Author Guidelines
To submit a paper to our journal:
- Register as an Author; we encourage you to register also as a reader and a reviewer at the same time
- Follows the Instructions to authors below.
- Read our Editorial and Competing Interest Policies
To submit a revised version
- Please be sure to include in your revised version a point-by-point cover letter indicating all changes made (one file only). Revised version must NOT be uploaded using the "Supplementary Files" field. Be sure to proceed as per the following instructions.
- Log in
- Click on your role as AUTHOR
- Click on STATUS on the page displayed
- Under the heading EDITOR DECISION (at the end of the page), upload your revised paper as AUTHOR VERSION using Browse and Upload buttons
- Use the NOTIFY EDITOR email to inform editors that the revised version has been submitted
Instructions (also available for download here)
Submission of a manuscript
The corresponding author must submit the manuscript online-only through our Manuscript Submission System.
Authorship
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the Council of Scientific Editors criteria. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to (a) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to (b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on (c) final approval of the version to be published. These three conditions must all be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author. Authors should provide a brief description of their individual contributions. In relevant cases of experimentation on animals, Authors may be required to provide the original authorization of their institutional Ethical Committee.
Manuscript preparation
Manuscripts must be written in English language only. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to have their manuscript checked by a language editing service, or by an English mother-tongue colleague prior to submission. The manuscript must be prepared with a standard word processor (preferably Microsoft Word or OpenOffice). Pages should be in A4 format and numbered. Times New Roman 12 pt is the advised font. Lines should be left numbered in continuum, to make the referees’ work easier, double-spaced and without interruption of page. The final document must then be converted to PDF for submission.
Full title, authors and head title
A clear, descriptive title, authors’ names and addresses should be on the first page. The title should be in bold face type, with capital and lower case letters, and preceded by a head title (with maximum length of 40 characters, spaces included). The names of the authors (with full first name and initial letter of the middle name, if present) should be centred under the title, in bold face type with capital and lower case letters. The current affiliations of the authors should appear centred below the authors’ names and should be referred to with numeric footnotes. The original name of institutions (no translation in English) should be used. The indication of the corresponding author with its qualification title (Dr., Prof.), full name, postal address, telephone number, fax number and email address must be indicated under the institutional addresses.
Example:
Head title: (up to 40 characters)
Title without acronyms
John White,1 Carlo D. Rossi,2 Edward F. Black2
1Department of Animal Science, University of Edinburgh, UK
2Dipartimento di Morfofisiologia veterinaria e Produzioni animali, Università di Bologna, Italy
Corresponding author: Dr. Carlo Daniele Rossi, DIMORFIPA, Facoltà di Medicina Veterinaria, Università di Bologna, Via Tolara di Sopra 50, 40064 Ozzano dell'Emilia (BO), Italy - Tel. +39.051.111111 - Fax: +39.051.222222 - Email: rossi@server.it
Abstract
The abstract should have a maximum length of 250 words and should summarise pertinent results in a brief but understandable form. References or tables are never cited in the abstract. The abstract should start with a clear statement of the objective and must conclude with one or two sentences that highlight important conclusions.
Key words
At the end of the abstract, list up to five key words including the species, variables tested and the major response criteria. It is advisable to select the key words from the most recent issues of the CAB Thesaurus (CAB International, 845 North Park Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA). The first letter of each key word is capitalized and key words are separated by commas.
Body of the paper
The body of the paper must include the following sections: Introduction, Materials and methods, Results and discussion, Conclusions, References. It may also include implications/applications, acknowledgements, possible divided attribution of the paper to the authors, any additional information concerning research grants and/or previous presentation to a Congress or to a Meeting of part of the results.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations should be limited to a unit of measure followed by digits (point between them only for no., i.e. number) and to all others included in the SI list (http://www.bipm.fr/enus/3_SI/si.html and/or, for Italian authors: http://www.science.unitn.it/~labdid/sisint/si1_home/si_home.html) and in the Veterinary Abbreviations and Acronyms Glossary (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/vex/vetdocs/abbreviation.htm).
All other abbreviations must be defined the first time they are used in the abstract and again in the body of the manuscript and as footnotes to the tables. Authors are encouraged to limit the number of abbreviations. Authors’ defined abbreviations should be in capital letters without points. Do not begin a sentence with an abbreviation, acronym, symbol or numeral.
Institutions: acronym in original language, caption in English or translated in English.
Examples: MIPAAF (Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies); INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research).
Measures and numbers
Units of measurements should be those recommended by the International Committee for the Standardization of Units of Measurements, please check this document (http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure) for Uniform Requirements. For numbers less than one use zero to the left of the decimal, e.g. 0.23. Do not use commas for four digit numbers, e.g. 9000, and use commas for numbers with more than four digits, e.g. 90,000. Do not use a hyphen when indicating the range, but use "to".
Nomenclature
Use italics to designate genus, species, botanical varieties and words in Latin (e.g.: et al.) or other languages. For genes, loci and alleles nomenclature use italics and refer to the website: http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/
Miscellaneous
Brand and company names and locations for equipment and substances should be included in parentheses within the text.
Reference list
Where available, direct URLs for the references should be provided, i.e.
Kai, Y.,H., Su, H.M., Tai, K.,T., Chi, S.C., 2009. Vaccination of grouper broodfish (Epinephelus tukula) reduces the risk of vertical transmission by nervous necrosis virus. Vaccine 2009 Nov 29. [Epub ahead of print].
All publications cited in the text should be presented in a reference list. Citations are listed in strict alphabetical order by first author’ last names. Use capital and lower case letters for authors’ names.
If all authors are identical for two or more citations, chronological order of publication should dictate the order of citations. When more than one paper in a given year is listed by authors whose names are in the same order in each paper, the papers are arranged in alphabetical order of the paper title.
Journal titles mentioned in the reference list should be abbreviated according to the following websites (sequenced by relevance):
or to Gale’s Periodical Title Abbreviations (Leland G. Alkire Jr. Ed., Gale Research Inc., USA, 1994 or following editions).
Publications in any language other than English (except for those written in non Latin alphabets) should retain their original title.
Use the following system for arranging your references (please ensure the use of the style “comma" between the last name and the initial letter of the first name”).
1) periodicals:
Hennighausen, L. G., Sippel, A. E., 1982. Characterization and cloning of the mRNAs specific for the lactating mouse mammary gland. Eur. J. Biochem. 125:131-141.
2) books:
National Research Council, 2001. Nutrient Requirements of Dairy Cattle. 7th rev. ed. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, USA.
3) multi-authors books:
Brouwer, I., 1965. Report of the sub-committee on constants and factors. In: K.L. Blaxter (ed.) Energy metabolism. EAAP Publ. N. 11, Academic Press Ltd., London, UK, pp 441-443.
4) proceedings:
- Rossi, A., Bianchi, B., 1998.
How writing the references. Proc. 4th World Congr. Appl. Livest. Prod., Armidale, Australia, 26: 44-46. (Or 44, if one page)
- Blanco, P., Nigro, B., 1970.
Not numbered volumes. Page 127 (or pp 12-18) in Proc. 3rd Int. Conf. Cattle Dis., Philadelphia, PA, USA.
5) thesis:
Rossi, P., 1999. Stima di parametri genetici nella razza Reggiana. Degree Diss., Università di Milano, Italy.
6) material from a World Wide Web site:
Food and Drug Administration, 2001. Available from:
http://www.fda.gov
7) when citing EU laws follow the item “Bibliographic notice” which can be found on the website EUR-Lex (
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/).
Example: European Commission, 1994. Commission Decision of 27 June 1994 concerning certain protection measures with regard to bovine spongiform encephalopathy and the feeding of mammalian derived protein, 94/381/EC. In: Official Journal, L 172, 07/07/1994, pp 23-24.
8) in press:
Manuscripts that have been accepted for publication but are not yet published can be listed in the literature cited with the designation (In press) following the journal title.
9) abstracts:
Abstracts are cited with the designation (abstr.) following the page number.
10) other:
Citations such as personal communication, unpublished data, etc. are not accepted.
Citations in the text
The Journal follows the “author, year” style of citation. When a citation has one or two authors, cite the reference throughout using the name(s) and the date.
When a citation has more than three authors, cite the reference throughout the text with et al. (in italics) following the last name of the first author.
When two or more references are included in a grouping within a sentence, they are arranged and separated by a semicolon.
The first criterion is the year (former citations precede recent ones); multiple citations for a given year are further arranged alphabetically and multiple citations for the same initial letter are arranged as follows: first the citation with one author, secondly the citation with two authors, then the other (with et al.).
When the same author has two references with different dates, cite them in chronological order, separating the dates with a comma; when the same author has two references with the same date, arrange the dates as a and b (also in the reference list) and separated by a comma.
Example:
(Ross, 1968, 1972; Burns et al., 1970; Allen et al., 1990; White and Hulk, 1990; White et al., 1990a, 1990b).
Citation should be made in the text to each reference.
Tables
Tables are numbered consecutively in Arabic numbers without "no." before the number. References should be made in the text to each table. The desired style of presentation can be found in published articles.
Titles of tables should be descriptive enough to be able to stand alone. Do not present the same data in tabular and graphic form.
Figures
Figures are numbered consecutively in Arabic numbers. References should be made in the text to each figure. Each figure should have a caption. The term “figure” is used also for graphs and photos.
Symbols and abbreviations used in figures can be defined in the figure caption or note or within the figure itself. Please avoid the use of bold face or greater size for the characters. Symbols and abbreviations used in figures can be defined in the figure caption or note or within the figure itself. Please avoid the use of bold face or greater size for the characters. Please remember that in order to promote good management of the space available images must take up the least space possible without compromising clarity. The figures must be submitted as .tif or .jpg files, with the following digital resolution:
- Color (saved as CMYK): minimum 300 dpi
- Black and white/grays: minimum 600 dpi
Lettering of figures must be clearly labelled.
IMPORTANT!
The final file must contain full text, tables, figures and references formatted as specified above (in case of a revised version you must also include to the submission a point-by-point cover letter addressing all changes made and headed to the Editor ).
The final document must then be converted to PDF for submission.
Authors also have the possibility to get Supplementary Files to be added to a submission. The files, which can be in any format, might include (a) research instruments, (b) data sets, which comply with the terms of the study's research ethics review, (c) sources that otherwise would be unavailable to readers, (d) figures and tables that cannot be integrated into the text itself, or other materials that add to the contribution of the work.
Supplementary Files option must not be used to submit a revised version.
