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Improving Reproducibility to Enhance Scientific Rigor and Laboratory Animal Welfare:...
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Improving Reproducibility to Enhance Scientific Rigor and Laboratory Animal Welfare: Looking Ahead

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Welfare".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2022) | Viewed by 2086

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Gina M. Alvino

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institutional Animal Care and Use Program, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
Interests: animal welfare; applied animal behavior; animals in research; environmental enrichment; pain assessment; reproducibility of animal experiments; animal research reporting; publication ethics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

I am delighted to present this Special Issue of Animals, which will focus on innovative research and insightful perspectives related to improving reproducibility and laboratory animal welfare.

The intersection of reproducibility and animal welfare has been a hot-button issue in recent years. Facing a crisis in both the reproducibility and translatability of animal models, stakeholders from the global animal research community (scientists, funders, regulatory and policy experts, publishers, and so forth) have engaged in myriad discussions and investigations to understand the underlying causes and to devise a sustainable path forward—to benefit animal welfare and improve the quality and reporting of research.

Indeed, over the past decade or more, research groups have undertaken various initiatives that have resulted in the publication of thoughtful reporting guidelines (e.g., ARRIVE, TOP and PREPARE), the development of preclinical preregistration, registered reports, data sharing, and increased awareness about proper experimental design and statistical methods.

Where can we go from here?

In this Special Issue, we welcome submissions of various article types including research articles, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, as well as opinion pieces/commentaries and narrative reviews, all related to innovative efforts to improve reproducibility, scientific rigor and animal welfare within the laboratory setting. The readership of Animals will greatly benefit from Special Issue as the community continues to discuss these critical issues in biomedical research and work towards an effective resolution.

Dr. Gina M. Alvino
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 1833 KiB  
Article
Generalizability, Robustness and Replicability When Evaluating Wellbeing of Laboratory Mice with Various Methods
by Dietmar Zechner, Benjamin Schulz, Guanglin Tang, Ahmed Abdelrahman, Simone Kumstel, Nico Seume, Rupert Palme and Brigitte Vollmar
Animals 2022, 12(21), 2927; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12212927 - 25 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1829
Abstract
An essential basis for objectively improving the status of animals during in vivo research is the ability to measure the wellbeing of animals in a reliable and scientific manner. Several non-invasive methods such as assessing body weight, burrowing activity, nesting behavior, a distress [...] Read more.
An essential basis for objectively improving the status of animals during in vivo research is the ability to measure the wellbeing of animals in a reliable and scientific manner. Several non-invasive methods such as assessing body weight, burrowing activity, nesting behavior, a distress score and fecal corticosterone metabolites were evaluated in healthy mice and after three surgical interventions or during the progression of four gastrointestinal diseases. The performance of each method in differentiating between healthy and diseased animals was assessed using receiver operating characteristic curves. The ability to differentiate between these two states differed between distinct surgical interventions and distinct gastrointestinal diseases. Thus, the generalizability of these methods for assessing animal wellbeing was low. However, the robustness of these methods when assessing wellbeing in one gastrointestinal disease was high since the same methods were often capable of differentiating between healthy and diseased animals independent of applied drugs. Moreover, the replicability when assessing two distinct cohorts with an identical surgical intervention was also high. These data suggest that scientists can reach valid conclusions about animal wellbeing when using these methods within one specific animal model. This might be important when optimizing methodological aspects for improving animal wellbeing. The lack of generalizability, however, suggests that comparing animal models by using single methods might lead to incorrect conclusions. Thus, these data support the concept of using a combination of several methods when assessing animal welfare. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Improving Reproducibility to Enhance Scientific Rigor and Laboratory Animal Welfare: Looking Ahead)
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