EAN Surveys

The members of the EAN Scientific Committee will carefully assess all submissions and award a maximum of 100 points to each initiative. To be accepted, each reviewer should assign a minimum score of 60 points. The criteria below shall get considered:

1. Relevance of the study (10 pts.)
2. Quality of the prepared overview and information on previous surveys conducted in the field (10 pts). Concordance between the survey´s items and the research protocol (10 pts).
3. Methodology and survey design (10 pts.).
4. Potential utility of the survey results (40 pts):
   - Contribution to Brain Health and current research agenda gaps (15 pts.).
   - Research impact (e.g., further dissemination, exploitation, communication) (15 pts.).
   - Benefits for EAN and its committees/working groups and the wider neurological community (5 pts.).
5. Interest from other stakeholders in the survey's outcome (5 pts.).
6. Good preparedness and well-written proposal (10 pts.).

• Upon approval, the EAN Head Office will provide support to the survey organizers. This includes checking the logic and setting up the survey in the system as well as extracting the data. Please be aware that several feedback rounds are possible until the survey gets launched (consider a minimum of 3 months’ time, before your survey gets launched). Additionally, the proposers ´full commitment and cooperation is essential. The EAN Head Office reserves the right to pause or even cancel a survey initiative for which no response from the authors is provided in a timely or consistent manner.
• A standard set of demographic questions will be prepared for all surveys to ensure consistency.
• All authors should provide a very short introduction at the very beginning of the survey (2-4 sentences) and one descriptive sentence under each new section of the survey.
• Additionally, a data protection and privacy statement should accompany the first page of the survey. EAN Head Office can provide a template for this section, if desired.
• Surveys should be limited to a maximum of 10 items that focus on the specific research topic of interest. This limit excludes general socio-demographic questions and standard introductory items, such as those related to general interest and professional background (which should also not exceed the 10 items). In exceptional cases, up to 20 items may be allowed.
• The Head Office and the Scientific Committee´s members in charge of the review process will label some changes as mandatory. Other observations will be labelled as suggestions for the authors to consider.
• If the survey is being conducted or plans to be conducted in the context of a wider research project, EAN Head Office shall receive all related documents beforehand (e.g., project description, authors, grants if any, other participating societies, etc.) together with the basic survey related documents (survey itself and EAN survey proposal form). 

• Survey results are expected to be published in the form of an article/research paper in the European Journal of Neurology. If the authors wish to submit the results to another Journal, a short description of the background reasons is expected.
• A waiver for open-access publication may be considered if no other funding source can be guaranteed. Please refer to OA waivers policy.
• The Survey´s authors are expected to inform the EAN within a lapse of 6 months after the survey was closed about how the data was processed and results dissemination.

• The EAN Scientific Committee reserves the right to amend survey questions if necessary.
• Surveys with similar objectives may be merged if it is deemed beneficial.
• Surveys submitted by panel members: Surveys will be shared on the EAN website, through dedicated emails and EAN newsletters.
• Stand-alone surveys will be reserved for special cases, decided on a case-by-case basis, to reduce survey fatigue among members.
• Surveys submitted by correspondent and full members (who have not joined any of EAN´s Scientific Panels): Surveys will be shared on the EAN website and promoted through the EAN Newsletter.

• To ensure fairness, the number of surveys per scientific panel will be noted, and priority will be given to those who have not yet submitted a survey to encourage community engagement.