General Information

PAIN® is the official publication of the International Association for the Study of Pain® (IASP®). PAIN® publishes original research on the nature, mechanisms, and treatment of pain and provides a multidisciplinary forum for the dissemination of research in the basic and clinical sciences. The Editor-in-Chief of PAIN®is Francis J. Keefe, PhD, Pain Prevention and Treatment Research Program, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.

Please submit manuscripts online via the PAIN® manuscript submission site at ees.elsevier.com/pain.

Editorial Office Contact Information

PAIN, 1510 H Street NW, Suite 600, Washington DC 20005-1020 USA; telephone: +1.202.524.5300; fax: +1.202.524.5301; e-mail: painj@iasp-pain.org

Editorial Policies for Authors

The editors review manuscripts submitted under multiple authorship on the assumption that (1) all listed authors concur with the submitted version of the manuscript and the listing of the authors; (2) authors made important contributions in one or more of the following areas: conception and design, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript, or making intellectual contributions to its content; (3) responsible authorities in the laboratory or at the institution where the work took place have tacitly or explicitly approved the final manuscript. A cover letter accompanying the manuscript should include a statement of any financial or other relationships that might lead to a conflict of interest.

Your cover letter should include the following:

•Title, authors, number of pages, and number of tables and figures.

• Indication that all the authors have read and approved the paper.

• Description of how each author contributed to the manuscript and others who may have assisted.• Name of the Special Section in which the paper is to be included, if applicable.

• Names of four potential reviewers with complete contact details. As our objective is to obtain independent reviews that are free from bias, please do NOT suggest people with whom you have worked or published in recent years or anyone who works at your institution. There is no assurance that the editors will choose reviewers from the list you provided.

• Information about any previous presentation of the data (e.g., at a specific meeting or as a thesis).

• Information about the existence of any closely related manuscripts that you have submitted for simultaneous consideration to the same or another journal.

• Notice of any interests that might be seen as influencing the research (e.g., financial interest in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research, etc.).

• A copy of the permission granted to reproduce or adapt any copyrighted material from another source or a notice that permissions are pending. Indicate the original source(s) in the legend of the illustration, or as appropriate in a footnote to the text.

By submitting a paper to PAIN®, the authors are agreeing that the paper has not been previously published (except in abstract form) nor has the paper been submitted to another online or print journal.

Articles should be written in English and should be complete in all respects. As the Publisher provides only limited editing, we ask that your article be edited by a person experienced in writing manuscripts in English BEFORE submission. The layout, style, and length of article should adhere strictly to the instructions given under "Categories of Articles" (see below) and, in particular, to the reference style of PAIN®.

The journal will only consider publication of work that includes information that is sufficient to permit replication by other laboratories. Manuscripts reporting data from novel chemical probes will not be considered unless the structure and pharmacological characterization, including selectivity and relevant formulation, are reported or directly described in a prior peer-reviewed publication.

PAIN® does not publish open-label trials, with the possible exception of the Clinical Notes section.

Manuscripts that evaluate clinical interventions must be randomized. Results that are derived from studies that are not randomized may be appropriate for the Clinical Notes section. In addition, studies should have high methodological quality and as large a representative sample as possible. If the paper is an epidemiological study, it should address a new population that will help the reader to understand the impact of cultural and socioeconomic factors on chronic pain.

Authors of reports of clinical trials must use the CONSORT checklist, as well as the PRISMA statement used for systematic reviews found at prisma-statement.org (both used with permission).

Manuscripts reporting results of randomized trials must include the Consort E-Flowchart and a checklist of items, both of which can be found at www.consort-statement.org. As the flowchart will be published only in the online version of PAIN®, please supply several summary sentences in your text that refer to the flowchart. These sentences will appear in the print issue of the journal.

Ethics of Animal Experiments. Authors must acknowledge that their experiments adhered to the guidelines of the Committee for Research and Ethical Issues of IASP [www.iasp-pain.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Animal_Research]. Authors should indicate if the experimental work was reviewed by an institutional animal care and use committee or its equivalent.

Ethics of Human Experiments. Authors reporting on experimental work on humans should, where relevant, submit evidence that the work has been approved by an institutional clinical research panel or its equivalent.

No revisions or updates will be incorporated after the article has been accepted and sent to the Publisher (unless approved by the editors).

Manuscript Preparation

Please provide a summary of one or two sentences (25 words max.) stating the conclusions of your study. This summary will be used in the Table of Contents. When writing the synopsis, please avoid use of the first person. Please also refrain from using statements that begin with, "This study..." Do not merely rephrase the title of the paper, but rather provide some information that will inform readers of the objective, methods, results, and/or conclusions.

Please submit figures and tables as separate files (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, Table 2, etc.), Each figure and table should appear on a separate page.

Text files should be supplied in Microsoft Word, Windows or Macintosh formatted. This format is preferred over ASCII text (TXT) or Rich Text Format (RTF). Please do not import a file already in PDF format.

Categories of Articles

Clinical/Basic Science Research Reports

Clinical Notes

Comprehensive Reviews

Topical Reviews

Commentary (Invited Only)

Letter to the Editor

Graphic Files

See Elsevier's website for guidelines for preparing electronic artwork: www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

The following are preferred formats: native formats of Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe® Illustrator®. If this is not possible, the graphic files may also be supplied in TIFF, EPS, JPEG, GIF, or PPT format.

All graphic files supplied as bitmap format (not vector format) in native Adobe® Photoshop®, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, or PPT must be submitted in sufficiently high resolution (240-300 dpi for gray-scale or color images and 600-1,000 dpi for line art) to allow for printing. Please do not submit figures in PDF format.

Multimedia files: Please contact the Editorial Office at painjournal@iasp-pain.org before attempting to submit files of this type. Additional e-files that may be submitted include a variety of multimedia options, such as large figures, photographs, and brief video clips with or without audio content. Material submitted for publication online via e-PAIN must be of a high enough resolution to be viewable in a web page-type format. These additional files should be uploaded only on the special page to which you will be directed during submission via EES. A maximum of 10 digital images, 2 video clips, and 2 audio files can be submitted for an e-PAIN manuscript. The file limit for each figure or photograph is 1.5 MB; video clips, 3.0 MB each; separate audio content, 1.0 MB.

Costs: There are no charges for material presented online, including color figures. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures, then Elsevier will ensure that these figures will appear in color on the web (e.g., ScienceDirect) at no additional charge, regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. Each author will be provided with a PDF version of the text and photographs contained in the full material (print and online), and 50 copies of the summary of the article that appears in the print version of PAIN®. Authors will not receive a reprint that includes video and audio content.

Editorial Review and Publication

The PAIN® Editor-in-Chief, Francis J. Keefe, and Section Editors do the initial review of all submissions.

Proofs. Elsevier will send one set of page proofs in PDF format by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address, then hard-copy proofs will be sent by post). PDF proofs can be annotated; for this, you will need to download the latest version of Adobe® Reader®, available free from www.adobe.com/reader. Instructions on how to annotate the PDF files will accompany the proofs. If you do not wish to use the PDF annotation function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return them to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections, quoting the line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, scan the pages, and e-mail them, or send them by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness, and correctness of the text, tables, and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will be considered at this stage only with permission from the Editor-in-Chief. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you send all corrections to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with publication of your article if no response is received.

Page Charges. There are no page charges for PAIN®.

Reprints. Elsevier will provide a total of 50 reprints of each paper free of charge to the corresponding author. Additional copies can be ordered at prices shown on the offprint order form, which will be sent to the author on receipt of the accepted article at the Publisher.

Author inquiries: For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission), the status of accepted articles through our Online Article Status Information System, author Frequently Asked Questions, and any other inquiries relating to Elsevier, please consult www.elsevier.com/authors.

Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, are provided by Elsevier when an article is accepted for publication.

IASP does not publish announcements in the journal. For possible inclusion of announcements in the IASP Newsletter, please contact IASP, 1510 H Street NW, Suite 600, Washington DC USA 20005-1020, Fax: 1.202.524.5301; e-mail: iaspdesk@iasp-pain.org; www.iasp-pain.org.

Cover Material. IASP invites you to suggest cover images. The illustration may be from a manuscript submitted for publication, a previous paper published in PAIN®, or material not published previously. Photographs of historical interest are also welcome.

Online access to PAIN® (members only) can be found at: www.iasp-pain.org/PAIN.

This content will be archived for PAIN® at the Dutch Royal Library, The Netherlands.

Updated April 16, 2013.