Author's Guidelines

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INDIAN JOURNAL OF ANIMAL HEALTH

ISSN 0019-5057

(A Biannual Journal published in June & December)

Published by

West Bengal Veterinary Association

37, Kshudiram Bose Sarani, Kolkata – 700037, West Bengal

Phone: (033) 2557 1987, Web: www.ijah.in

Email: ijahwbva2010@gmail.com

1. Aims and scope

 Indian Journal of Animal Health (IJAH) is a double-blinded peer-reviewed biannual open access journal that accepts research articles, short communications, reviews, book reviews and scientific reports in all aspects of veterinary, animal, dairy and fishery sciences. Letter to the editor, commentary as well news and views section are also considered in the journal. A research article covers a full report of the results of original primary research with precise description and clear interpretation of the work which has not been published elsewhere. A short communication is intended to rapidly communicate novel ideas and results in new and developing areas of veterinary, animal and fishery sciences, but is limited in the level of performed investigations and is thus insufficient to fulfil the requirements of a full paper. A short paper may be submitted to the journal as such, or may result from a request to condense a regular paper during the review process. A review aims to provide an overview or a meta-analysis for an issue of great interest or topicality. The reviews will be invited by the Editorial Board. However, potential authors can suggest topics to the Editor. Authors must be experts and have several publications on the subject. A scientific report or a case report deals with important issues to clinicians and biomedical researchers in all areas of veterinary, animal, dairy and fishery sciences. Commentary is a short article on recent interests and topics within the journal scopes, which will be usually commissioned from recognized experts by the journal. A book review with technical contribution will also be considered for publication. 

2. Ethics

Guidelines of the COPE committee (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines) are followed by the journal. Neither previously published article nor considered for publication elsewhere is accepted.  If such unethical practice noticed at any point of publication process, it will be immediately rejected and if published the article will be retracted. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for partial reproduction of materials (text, tables or figures) taken from other publications, and for accurately citing their origins. Authorization will be requested from both the author(s) and publishers of these materials.

When reporting experiments on animals and zebra fish, authors must indicate the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of animals that have been followed, along with an approval letter from the appropriate ethical committee. Author can follow bioethics guidelines provided here:  http://icmr.nic.in/bioethics/final_cpcsea.pdf. 

When reporting experiments with risk group 3 or 4 organisms (WHO or OIE enlisted), genetically modified organisms, recombinant DNA and allied technology, the authors are solely responsible for maintaining biosafety protocols and obtaining an approval from institutional or national biosafety committee. Authors may follow these biosafety guidelines provided here: http://envfor.nic.in/sites/default/files/biosafety/biosafety_regulations.htm. Authors will be fully responsible for any form of plagiarism, unauthorized use or manipulation of data, if contained in their submitted manuscripts. Authors need to provide a self declaration on this aspect. Under any circumstances, IJAH will not bear the responsibility for violating such norms.

 Conflict of interest. Authors have to declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the present research work. 

Authorship. An authorship implies at least any one of the following criteria (1) substantial contribution to the conception and design, (2) the acquisition of data, (3) statistical analysis of data and (4) interpretation of the results or drafting or critically revising the manuscript, and all authors approve the final submitted version.  With the submission of a manuscript to the Journal, all authors warrant that they have the authority to publish the materials and that any part of the manuscript has not been published previously, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. The corresponding author will take the primary responsibility for all kind of communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author needs to be available throughout the submission and peer review process to answer to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information about the paper arising after publication. 

3. Submission and handling of manuscript 

Original manuscript

Authors must send all the manuscript files (cover letter, author’s declaration, title page, proposed reviewers, main manuscript, and photograph and figure files) after registering his/her name in the journal homepage www.ijah.in through manuscript submission process. Any further correspondence may be made with the email: ijahwbva2010@gmail.com. Submission of a manuscript implies that 1) the work described has not been published previously in any language (except in a book of abstracts, in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or as part of a thesis); 2) the work is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; 3) publication of the work has been approved by all co-authors; 4) the authors agree to the automatic transfer of the copyright to the publisher if the manuscript is accepted for publication; 5) the manuscript will not be published elsewhere in any language without the consent of the copyright holders; and 6) written permission of the copyright holder was obtained by the authors for materials from other copyrighted sources. 

Cover letter. The corresponding author on behalf of all the authors must give a written declaration (download from the site) stating all points as stated under original manuscript. Author’s declaration is mandatory for submission of article to the journal. 

Peer review and editing

Upon submission, the manuscript will be evaluated for compliance with the author instructions. Manuscripts that do not achieve the prerequisites for publication will be immediately sent back to the authors. Submitted manuscripts will be primarily rejected if not satisfied with the objectives / scope of the journal, and report of plagiarism. Editors have full responsibility for reviewing process of submitted manuscript in the order it received. The manuscript is sent to at least two reviewers for evaluation in a double blind peer review process. The reviewer recommends acceptance, acceptance after revision, resubmission after revision or rejection. If both reviewers recommend acceptance or rejection, the decision will be executed. If their opinions differ, the Editors may invite a third reviewer to decide acceptance or rejection of the manuscript. Editors will communicate with the corresponding authors and make the final decision for acceptance, rejection or further revision. The identity of the reviewers is not disclosed to the authors and vice versa, but is made known to the Editors, and only the anonymous report is sent to the author. Papers requiring revision will be returned to the authors, and the author must return the revised manuscript to the Editors within 2 weeks. Editors may send the revised manuscript to reviewers to check if the manuscript has been revised suitably. If a paper is not suitable for publication, the author will be notified with a statement of reasons for rejection. The decision of editor is final unless there is a proven error in the process of manuscript evaluation or peer review. The authors may appeal if they believe unfair judgment has been made.

The authors need to supply the names of three potential referees along with their affiliations, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and areas of expertise of the referees. The proposed referees should not be previous and current collaborators of your research. Reviewers must not be members of the same institution. The editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not the proposed reviewers will be assigned.

 Papers reporting sequence data. If any new nucleotide or amino acid sequence is derived, the sequences must be submitted into GenBank/ENA/DDBJ and the accession number(s) should be mentioned in the final version of the article. Similarly entire set of supporting microarray, next-generation sequencing or other functional genomics data must be deposited into GEO, Array Express, CIBEX and the accession number(s) should be mentioned in the final version of the manuscript.

 Papers reporting isolation of novel microbe or parasite. The isolated viral, bacterial, fungal, protozoal strains from the clinical cases and the rumen or dairy microbes may be deposited in national culture collection centres [e.g. Veterinary Type Culture Collection (VTCC), NRC-Equine, Hissar; Type Culture Laboratory, Division of Biological Standardization, IVRI; Central Research Institute, Kasuli; Microbial Type Culture Collection, IMTECH) and the accession numbers / repository numbers may be incorporated in the final version of the manuscript. 

4. Manuscript preparation

 Manuscript format

Manuscripts should be written in concise, legible English, which must be carefully reviewed by the authors for correct grammar and syntax. English spelling can be either British or American, but it must be consistent throughout the manuscript. Manuscripts should be prepared in Times New Roman 12-point font, with double line spacing and justified aligned text throughout. The four margins will be 2.5 cm. Section headings (level 1) need to be written in 14-point bold font. Sub-headings (level 2) need to be written in 12-point bold italic font. All pages should be numbered consecutively starting after the title page, and continuous line numbers should be used to facilitate easy reference by the reviewers. Each paragraph should begin with an indentation of 1-cm. Each tables, figure along with legend and annexe must be included on separate pages (but in the same Word document), after the Reference section. All figures should also be sent separately (other than manuscript word file) in JPEG or TIFF format at 600 dpi.

Review articles should not be longer than 20 manuscript pages (or 6,000 words). They should include a title page, an abstract with maximum 250 words, up to five keywords, highlights, running title, a variable main text (the introduction should be based on general coverage of the issue, followed by a critical assessment of the most important references), conflict of interest, data availability, author’s contribution, acknowledgments, references, tables/figures (encouraged). Reviews will also be submitted to the peer-review process.

 Research articles should be written within 8 to 15 manuscript pages (or 2,500 to 4,500 words), including tables and figures. Research articles should include a title page, an abstract with maximum 250 words, up to five keywords, highlights, and a running title. The main text should include the following sections: introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conflict of interest, data availability, ethical statement, author’s contribution, acknowledgments, references, tables and figures.

 Short communications should be within 5 to 8 manuscript pages (or 1,500 to 2,500 words), including tables and figures. Short communications should include a title page, an abstract with maximum 250 words, up to five keywords, highlights, running title, main text not divided into subsections, conflict of interest, data availability, ethical statement, author’s contribution, acknowledgments, references, and a maximum of three tables and/or figures.

 A scientific report or a case reportbased on research/clinical works are also acceptable and should not exceed 4 manuscript pages (or 1,200 words). It includes a title page. No headed sections are required, except Abstract with maximum 100 words, up to five keywords and running title. In brief, it contains Introduction, Case History and Observations, Treatment and Discussion with conclusion (with no subtitle); and conflict of interest, ethical statement, author’s contribution, Acknowledgement (optional), and References. Supportive figure/photo may be presented as documentary evidence.

Commentary - Commentary should be within 1000 words with a maximum 5 references. Usually, Commentary does not contain figures or tables.

Book Review should not be longer than 750 words.

Layout

Title page – The title page should include the title of the manuscript, full names of authors and their institutional affiliation(s). If several authors and institutions are listed, the department and institution of each should be clearly stated. In separate paragraphs, the address for correspondence, including the name of corresponding author, address (institutional affiliation, city, zip-code and country), telephone and fax number, and e-mail address, should be given. E-mail address of the corresponding author will be published with the article. A running headline not exceeding 10 words and spaces should also be provided.

Abstract –The abstract should contain maximum 250 words. The style must be concise and must not contain references. A typical abstract briefly describe the relevance of the study, the specific objectives, the materials and methods, results and conclusion without any subheadings and should be in one paragraph. The page of manuscript containing abstract should be started with the title of the article. The Author(s) may encourage presenting the whole work including objectives, methodology, results with outcome and conclusion here in graphical presentation.

Additional key words –A maximum of five key words should be included. These should not repeat the words that appear in the title.

Highlights – Principal outcome of the work in 5 bullets (maximum). Each bullet will contain maximum 100 characters including space.

Introduction –The introduction should contain sufficient background information about the work to allow it to be placed in the context of other research and to allow the reader to understand the relevance, proposed objectives and evaluation of the results. The introduction should conclude with one or two sentences that define the objectives and the essence of the article.

Materials and methods –Sufficient information should be provided to enable experiments to be repeated. For routine methods, a brief description and literature reference will be enough. New methods must be described in detail and may provide sufficient supplementary information in separate file.

In the case of rarely used chemical products or equipment, the manufacturer’s name and address should be given. In case of mathematics formulae, please submit equations as editable text and not as images. Present simple formulae in line with normal text where possible and use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms, e.g., X/Y. In principle, variables are to be presented in italics. Powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp. Number consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately from the text (if referred to explicitly in the text).

Results –In general, it should only describe the results of the experiments. The data / information as well as explanations provided in the figure and table captions should not be repeated in the text. Data should be represented either by figure or table, not by both.

Discussion –The discussion should be analytical and interpretative and should establish an association between the results obtained and other published works. Conclusions usually do not contain references but provide a short, general restatement of the main experimental results and their importance to the reader or the subject being discussed which will be the last paragraph of this section.

Conflict of interest– Author must disclose whether there is any conflict of interest or not. They have to disclose any personal relationships with other peoples of organizations that may influence their work. Potential conflicts of interest are employment, consultancies, honoraria, paid expert support, patent application/registration and grants or other funding.

Data availability – All original research must include a data availability statement. Data set generated during research need to be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Authors’ contribution –Contribution of each author in the manuscript needs to be specified.

Ethical approval – If a study involves direct research on animals / zebrafish, the study needs to be approved byan appropriate authority and the approval statement needs to be provided.

Acknowledgments – When it is considered necessary, acknowledgements should be made to the people, centres or bodies that have collaborated or supported to carry out the work in any form including fund support. Contributors who did not meet any one of the criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. The source of funding for the study, if any, should be disclosed.

References – When references are cited in the text, the author’s surname should be provided in parentheses, followed by a comma and the year of publication; for example, “(Sarkar, 1992)...”. If there are two authors, the surnames should be followed by “and”; for example, “...(Sarkar and Ghosh, 2007)...”. If there are three or more authors, include the surname of the first author followed by “et al.” and a comma; for example, “...(Patra et al., 2009)...”. When several references are cited, they should be ordered from oldest to most recent; if they are from the same year, sort them alphabetically “...(Das and Samanta, 1966; Garg et al.,2008; Mandal et al., 2008)...”.. If there are two authors with the same surname and year of publication indicate them with letters a and b after year of publication, for example, “...Sar et al., 2007a; Sar et al., 2007b;...”. References in the list must be in alphabetic order by authors. Doi numbers must be included where these are available. In the case of several references from one author, papers that are sole authored should be presented first, followed by those with two authors and then references with three or more authors, respecting the chronological order in each case. If more than one of the articles was published in the same year, a letter should be added after the year to identify the references (e.g.,2005a,b).Multi-authored works should list the first five authors followed by “et al.”. Use abbreviated journal names. It is requested to follow Biological Journals and Abbreviations_ A.html. References to a paper “in press” are permissible, provided that the paper in question has been accepted for publication (indicate the doi or documentary evidence of acceptance). A reference to “unpublished work” is only permissible if it contains essential information; it should be available from the cited authors on request, and the names of all persons involved should be cited [first initial(s) followed by surname] in parentheses as “unpublished data”. Any person cited as the source of a “personal communication” must have approved the reference. This type of citation is permitted in the text only, not in the list of references. The use of “in preparation” or “submitted for publication” is not permitted.

 The examples of literature references are as follows:

Journal article –Dey S, Sarkar PB and Roy JP, 2004. Determining features and state of a pasture. Asian J Plant Sci, 3(2): 564-568, doi:

Books –Milthorpe FL and Moorby J, 1999. An introduction to crop physiology. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp 244

Chapters of books –Mandal GP, 1996. Soil salinization and land desertification. In: Soil degradation and desertification in Mediterranean environments (Rubio JL, Calvo A, eds). GeoformaEdiciones, Logroño (Spain), pp 105-129

Conference proceedings –Sanz-Romero P, Gonzalez-Mesa JC and Calvo-Gutierrez F, 2000. Nonpoint sources of water contamination and their impacts on sustainability. Proceedings of V International Conference on Tomato Breeding and Genetics, Kaunas (Lithuania), Sept 13-16, pp 187-192

Electronic sources –When referencing electronic sources, please provide place of publication (URL, ftp address, etc.) and date accessed or date of last update for web pages. For example: Casler MD, Jung G, Bughrara S, Hamblin A, Williamson C and Voigt T, 2007. Development of creeping bentgrass with multiple pest resistance. USGA Turfgrass and Environmental Research. Available in http://usgatero.msu.edu/v05/n18.pdf. [15 Feb, 2009]

Handbooks, Technical Bulletins, Theses and Dissertations –Goering HK and Van Soest PJ, 1970. Forage Fiber Analyses (Apparatus, Reagents, Procedures, and Some Applications). Agricultural Handbook No 379, ARS-USDA, Washington, DC

Kumar A, 2011. Efficacy of pentasulphate mixture and arsenic in alleviating chronic selenosis and expression of glutathione peroxidase genes in buffaloes. MSc Dissertation. National Dairy Research Institute (Deemed University), Karnal-132001, Haryana, India 

Tables and figures –They should be cited consecutively in the text, numbered independently with Arabic numerals and self-explanatory. Tables should be headed by a number and title. Explanatory notes that facilitate the interpretation of the tables should be included as a footnote to the tables. Tables should define cells and must not be created using the space bar and/or tab keys. Figures may correspond to diagrams or photographs. The figure number and legend should be presented at the bottom of the figure. After the acceptance of the paper, photographs should be sent separately as image files (jpeg or tiff) with a finished size of at least 600 dpi (dots per inch). Figures prepared with excel or a similar program should be included in the text as MS Office Objects or sent separately in the format of their source program (*.xls or *.xlsx files). 

5. Checklist for style

Units and symbols – Use SI (International System) units in accordance with the recommendations of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). Use abbreviations L, mL and µL for capacity or volume units. Express N (normality) as mmol/L and ppm as mg/kg or mg/L. Please spell out numbers one through nine, except when used with units. When units are not preceded by a number, the term should be written in full, without using the symbol (e.g.,“metres”, “23 m”). Express decimals using a full stop (e.g., 3.14) and thousands with commas (e.g., 21,314). For decimal quantities <1, place a zero before the decimal point. Report dates with the day first, then the month, and then the year.

 Abbreviations must be defined when first mentioned in the abstract or text [e.g., “polymerase chain reaction (PCR)”] and again in the tables and figures. Abbreviations must then be used throughout the article, except at the beginning of a sentence.

Mathematical equations – Use an equation editor for mathematical expressions whenever possible. Avoid inserting formulas as images.

Never starts a sentence with a numeral: “Four plants and five years ago” is correct, not “4 plants and 5 years ago”. This means that some sentences may need to be rewritten: “Farmers collected 4,000 fruits in the first year”instead of “4,000 fruits were collected the first year.”

Scientific names –Genus must be written in full for the first time an organism is mentioned in the abstract or text and in every table and figure. If you are discussing several different species within a genus so that the genus is the same for each species mentioned, write genus along with species in full for the first time each new species is mentioned, even if it seems redundant. After the first time, use the genus abbreviation with a period.

Genus and species are always italicised. Do not italicise "spp.". Genus is italicised when it appears alone (i.e.,Phytophthora infections).

Latin binomials or trinomials and authorities, when first mentioned, must be given for all plants, insects and pathogens (e.g.,Solanum lycopersicumL.).

Both common and chemical names of pesticides must be given when first mentioned (e.g.,“Atrazine (2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-1,3,5-triazine) was most persistent...”).

Mark botanical cultivars in single inverted quotation marks, or use the abbreviation cv. when first mentioned (e.g., tomato ˈRoyestaˈ or cv. Royesta). Subsequently, this can be referred to as Royesta tomato or Royesta cultivar.

Animals (breed, sex, age, and body weight), diets, measurements and statistical models should be written in a clear and detailed way.

 6. Correction of proofs

Page proofs of articles are sent to authors as PDF files. Corrected proofs should be sent to the Editorial Office within three days by e-mail. Proof reading occasionally generates additional queries for the author. If corrections are not received in due time, the editors reserve the right to perform the corrections that they consider most appropriate.

7. Submission of Article

Authors must send all the manuscript files (cover letter, author’s declaration, title page, proposed reviewers,  main manuscript, and photograph and figure files) after registering his/her name in the journal homepage www.ijah.in through manuscript submission process.

8. Submission checklist

The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item. 

Ensure that the following items are present:

• Cover letter (Author’s declaration),

• Title page. One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details: E-mail address, full postal address.

• All necessary files have been submitted online, and contain main manuscript file (abstract, key words, highlight, running title, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion (with conclusion), conflict of interest, data availability, author’s contribution, acknowledgements, references, (all figure legends, where required), all tables (including title, description, footnotes), and figures

• All pages should be numbered consecutively starting after the title page

•Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'.

•References are in the correct format for this journal.

• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa 
• Permission has been obtained for the use of copyrighted materials from other sources (including the Internet), printed version of figures (if applicable) in colour or black-and-white. 
• Indicate clearly if a figure needs to be printed in colour or black-and-white. 

9. Page charges 

A PDF file of the published article will be sent to the corresponding author. A publication charge of Indian rupees 300 for each article along with Indian rupees 300 per page for Indian authors or US$ 10 for foreign authors per page needs to be paid along with the final proof against the invoice. Authors are required to pay an additional charge of rupees 600 per colour page. The money needs to be paid by account transfer or demand draft to the account mentioned in the bill of Publication charge. 

10. Articles will be published online with DOI number on Journal website immediately after the acceptance and subsequently it will be publised in printable form in the issue of the Journal.

 Disclaimer

Whilst every effort is made by the Publishers and Editorial Board to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement appear in this Journal, they wish to make it clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisements herein are the sole responsibility of the contributors or advertisers concerned. Accordingly, the Publishers and Editors and their respective employees, officers and agents accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever for the consequences of any such inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement. Any legal complication, if arise, will have to be settled at the Kolkata High Court, West Bengal, India.

 

Copyright Notice

© WBVA. Manuscripts published are the property of the West Bengal Veterinary Association, and quoting this source is a requirement for any partial or full reproduction.