarantee Statement signed online during submission.

If the Submitting Author is not the Corresponding Author, or indeed is not listed amongst the list of authors of a submission, this must be acknowledged in the cover letter accompanying submission of a manuscript. The Submitting Author may check the box in the online submission system supporting the Author Guarantee statement as a proxy of the Corresponding Author. A Submitting Author may not sign the Author Guarantee Statement as part of the Author Declaration Form if they are not listed as an author.

ii) Responsibility for accuracy
It is the responsibility of the corresponding author and the submitting author, (if they are different), not the Society or the editorial office staff of Headache, to ensure all ancillary information, such as Conflict of Interest declaration and Clinical Trial Registration number, is provided accurately.

iii) Provision of all information as requested by Headache
Submitting and Corresponding authors must ensure they are familiar with the AHS Journal Publication Guidelines, especially in relation to any guarantee regarding the scientific integrity of the article. The Journal will pursue all cases of transgression of these policies with referrals to the AHS Publications Committee. A lack of awareness of the policies outlined in this document will not be an acceptable defense in any cases of misconduct or transgression of these policies.

It is the responsibility of the Submitting (and Corresponding author if different) to provide all information required by Headache at the point of submission. Failure to collect missing information by the editorial office of Headache or by Society staff does not indemnify the authors against possible disciplinary action.

iv) Role of Funding Source/provider of Educational Grant
Authors should explain either in the main body of the manuscript or as part of the Acknowledgements, the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in:

• study design
• data collection and analysis
• writing the paper

As part of the submission process, it will be a requirement to indentify explicitly all sources of funding. Manuscripts published in Headache will now identify, in a field defined as “Financial Support:”, all funding sources. Authors should be aware that the presence of any kind of financial support is not an impediment to publication. The disclosure of funding, however, is mandated.

v) Editing of manuscript
Authors must ensure their submitted work is ready for publication. There must be no expectation that a manuscript will receive editing of any kind prior to publication. Manuscripts must, therefore, be written in grammatically and syntactically idiomatic English, in an appropriate scientific, academic and professional manner and must be devoid of any potentially libelous statements or remarks of a personal nature. Headache does not accept any responsibility to capture and remove any such statements – the responsibility is solely that of the Submitting or Corresponding author.

vi) Ensuring appropriate permission to reproduce previously published material has been granted
Authors must demonstrate that they have permission to use any previously published figures, tables, data or other materials. Even if the author of the submitting paper produced the prior-published material, it must be clear that permission to reproduce was granted by the copyright holder. Headache will not assume any responsibility for failure to obtain adequate permission or the improper use of reproduced material as set forth in the granting of permission to reproduce from a copyright holder or its proxy.

vii) Clearance to use data
Authors must ensure they have proper permission to publish data contained in their submission. If the data is proprietary, please ensure you have clearance to submit this material for publication with the owner of the data. Headache will not assume any responsibility for the publication of data without permission.

viii) Personal Communications and Unpublished Data
A signed statement of permission should be included from each individual identified as a source of information in a personal communication or as a source for unpublished data, and the date of communication and whether the communication was written or oral should be specified. Authors must ensure they have agreed the nature and extent of a reference to a personal communication. In principle, Headache does allow the citation of personal communication, but encourages Authors to refrain from such practice if possible.

ix) Dual Submission
Any manuscript submitted to Headache must not be submitted simultaneously to any other publication. This behavior represents a form of ethical misconduct and any instances of dual submission brought to the attention of the editorial office either during submission, following acceptance prior to publication and subsequent to publication will be referred to the AHS Publications Committee.

x) Reference to material in press
If reference is made to another manuscript that is “submitted” or “in press” at Headache or any other publication, the “submitted” or “in press” manuscript must be included with the submission to Headache.

xi) Manuscript Withdrawal
In the event that a manuscript is to be withdrawn from submission to Headache, a letter must be sent to the editorial office requesting withdrawal. This letter must signed by all authors and state the reasons why the manuscript is being withdrawn. The journal will not withdraw a manuscript from peer review until such a letter has been received. Authors must not assume their manuscript has been withdrawn until they have received appropriate notification from the editorial office. Withdrawal of a manuscript subsequent to acceptance for publication will only be granted in the most exceptional of circumstances.

It is not acceptable practice to withdraw a manuscript in the event of acceptance at another journal. This constitutes dual submission. The editorial office of the other journal will be notified of your actions. In such circumstances Headache may chose to impose appropriate punitive action subject to review by the AHS Publications Committee.

xii) Opinions expressed are authors
Opinions expressed in ALL classifications of manuscripts, editorials and commentaries do not constitute support of, or endorsement by, the American Headache Society. Unless otherwise stated, all opinions expressed are solely the author(s).

xiii) Embargo dates
Headache employs an embargo on press releases and any other type of announcement or promotion of an accepted manuscript until a manuscript is published online (or in print, whichever occurs first). Questions regarding the embargo date must be directed to the editorial office.

xiv) Image Manipulation
No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Authors must supply the original image as digitally captured. Authors are also advised to retain a copy of the original image file in the event on an investigation into the veracity of an image supplied. An inability to supply the original image will mean an article will be denied publication in Headache. In the event of a detection of image manipulation subsequent to publication, the journal editorial office may append to the manuscript a Statement of Concern, expressing concern regarding the authenticity of the image published.

Headache reserves the right to examine all images for suspected beautification or enhancement.

In the event that image manipulation is detected, authors will be invited to explain such manipulation. Following investigation, the Editor-in-Chief, at his or her discretion, will take appropriate action. Evidence of fraud will be referred to the AHS Publications Committee for further review. 

Authors are solely responsible for ensuring the veracity of both the content and all author data and disclosures to the best of their abilities. The Headache editorial office receives all information in good faith. Authors are also responsible for the careful checking of the proof as prepared by the publisher and its vendors. By signing off on that proof, using the forms provided by the publisher, you are agreeing that the manuscript meets all criteria for publication as described in the AHS Journal Publication Guidelines.

A manuscript cannot be published until the Headache editorial office has received the Author Declaration Form

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3. Conflicts of Interest

Authors are required to include a Conflict of Interest Statement with their manuscript submission and reaffirm the veracity of their disclosure as requested by the online submission system.

Headache Conflict of Interest Statement

Do you or your co-authors have any conflict of interest (consultant, grant supporter, investigator, speaker's bureau) or do you or a family member have a financial or material interest greater than $10,000 (board member, employee, owner, stockholder, patents pending/received) relating to the subject matter discussed in this manuscript?

As a guide to what is appropriate for inclusion please consider including all information that could otherwise potentially embarrass you should it not be disclosed but became public knowledge at a later date.

A statement from EVERY author must be included. In the event of nothing to disclose, this must be stated.

Employment at a pharmaceutical company constitutes a clear Conflict of Interest. This must be stated in the Conflict of Interest declaration. It is not sufficient to only disclose employment solely through the author’s institutional details.

Authors are solely responsible for ensuring the correct Conflict of Interest information is submitted to the journal and, if a manuscript is accepted for publication, confirm that it is included in the final proofs ahead of publication in the correct format. Failure to disclose Conflict of Interest information, or to do so incorrectly represents a serious ethical transgression and may result in the authors being referred to the AHS Publications Committee for possible disciplinary action.

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4. Peer Review

i) The peer review process
Once a manuscript is submitted to Headache it will be considered for submission into the full peer review process by the Editor-in-Chief and an Associate Editor in charge of the review of a submission. The Journal reserves the right to reject a manuscript before full peer review.

Full peer review involves the assessment of a minimum of at least two reviewers (one for Clinical Notes). The peer review process is double-blinded.

Manuscripts are evaluated according to the following criteria:

• Originality of thought or data presented
• Validity of data
• Employment of appropriate methodology and statistical techniques
• General interest of content to the readership
• Conclusions are justified by the results
• An acceptable standard of writing

ii) Reviewer Confidentiality – manuscripts as privileged and confidential information
All submissions contain privileged and confidential information. All Editors and Reviewers must not disclose data, theories, concepts, results or any other information contained in a submission at any time ahead of publication. Transgressions will result in a referral of a case to the AHS Publications Committee.

Once a manuscript has been reviewed, Reviewers are obligated to destroy any copy they retain of the manuscript under review.

All Reviewers when invited to perform a review will receive a blinded abstract of the submission under review. If Reviewers believe a potential conflict of interest may exist they should decline to review the manuscript immediately, and inform the editorial office promptly. Potential conflicts of interest for reviewers include, but are not limited to all points raised in the AHS Conflict of Interest policy (as outlined in Section 3 of this document).

The Authors will see comments from the Reviewer(s) but will remain blinded to the identity of the Reviewer. The Journal will not publish the comments from Reviewers at any point nor release them to any party other than the Author, Editorial Board and the AHS Publications Committee if required as part of an ethical transgression case.

The Journal will not at any time place the Author and Reviewer in contact with one another – all requests to do so will be refused.

Occasionally, Reviewers can accurately assume the identity of the Authors. Reviewers must not, under any circumstances contact the Authors directly.

Reviewers, once they have accepted an invitation to review a manuscript, will be provided with a brief set of instructions on how to review a manuscript. These instructions will also outline proper Reviewer behavior and all issues pertaining to matters of confidentiality.

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5. Editorial Decisions

The Editor-in-Chief makes all final decisions regarding publication. Authors reserve the right to challenge decisions but must do so through a detailed point-by-point response. A courteous manner, arguing a case for why a decision may be rescinded, is expected. Headache also reserves the right to stand by its original decision without further disclosure of the reasons for a decision, a discretion granted solely to the Editor-in-Chief. The Journal will not disclose any Confidential Comments to the Editor as supplied by Reviewers or Associate Editors in the event of a dispute over a decision.

In an effort to ensure transparency in the decision-making process, Headache will publish annually a Conflict of Interest disclosure for every Editorial Board member.

It is the responsibility of the Corresponding Author to inform all co-authors of a decision regarding publication made by the Headache Editor-in-Chief.

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6. Originality, prior publication and duplicate submission

i) Prior publication
Release of data at a scientific meeting in the form of a presentation, poster, abstract, or as an abstract on the web, does not constitute prior publication. In addition, Headache will not consider publication of data at a Clinical Trials registration site prior publication if the results are presented in the form of a brief structured (<500 words) abstract or table.

ii) Simultaneous submission
Headache will not consider any manuscript that has been submitted simultaneously to another journal unless approval has already been granted for a joint-publication with another journal.

iii) Redundancy
Authors must avoid the submission of redundant articles. Redundant (or duplicate) publication, as defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors is publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published in print or electronic media. "Salami publishing" will not be tolerated by the Headache editorial office. This is defined as the Author covering the same population, methods, and question in previous studies they have published with only minor or incremental changes in what they report. Headache considers this may be an attempt to bias the literature. If there is any hint of redundancy, the Author should send the potentially overlapping paper and explain, in the covering letter, why it is necessary to include the material and why it should not be regarded as redundant.

All papers that are found to constitute redundant, salami or duplicate publication during peer review will be summarily rejected without opportunity to resubmit. Papers found to contain any form of redundancy between acceptance and publication will have an acceptance decision rescinded and the paper will be rejected without a chance to resubmit. Papers found to contain redundancy after publication may face the inclusion of a Statement of Concern to be appended to the article, stating that the article constitutes a redundant publication, unless the Author can adequately defend any accusation of redundancy.

Headache, will not consider for publication unsolicited submissions that have been published previously. This includes the translation into English of manuscripts published in other languages. Exceptions may be granted only at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. The editorial office must be informed of an intention to submit such an article before a manuscript is uploaded into the online submission and review system.

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7. Access to Data

For all Clinical Trials, the Submitting or Corresponding Author must sign the Access to Data Statement as part of the Author Declaration Form. The statement reads:

All authors declare we had full access to ALL the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Headache also requests the following statement is included in the methodology section:

The author(s) had full access to all the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis

Authors should be aware that the statement refers to EVERY item of data collected and not all data they requested to see, an important distinction. Authors should be aware that if, subsequent to publication, it is suspected authors did not have access to all data as claimed, the signatory of the Access to Data Statement will be required to explain in detail the exact nature of their data access to the AHS Publications Committee. In the event it is proven the Authors failed to declare their access to data accurately, an erratum may also be appended to the published article restating the nature of the Author(s) access to data.

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8. Indemnification

All Submitting or Corresponding Authors must agree to indemnify the American Headache Society and hold it harmless from all damages and all reasonable expenditures incurred by the American Headache Society as the result of any charge or claim of copyright infringement or violation of proprietary rights asserted against the American Headache Society by third parties as a result of the American Headache Society’s use and publication of the manuscript.

An Indemnification Statement is included as part of the Author Declaration Form.

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