Instructions to Authors

JUNE publishes peer-reviewed reports of innovations in any area of undergraduate neuroscience education related to the mission of advancing undergraduate neuroscience on topics such as novel pedagogy and original laboratory exercises. All articles should be written for an audience of college faculty and include references to relevant literature, supplies, and/or supplemental materials such as animations, websites, etc. Qualitative or quantitative assessment of pedagogical outcomes are strongly encouraged. JUNE is indexed in PubMed and each article has a registered digital objective identifier to allow easy dissemination of the articles.

JUNE is the journal of the Faculty of Undergraduate Neuroscience or FUN.  FUN membership is not required, but is encouraged.  All articles published in JUNE will be freely available to all readers.

All submissions must be original work in English that is unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere.

JUNE does not serve as a journal for undergraduates to publish the results of experiments, literature reviews, or their reflections on pedagogy. This journal is for publication of innovative pedagogy.  If undergraduate co-authors have contributed significantly to the development and/or assessment of lab exercises, they can be authors, however, not corresponding authors.  JUNE does not publish articles on neuroscience exercises for pre-college students or medical curricula. Pedagogical innovations should be within the context of neuroscience education or interdisciplinary connections with neuroscience, not other disciplines or general education.

JUNE is published twice a year: we aim for a spring issue in May and a fall issue in November. Special issues are also published which feature FUN workshop presentations. The submission deadline for full consideration for the spring issue is March 1, and for the fall issue September 1, though manuscripts are reviewed as they are received.  The average time between submission and return of reviewer comments is currently 2 months.  Accepted manuscripts will be e-published as soon as possible following acceptance under the Next Issue tab, and published as part of the next complete issue of JUNE.

JUNE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
All manuscripts must be submitted directly to the editor-in-chief electronically via email as Microsoft Word Documents in publication ready format according to the formatting guidelines below. A sample MSWord document is available on the JUNE website for further reference and should be used as a template. All articles will ultimately be published as PDF documents.

Manuscripts should be accompanied by a cover letter from the corresponding author that briefly describes the significance and originality of the work, indicates that the manuscript has neither been published nor under consideration at another journal, indicates that the work adhered to appropriate ethical guidelines for any human and/or animal experimentation, discloses any potential competing interests, and indicates that all authors have agreed to submission of the manuscript and to pay any publication charges assessed (see below).  Contact information for at least four potential peer reviewers should also be included in the cover letter.  Potential reviewers should be experts in the field, able to objectively assess the manuscript, and not current or recent collaborators.

Article Publication Charges:
As an open access journal, publication in JUNE typically* requires the payment of a nominal Article Page Charge to partially defray production, indexing and dissemination costs, as follows:

• $50 for manuscripts of up to 6 pages and no more than 10 figures from members in good standing (at the time of submission) of Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN); for each additional page a mandatory fee of $10 per page will be added; for each additional figure, a fee of $7.50 will be added.  No page charges are assessed for Reviews, Editorials/Opinions, and Letters to the Editor.

• $100 for manuscripts of up to 6 pages and no more than 10 figures from nonmembers of Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (at the time of submission); for each additional page a mandatory fee of $20 per page will be added; for each additional figure, a fee of $15 will be added.  No page charges are assessed for Reviews, Editorials/Opinions, and Letters to the Editor.

*Waivers. JUNE automatically waives publication fees to corresponding authors located in the countries classified by the World Bank as low income economies (Category I), lower-middle income economies (Category II), or upper-middle income economies (Category III).

As JUNE strives to publish all quality papers, requests to waive the fee will also be considered in cases of financial hardship (such as lack of institutional funding, etc.) if included in the cover letter accompanying manuscript submissions.  All correspondence on financial considerations will remain private communications between the JUNE editors and the authors.

Payment of publication charges.  The corresponding author must agree at the time of acceptance to pay the publication charge (or request a waiver).  On acceptance, the author will be contacted with directions for making payment.  Payment of the publication charge must be received before the article is published online and available at the JUNE website.

Inquiries regarding submissions should be directed to the following:

Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education
c/o Elaine Reynolds
Professor of Biology and Neuroscience
Chair of Aging Studies
Lafayette College
746 High Street
318 Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center (RISC)
Easton, PA 18042
JUNEFUNjournal@gmail.com

FORMATTING GUIDELINES: (also consult the JUNE article template, available as a MSWord document)

JUNE article template MSWord

Margins: Top, Left, & Right = 0.5″, Bottom = 0.56″margin

Headers: all 8 point Arial

First page: “The Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education (JUNE), Spring 2012, 10(2):1-10”
Subsequent odd pages “The Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education (JUNE), Spring 2012, 10(2):1-10 2”
Subsequent even pages “First Author Last Name et al. five spaces Running Title (<60 characters) five spaces page number”

Note: actual page numbers will be determined when the issue goes to press and will be completed by the editor.

Title: 14 point bold Arial, left justified

Authors: 12 point bold Arial, left justified, institutional affiliations denoted by superscripted numbers

Institutional Affiliations: 10 point italicized Arial, left justified Department(s), College/University, City, State (or country if non US), Zip code

DOI: a hyperlink place holder should be entered on the line beneath the Institutional Affiliations (see template Word document).  DOIs will be assigned before publication and the copy editor will update this information in the document.

Abstract: 10 point Arial, right & left justified, 2 column format (3.65″ columns with 0.2″ separation)

Key words: 10 point italicized Arial, right & left justified, terms separated by semicolons, first line indented five spaces

Section Headings: No explicit Introduction heading, but sections such as Materials & Methods, Results, Discussion, & References should be in all caps, bold, 12 point Arial

Text: 10 point Arial, right and left justified, 2 column format (3.65″ columns with 0.2″ separation), first line of section’s first paragraph is not indented, all subsequent paragraph lines are indented five spaces, one space following the period at the end of a sentence (beginning Fall 2023 issue).

Figures: Color or black and white figures should be inserted directly into the most appropriate location within manuscript as either one column (3.65″) or two column (7.5″) widths. In general figures that are one column width are easier to format than those that span two columns. (Authors inserting 2 column wide figures will need to insert section breaks before and after the wide figure). Inserting the figures and legends after the text has been finalized is recommended.  Captions should not be grouped with its table or figure in a text box or in frames.

Figure Legends: Arial 9 point “Figure 1” in italics 9 point Arial with a period following. Legend title and text of legend in regular Arial 9 point. Figure section references in the legend should be italicized (e.g., A and B).

References: Follow the citation style of Journal of Neuroscience. References should be in alphabetical order, right and left justified in Arial 9 point with 0.125″ indentation of the second and subsequent lines. Each reference should include a digital object identifier if available. All references should be parenthetically noted in the text in chronological order (Keller, 1991; Riddle et al., 1995; Lewin and Barde, 1996).  Please do not import references from a reference database that attaches the hyperlink. Authors are responsible for formatting the references properly before publication.

Keller R (1991) Early embryonic development of Xenopus laevis. In: Xenopus laevis: practical uses in cell and molecular biology (Kay BK, Peng HB, eds) pp 102-116. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Lewin GR, Barde YA (1996) Physiology of the neurotrophins. Annu Rev Neurosci 19:289-317. doi:0000000
Riddle DR, Lo DC, Katz LC (1995) NT-4-mediated rescue of lateral geniculate neurons from effects of monocular deprivation. Nature 378:189-91. doi:0000000

Acknowledgements and contact information for corresponding author: place text following last reference in 8 point Arial, right and left justified as separate paragraphs for acknowledgements and corresponding author. The full postal and electronic mailing addresses of the corresponding author must be included.