INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

AUSTRAL JOURNAL OF VETERINARY SCIENCES - Austral J Vet Sci

Founded in 1969 - ISSN 0719-8000 / ISSN 0719-8132

 Journal indexed by the following international scientific repertoires: Web of Science, Current Contents Agriculture, Biology and Environmental Sciences (CC/AB and ES), Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, International (C.A.B.I.), Dairy Science Abstracts, Veterinary Bulletin, Animal Breeding Abstracts; Helminthological Abstracts S.A., Biological Abstracts; Agrindex, Periodica, Focus on: Veterinary Sciences and Medicine.

Austral Journal of Veterinary Sciences publishes in English, Original scientific contributions such as scientific articles, reviews, short communications and case reports which can include clinical observations, descriptions of methods or techniques and advances in all aspects of veterinary science and animal welfare.

 SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

 Manuscripts should be submitted to the Editor via the on-line platform www.australjvs.cl and must include:

  • An electronic version of the text (MS Word format), tables (preferably in MS Word format), charts (Excel format), figures and photographs (TIFF, 300 dpi)
  • A cover letter to the Editor signed by the corresponding author should include the following:

-A declarative statement that the manuscript represents new information that has not been previously submitted or published elsewhere; or an explanation of any previous publication or presentation of all or parts of the manuscript.

-A declarative statement that all authors of the paper have read and approved the final version of the manuscript submitted and that all have made substantive contributions to the work. The statement must include the email address of all the authors.

-Specification of the type of manuscript that is being submitted.

-A description of how the information provided in the manuscript is original, new, timely, significant, and relevant to the readers of Austral J Vet Sci.

  • The manuscripts must be original, unpublished and may not be considered for publication in another journal.
  • Manuscripts that do not conform to editorial requirements will be returned without review.
  • For manuscripts describing studies involving animals or humans, the appropriate Bioethical Committee Certification must be mentioned under Material and Methods.
  • Referees of Austral Journal of Veterinary Sciences will aid the Editorial Committee to determine whether the manuscript fulfills publication requirements. The authors must suggest at least three referees. All articles submitted for publication will be assessed by two referees. The referees will be selected by the Editorial Committee, and may or may not include those nominated by the authors. In the case of a disagreement between the referee’s reports, a third referee will aid the Editorial Committee to reach a decision. Referees are obliged to keep all information from the articles confidential, including unpublished information. Authors should state any potential conflicts of interest at the time of submission of the manuscript. Such information will not alter established editorial and review policies but will assist the editorial staff in avoiding any potential conflicts that could give the appearance of a biased review.
  • The final decision regarding acceptance of the manuscript will be taken when the Editorial Committee accepts the manuscript following correction according to the referees’ comments.
  • Accepted articles must pay a publication fee prior to publication, the amount of which can be found at www.australjvs.cl/ajvs/web-pay/ .

 PREPARATION AND FORM OF MANUSCRIPTS

 Type of articles

Review articles: provide expert summaries of current knowledge in a particular field of veterinary science, and do not necessarily have a set format. Authors should consult with the Editor before initiating a review. The Editorial Committee may solicit an expert to prepare a review, which will also be refereed and edited. Reviews must not exceed 30 pages in length, including tables, figures and references.

Scientific articles: report new advances in veterinary science based on original research. The format must include abstract, introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements (when pertinent) and references. The maximum length of the manuscript is 20 pages, including tables, figures and references.

Short communications: briefly inform of an advance, experimental result, new methodology, with the following format: abstract, introduction, material and methods, results and discussion
(combined), acknowledgements (when pertinent) and references. The maximum length of the manuscript is 12 pages, including tables, figures and references.

Case report: is a brief note that describes preliminary findings and contributes significantly to the understanding of the Veterinary Science. The maximum length is 1,300 words which includes
the main body of the text and cites. An abstract of 50 words is required, plus 15 references and two tables or figures, or one of each. Acknowledgements can be included (when pertinent). Subtitles must not be used to divide the main body of the text.

 JOURNAL STYLE AND LAYOUT

 General presentation: Manuscripts must be written using 12 point Times New Roman font with one and a half-line spacing, on one side only of letter paper (21.5 x 27.9 cm) using 2 cm margins on all sides. Pages must be numbered consecutively in the top right corner, and lines must be numbered on the left, starting with number one, on all pages. The main body of the text must be indented. Headings must be in upper case, left-justified on a separate line with no full stop following, e.g. MATERIAL AND METHODS. Only the first letter of sub-headings is capitalised. Primary sub-headings (e.g. Experimental design) should be left-justified; secondary sub-headings are left-justified and italicised. Do not use underlining and do not number sub-headings or itemised lists. In the text, numbers must be written in numerals. When a sentence begins with a number or when necessary for clarity, this should be written in words. A decimal point must be preceded by a number (e.g. 0.5 not .5). All measurements must be reported in SI units (www.nist.gov/pml/pubs/sp811/) unless it is normal practice in a discipline to use derivatives (e.g. the Curie international unit). Dates must be formatted as 07 September, 1954 in the text, but they may be abbreviated in tables and figures. Use the 24-hour clock for times of day (e. g. 13:00 h). Chemical nomenclature must be expressed using the Biochemical Society Standards (Biochem J 209, 1-27, 1983), generic names (in lower caps) must be used for medications. If brands and sources of medications need to be included, this should be included as a foot-note. Enzymes must be identified at first mention, in accordance with the Enzyme Commission of the International Union of Biochemistry. Latin terminology and abbreviations commonly used in scientific literature, such as in vitroin vivoad libitum must be italicised. Scientific names of animal species should be mentioned once in the text, complete and in brackets, subsequently only the common name should be used. Probability values must be presented as P<0.05 or P<0.01. Standard deviation, standard error of the mean and confidence intervals are abbreviated as follows: SD, SEM and CI, respectively.

 Title

 Title must be short, specific and informative. The title is centred in bold, starting at line 10 without using trade names or abbreviations. Only the first letter is capitalised. Scientific names of animal species must be mentioned in the tittle, in brackets, only in the case of non-domestic species.

 Author’s names and addresses

 Author’s names are written underneath the title, separated by a space. Use full name and separate authors by commas, as in the example: Christopher A. Westwood, Edward G. Bramley, Ian J. Lean. Superscript letters should be used after each author’s name to identify the section, department, service or institute, city and country of the author where the work was conducted. The corresponding author is indicated using the superscript letter followed by an asterisk, with the telephone, mailing and email addresses indicated in the footnote.

 Footnotes

 These are used to define abbreviations used in table titles, commercial brands, the name and address of companies. They must be indicated with numbers.

 Abstract

 The second page must contain an abstract of no more than 250 words that describes the objectives of the study or research, the material and methods used, the principal results and the most important conclusions. Non-standard abbreviations must not be used. On a separate line, left-justified, and separated by a space, up to four Key words should be identified. The use of key words containing more than two words (a phrase) must be avoided.

  Introduction

 The subheading “Introduction” is written on the next page following the Abstract and Resumen. In the following line, indented by 5 spaces, the context of the study is briefly presented without an extensive revision of the theme, and only citing the most relevant references. The hypothesis and objectives of the study must be clearly and concisely presented. 

 Material and methods

 Separated by one space from the previous section, this section should contain sufficient detail to allow others to repeat the study. When the first reference in the text is made to medications or chemicals, the generic name, dose and route of administration should be indicated. For specialised equipment, the brand, model and manufacturer’s name must be indicated. Studies involving animals or humans must mention the appropriate Bioethical Committee Certification. Details of all statistical methods used must be given at the end of this section under the sub-heading “Statistical analysis” and should include adequate detail to allow readers to determine precisely how data have been analysed and the units that are used to express the results (mathematical mean, standard deviation, standard error of the mean, mediums, ranges or confidence limits, etc.). The use of parametric (Chi-square, student’s t-test, ANOVA, etc.) or non-parametric (Wilcoxon, Kruskal-Wallis etc.) analyses must be indicated. The name, version and sources of computational statistical analysis programs must be identified, e.g. SPSS 9.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago IL, USA).

 Results

 Separated by one space from the previous section, this section should contain a concise and logical description of the results obtained without discussion or reference to other work. The minimum number of tables and figures should be included to present the pertinent data without repetition, and data presented in tables and figures should not be repeated in the text.

 Discussion

 This section, separated by one space from the previous section, should evaluate and interpret the results and relate these to other relevant results. The results should not be repeated and new results must not be presented in this section. Care should be taken to ensure that the discussion is developed in a logical and concise manner, and conclusions are reached, as well as a discussion of their relevance. Conclusions that are not directly supported by the data of the study or other unpublished studies should not be presented.

 Acknowledgements

 This section should be brief, and should only include people or institutions that have made a direct contribution, provided necessary material or have provided the facilities for the study’s development. The source of funding should be indicated in this section.

 References

 The accuracy of the reference section is the responsibility of the authors and references must be verified against the original article. Please ensure that all articles cited in the text are included in the reference list and vice versa. In the main text, citations should be listed in parentheses in chronological order, citing authors’ names, and using et al after the first author’s name where there are more than two (e.g. Smith 1994, Castro and Martínez 1996, Weiss et al 2002). All lines after the first line of each entry in the reference list should be indented 0.5 cm from the left margin (hanging indentation). The reference list must be ordered alphabetically according to the first author’s name, and all authors’ names and initials must be included. When no author is given, use the term “Anonymous” in both text and reference list. References with the same author, single or with coauthors, should be listed in chronological order. If there were more than five authors, et al must be used after the fifth one. The letters a, b, c, etc. should be appended as a superscript when more than one work is cited from the same author within the same year. Author names should appear with the initials and first letter of the surname in upper caps and the remainder of the surname in lower caps, with no periods between initials. Journal title abbreviations and names of books must be in italics. For journals, ISI abbreviations must be used. The following examples can be used as a guide:

 *Please note that the hanging indent has been omitted in the following examples but it must be added to each reference in your manuscript.

For journal articles:

 Mella C, Medina G, Flores-Martin S, Toledo Z, Simaluiza RJ, et al. 2016. Interaction between zoonotic bacteria and free living amoebas. A new angle of an epidemiological       polyhedron of public health importance?. Arch Med Vet 48, 1-10.

 Neverauskas CE, Nasir A, Reichel MP. 2015. Prevalence and distribution of Neospora caninum in water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) and cattle in the Northern Territory of Australia. Parasitol Int 64, 392- 396.

 For books, chapters in books or occasional publications:

Leeson S, Summers JD. 2005. Commercial poultry nutrition. 3rd ed. Nottingham University Press, Nottingham, UK.

Larson V. 2009. Complications of chemotherapeutics agents. In: Silverstein D, Hopper K (eds). Small Animal Critical Care Medicine. Saunders Elsevier, St Louis, Mo, USA, Pp 817-820.

WHO, World Health Organization. 1972. International Drug Monitoring: The role of national centres. Tech Rep Ser WHO Nº 48.

SAG, Servicio Agrícola y Ganadero, Chile. 1996. Resolución Exenta Nº 3599 del 29 de noviembre de 2006.

 For softwares:

 SAS, Statistical Analysis System. 2000. SAS version 6.0. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA.

R Core Team. 2014. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.

 For articles and proceedings published in regular series:

 Zimbelman RB, Rhoads RP, Rhoads ML, Duff GC, Baumgard LH, Collier RJ. 2009. A re-evaluation of the impact of temperature humidity index (THI) and black globe humidity index (BGHI) on milk       production in high producing dairy cows. Proceedings of the 24th Southwest Nutrition and Management Conference, Tempe, Arizona, USA, Pp 158-169.

 For PhD and MSc dissertations:

 Lindberg A. 2002. Epidemiology and eradication of bovine virus diarrhea virus infections. PhD Dissertation, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.

 Minimise the citation of abstracts as references. Authors are specifically discouraged from citing “unpublished data” or “personal communication”, unless this information exists in written form, in which case the text should be referred to as a footnote, but this should not appear in the list of references. References to papers which have been accepted but not published should be cited as “in press”, whereas manuscripts which have been submitted for publication but not accepted should be referred to as “unpublished data”. Web pages should not be included as references. If so required, web page addresses should be written as footnotes, including date of consultation.

 COMPLEMENTARY INSTRUCTIONS

 Tables

 The titles to tables and figures should be self-explanatory. The number of tables should be kept to a minimum and presented on separate pages with their respective titles at the top. Information in tables must not be repeated in the text. Tables must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numbers in the order in which they are referred to in the text. The brief title to the table should indicate the contents of the table and should be understandable without reference to the text. Each column of each table must have a short or abbreviated heading. Only column headings and general titles should be separated with horizontal lines. Data columns should be separated by spaces and not vertical lines. When additional explanatory information is required, this should appear at the foot of the table. Explanatory information for non-standard abbreviations and units should appear within parentheses. If superscripts are used to indicate significant differences between values, use a, b, c. Minimise the number of digits in each column. Indicate a zero value as 0. Table widths should not exceed 80 mm for one column or 170 mm for two columns.

  Figures

 Figures should be submitted on separate pages, with their respective titles in English at the bottom and numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals in the order they are referred to in the text, e.g. Figure 1, not Fig. 1. Figures include all illustrations that are not Tables, e.g. graphs, radiographies, ecographies, electrocardiograms, photographs, etc. Figures must be vertically oriented and be accompanied by a short descriptive caption that contains an explanation for all markers, lines and symbols used but no abbreviations.  If the figure contains sections, these should be labelled as a, b, c, etc. in the top right corner and must be described in the caption. Figures may be one or two column-widths (80 or 170 mm, respectively). The cost of printing coloured figures must be met by the authors. The authorship of non-original figures must be acknowledged, and when appropriate, authorisation to reproduce these figures must be provided.

  Changes to authorship

 Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the Editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended.

  Proofs

 A proof will be sent to the corresponding author for proofreading in PDF format, and must be returned within the specified time, otherwise the Editor reserves the right to carefully proof-read the article but without assuming responsibility for errors, to continue with the publication process. Alterations to the proof that do not correspond to minor errors will be charged to the authors. Neither the Editor nor the Publisher accept any responsibility for printed errors that had not been indicated by the authors.