Animals — Instructions for Authors
Please first read the section 'Aims & Scope' to have an overview, and to assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal.
Shortcuts
- Ethical Guidelines
- Submission
- Manuscript Preparation
- Potential Conflicts of Interest
- Review
- English Corrections
- Inclusion of Data
- MDPI Publication Ethics Statement
- CrossCheck/iThenticate
- Supplementary Material
Ethical Guidelines
MDPI is committed to respect high standards of ethics in the research, editorial and reviewing processes. Beside commonly accepted rules regarding authorship and editorial practices, commitments of authors publishing in MDPI journals are as follows:
The editors will require that the benefits potentially derived from any research causing harm to animals are significant in relation to any cost endured by animals, and that procedures followed are unlikely to cause offense to the majority of readers. Authors should particularly ensure that their research complies with the commonly-accepted '3Rs':
- Replacement of animals by alternatives wherever possible,
- Reduction in number of animals used, and
- Refinement of experimental conditions and procedures to minimize the harm to animals.
Any experimental work must also have been conducted in accordance with relevant national legislation on the use of animals for research. For further guidance authors should refer to the "Ethical Guidelines for Research in Animal Science" by Jarvis et al. [1].
During the electronic submission process, authors will be asked to inform the Editor-in-Chief of any potential conflicts of interest.
1. Jarvis, S.; Day, J.E.L.; Reed, B. Ethical Guidelines for Research in Animal Science. Available online http://www.bsas.org.uk/downloads/Ethicalguidelines_website.pdf
Submission of Manuscripts
- Submission: Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registeringand logging into this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form.
- Accepted File Formats:
- MS Word: Manuscript prepared in MS Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in MS Word, the Animals Microsoft Word template files must be used. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and make the layout very difficult.
- LaTeX: ensure to send a copy of your manuscript as a PDF file also, if you decided to use LaTeX. When preparing manuscripts in LaTeX, please use the MDPI LaTeX template files.
- Coverletter: Check in your cover letter whether you supplied at least 5 referees. Check if the English corrections are done before submission.
Manuscript Preparation
- Paper Format: A4 paper format, the printing area is 17.5 cm x 26.2 cm. The margins should be 1.75 cm on each side of the paper (top, bottom, left, and right sides).
- Formatting / Style: The paper style of Animals should be followed. You may download a template file from the Animals homepage to prepare your paper. The full titles and the cited papers must be given. Reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [4] or [1-3], and all the references should be listed separately and as the last section at the end of the manuscript.
- Reference Formatting: See the Reference Preparation Guide. References should be numbered according to the order in which they
appear in the text. - Reference Preparation: References should preferably be prepared with EndNote ®, ReferenceManager ™or a similar bibliography software package. If references are prepared manually they must be checked for integrity and correctness (you may use ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed/MEDLINE or Google Scholar). The Editorial Office will charge additional CHF 10 per citation for which extensive corrections must be made.
- Authors List and Affiliation Format: Authors' full first and last names must be given. Abbreviated middle name can be added. For papers written by various contributors a corresponding author must be designated. The PubMed/MEDLINE format is used for affiliations: complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, country, and email address should be added. All authors who contributed significantly to the manuscript (including writing a section) should be listed on the first page of the manuscript, below the title of the article. Other parties, who provided only minor contributions, should be listed under Acknowledgments only. A minor contribution might be a discussion with the author, reading through the draft of the manuscript, or performing English corrections.
- Simple Summary: authors of research articles published in Animals are required to provide a short, 100 words summary. The Simple Summary is different from the Abstract. It intends to benefit a wider, general and nontechnical readership. Please review the Simple Summaries of some research articles published in Animals (an example: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/1/1/7/).
- Abstract and Keywords: The abstract should be prepared as one paragraph (about 200 words). A list of three to ten keywords must be given, and placed after the Abstract.
- Figures, Schemes and Tables: Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color. Full color graphics will be published free of charge. Figure and schemes must be numbered (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, etc.) and a explanatory title must be added. Tables should be inserted into the main text, and numbers and titles for all tables supplied. All table columns should have an explanatory heading. Please supply legends for all figures, schemes and tables. The legends should be prepared as a separate paragraph of the main text and placed in the main text before a table, a figure or a scheme.
- Abstract/Table of Contents Graphic: Authors are encouraged to provide a graphical representation of the paper (in either JPEG, GIF, PNG or PDF format) to be used as a graphic of the paper, along with the abstract, on the Table of Contents. The graphic should not exceed 500 pixels width/height. As an example, authors may review the abstract graphic of following papers:
- http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/9/1/490
- http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/14/1/378 - Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI): Conference slides, video sequences, software, etc., can be included with the submission and published as supplementary material. Please read the information about Supplementary Material Depositbeneath.
Potential Conflicts of Interest
It is the authors' responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state here "The authors declare no conflict of interest." This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed under "Acknowledgments" section.
Review / Referees
Authors should suggest at least five potential referees with the appropriate expertise, although the Editor will not necessarily approach them. Please provide as detailed contact information as possible (address, homepage, phone, e-mail address). The proposed referees should be experts in the field who can provide an objective report - they should not be current collaborators of the authors nor have published with any of the authors of the manuscript within the last 5 years. Proposed referees should be from different institutions than the authors. You may identify appropriate Editorial Board members of the journal as potential referees. Another possibility is to select referees from among the authors that you frequently cite in your paper.
English corrections
This journal is published in English, so it is essential that for proper refereeing and quick publication all manuscripts are submitted in grammatically correct English. For this purpose we ask that non-native English speakers ensure their manuscripts are checked before submitting them for consideration. We suggest that for this purpose your manuscript be revised by an English speaking colleague before submission. Authors can also use the services of American Journal Experts (AJE) for this purpose. Authors of articles submitted to MDPI journals benefit of a one-time 10% discount on AJE's charges. Simply follow the above link to make use of the referral discount. Additional fees of CHF 250 will be paid by authors if extensive English corrections must be done by the editors.
MDPI Publication Ethics Statement
Animals is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). MDPI enforces a rigorous peer-review process that adopts strict ethical policies and standards to ensure that we contribute high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, etc., occasionally arise. MDPI takes such publishing ethics issues very seriously and our editors are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy.
CrossCheck/iThenticate
Animals is a member of CrossCheck powered by iThenticate. iThenticate is a plagiarism screening service that verifies the originality of content submitted before publication. iThenticate checks submissions against millions of published research papers, and billions of web content. Authors are encouraged to use iThenticate to screen their work before submission by visiting www.ithenticate.com.
Supplementary Material Deposit
We wish to encourage the submission of supplementary data in electronic formats, so that important (scientific) information is retained in full. Supplementary data can be submitted by e-mail with the main manuscript file.
New Species Nomenclature Requirements
If your manuscript involves description of a new species, in order to adhere to ICZN rules for validation, please register your work on the ZooBank website (http://zoobank.org/) once the manuscript is accepted but prior to publication. More information regarding ZooBank is available by the link http://zoobank.org/About. After registration in ZooBank, you will receive, from ZooBank, a registration number as well as a link evidencing your registration. Your manuscript will be published in Animals only after you provide us with the registration number and link from ZooBank.