Papers should be submitted to the editorial office electronically, i.e. by the Editorial System, at the address: www.editorialsystem.com/fpn.

The articles in this journal are published open access (OA)

Articles in the Pharmacotherapy in Psychiatry and Neurology journal are published free of charge.

Aims and scope of the journal

Pharmacotherapy in Psychiatry and Neurology / Farmakoterapia w Psychiatrii i Neurologii is a half-yearly journal that carries scientific and educational papers related in broad sense to the clinical and experimental neuropsychopharmacology. The journal is addressed to all those interested in the latest developments and research in this area, i.e. psychiatrists, neurologists, pharmacologists, psychologists, and representatives of other related disciplines. The papers in Polish or English language may be submitted to the journal.

The journal is particularly focused on the following topics:
• Pharmacological treatment of psychiatric disorders
• Pharmacological treatment of neurologic disorders
• Studies on efficacy and tolerability of new psychotropic drugs and drugs used in neurological disorders
• Preclinical pharmacology of psychotropic drugs and drugs used in neurological disorders
• Child and adolescent neuropsychopharmacology
• Neuropsychopharmacology of the elderly
• Mechanism of action of psychotropic drugs
• The effect of pharmacological treatment on brain bioelectrical activity (pharmaco-EEG)
• The effect of pharmacological treatment on cognitive functions and psychosocial functioning
• Psychometric assessment of drug activity
• Adverse reactions of psychotropic drugs and drugs used in neurological disorders
• Pharmacogenetic aspects of neuropsychiatric disorders and their treatment
• Neuroimaging of drugs used in psychiatry and neurology
• Ethics of using drugs in psychiatry and neurology
• Standards of pharmacological treatment in psychiatry and neurology



Types of articles accepted

The journal publishes:
• original papers,
• review papers,
• case studies,
• letters to the editors,
• reports from scientific conferences,
• book reviews,
• special papers.



Publication ethics

The journal is committed to upholding standards of ethical behaviour at all stages of the publication process.

The contents of the published work should comply with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DoH-Oct2008.pdf), EU Directives, consolidated requirements for biomedical periodicals (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, www.icmje.org), Committee on Publication Ethics and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements.

Any data referring to patients and photographs that enable the patients' identification shall be removed from the paper, unless the patient provides a written consent to their publication.

Clinical trials
Pharmacotherapy in Psychiatry and Neurology is published in accordance with ICMJE policies and recommendations. The ICMJE requires - and recommends that all medical journal editors require - registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of consideration for article publication.
The ICMJE defines a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome; examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes are any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events.

The ICMJE accepts publicly accessible registration in any registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) that includes the minimum acceptable 24-item trial registration data set or in ClinicalTrials.gov, which is a data provider to the WHO ICTRP.

In accordance with the ICMJE recommendations, the Editors of Pharmacotherapy in Psychiatry and Neurology require authors to provide all necessary information regarding the registered study when submitting the article for publication: name of the register, Main ID, Public Title, Date of Registration. The data provided by the author are verified by the editors.

More information on this can be found here www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html

Source: ICMJE, Clinical Trials, www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html

Conflict of interest and funding

All of the main author's and the co-authors' potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, related directly or indirectly to the addressed submission as well as all the grants or other forms of financial support or support in kind shall be acknowledged in a declaration enclosed to the paper.


Authors' declarations with respect to the paper

When submitting the paper, enclose a signed declaration with respect to the publication (the declaration template is available at the editorial system in the "Authors' Declaration" tab.). The declaration can be signed and provided by the corresponding author and on behalf of all the authors.
By the fact of submitting the paper, the authors declare as follows:

• The paper has neither been previously published (other than in the abstract form) nor submitted to another journal.
• The paper shall not be published in any other journal (including a translated version) without a written consent of the copyright holder for the title.
• The paper has been approved by all the authors and the authorities of the research unit.
• The paper has been prepared in compliance with all the recognised ethical codes and valid legal regulations, with due respect to the subjectivity of the tested individuals.


Authors' contribution to the paper

A statement is made that all the authors have significantly contributed to the research and all the data in the article are true and authentic, and there is no plagiarism. The contribution of the specific authors shall be indicated, e.g. significant contribution in the concept and work design, collecting data and the interpretation, statistical analysis and preparation of test results for the analysis, critical reviews as for the significant intellectual content, collecting literature, approval of the final form of the paper.


Peer review and reviewers' responsibilities

All the original, review and casuistic papers are subject to review by two anonymous reviewers from institutions other than that of the authors of publication. The paper shall be sent to the reviewers devoid of the cover page and authors' statements. The authors are under obligation to participate in the peer review process and to introduce the due corrections of mistakes or, if they do not agree to the above requirement, to withdraw the paper from publication.
The reviewed articles should be treated by the reviewers with due confidentially. The reviewer's judgements should be objective; reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the authors and the research funders. Furthermore, reviewers should point out any potential relevant published work which should be cited in the paper.
The list of reviewers for the articles in a given year is published in the last issue of the journal published in this year.


Editorial responsibilities

Editors shall preserve the anonymity of reviewers. Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to the authors of articles they reject or accept. Editors shall bear full responsibility and authority to reject or accept an article.


Legal liability

Editors shall make every effort to the effect that all the articles published in the journal presented reliable and true information. However, the editors are not liable for the contents presented in the papers as they express the knowledge and opinions of the authors.


Results of clinical trials

According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the journal will not consider trial result registration to be previous publication if the results are posted in the form of a brief (less than 500 words) abstract or table.
However disclosure of results in other circumstances (e.g. investor meetings) is not recommended and may undermine the credibility of the manuscript. Authors should disclose all results of the same or related work as contained in the registries.


Reporting results of clinical trials

All randomised (blind) trials presented in the article should contain a completed checklist for Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT). For more information, visit http://www.consort-statement.org.
The journal has accepted the standpoint of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which requires registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registration number should be published at the end of the abstract. The clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention related to health protection to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome; examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes are any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. Purely observational studies (in which medical interventions are not dictated by the researcher) are not required to be registered. For more information visit http://www.icmje.org.


Copyright and legal aspects

At the time of the acceptance of the work for publication, the copyright is transferred to the journal owner. The published work remains the property of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology.
All published papers are accessible in the Open Access system and on terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
The rights to the article are usually transferred by the authors to the owner of the journal, who makes it available under the Creative Commons license. However, if the author does not want to transfer the copyright to the publisher, he/she may contact the editorial office and set separate rules - under which the editorial office may publish an article in the journal. For the detailed information, please contact with editorial office.
The papers that have already been published shall be accompanied by a written consent for the publication from the previous publisher.
Any potential conflict of interest shall be settled by the district court competent for the Editorial Office. Legal relations between the Editor and the author(s) are compliant with the Polish law and international conventions ratified by Poland.


Rights to the article retained by the Author

The author (or employer or institution) retains the right to the article in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License.


Manuscript preparation

The journal accepts papers in the Polish and English languages. The papers shall be submitted via the Editorial System, at the address: www.editorialsystem.com/fpn. The editorial office preserves a right to refuse a text before the review if it is not in line with the journal subject area or if it is not satisfactory as for the content or form.

Text-related requirements

Original and review papers should not exceed 5,000 words (including tables, figures, references and appendices). Case studies should not exceed 2,500 words. Text files submitted via the Editorial System shall be written using a 12 pt font, with 1.5 cm spaces and margins of 2.5 cm. The columns should not be adjusted nor the words hyphenated. Remove double spaces and do not use spaces as tabs. Try to avoid footnotes.

Each part of the paper should start from a new page.
The title page should contain the title of the paper in both the Polish and English languages, full names of the authors, their affiliations and the full name of the corresponding author, including the address, telephone number and email address.
Page 2 should contain an abstract in Polish, 200–250 words for original and review papers, and 150 words for case studies.
Abstracts of original papers should be structured as follows: objectives, material and methods, results and conclusions.
Abstracts of review papers should be structured as follows: objectives, literature review and conclusions.
Abstracts of case studies should be structured as follows: introduction, case study and comments.
Below the abstract, 3–6 keywords should be given as per Index Medicus.
Page 3 should contain an abstract in English, following the same structure as the Polish abstract – for the original paper: objectives, material and methods, results, conclusions; for the review paper: objectives, literature review and conclusions; and for the case study: objectives, case report and conclusions. Below the abstract, 3–6 English keywords should be given.
Authors of papers written in English do not have to provide abstracts in Polish.
Page 4 and all the subsequent pages should contain the body text of the paper.
The original paper should be structured as follows: objectives, material and methods, results and conclusions.
The review paper should be structured as follows: objectives, literature review and conclusions.
The case study should be structured as follows: objectives, case report and conclusions.
The methods section should include a statement of the approval by the relevant bioethics commission to undertake the study and of the subjects' conscious consent as well as information on the statistical methods used.

Only international drug names should be used in the body text of the paper.
Abbreviations used in the text should also be explained at their first mention (this also applies to the abstract); a glossary of abbreviations is also acceptable.
All the information on the financing sources (e.g. grant numbers) should be given. All the authors should disclose any financial dependencies and any other information that, if omitted, might raise suspicion of a conflict of interest.
At the end of the paper, above the literature, acknowledgements are acceptable.

References

References should be arranged alphabetically, numbered in Arabic numerals and cited using the Harvard system (author's name and the year of publication), e.g. Kowalski et al., 2004. For papers with two authors, both names are required, while for papers with three or more authors – the name of the first author should be given, followed by "et al." and the year of publication. The references section should cite the names of the first six authors. For papers with more than six authors, "et al." should be used after the sixth name. For books, the names of all the editors should be given. Abbreviations of journal names should be used as per Index Medicus. Each reference item should be cited in the article body – and otherwise, each item cited in the paper body should be listed in the references section.

References should use the following structure:

Journal articles
Bilder RM, Volavka J, Czobor P, Malhotra AK, Kennedy JL, Ni X et al. Neurocognitive correlates of the COMT Val (158) Met polymorphism in chronic schizophrenia. Biol Psychiatry 2002; 52: 701–707.

Conference proceedings papers
Groening L, Olivier B. Translation of animal models to human psychopathology. 8th ECNP Regional Meeting, Moscow, Russia, April 14-16 2005. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol 2005; 15 (suppl 2): S93–S94.

Books
Maruszewski T. Pamięć autobiograficzna. Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne, Gdańsk 2005.

Book chapters
Nasierowski T. Dzieje psychiatrii. In: Psychiatria. Tom I. Bilikiewicz A, Pużyński S, Rybakowski J, Wciórka J (red.), Wydawnictwo Medyczne Urban & Partner, Wrocław 2002, 1–46.

Websites
Provide the URL address and the date of the last access and, if available, the digital object identifier (DOI).
Murawiec S. Farmakoterapia jako efekt relacji lekarz-pacjent; http://www.psychiatria.pl/artykul/farmakoterapia-jako-efekt-relacji-lekarz-pacjent/8852.html (last accessed on 8.04.2015).

Tables

Tables in articles in Polish should also have titles in English. Tables of articles in English do not need Polish titles. Tables should be numbered using Arabic numerals, placed on separate pages and submitted as separate files. The locations of tables in the body text should be marked. Comments for tables should be provided in the notes below the tables.

Figures

Figures, like tables, should have titles also in English. Figures in articles in English do not need additional Polish titles. Figures should be numbered using Arabic numerals, placed on separate pages and submitted as separate files. The locations of figures in the body text should be marked. It is advisable that the figures have approximately the target size, using uniform fonts, preferably Calibri. Figures can be sent in one of the following formats: TIFF, JPG, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw and EPS. Photographs should have the minimum resolution of 300 dpi and should be submitted as TIFF or JPG files. Comments for figures should be provided in the notes below the figures.
Captions for figures and tables should be submitted in a separate file.
Figures are basically printed in black and white. However, there is an option of colour printing, at the author's cost.
If figures or photographs have been previously published or the copyright is not held by the authors, the source should be given, and a written permission to use the materials should be obtained from the copyright holder.


Author's proofreading

The corresponding author shall receive the paper in a PDF format prior to publishing.
Adobe Reader, free software downloadable from the address: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html is required to open the file. The remarks should be made as comments in the PDF file. If the paper is not sent back at the indicated time-limit, it can be published without the authors' approval.