About Veterinary Research

This page includes information about the aims and scope of Veterinary Research, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims & scope

Veterinary Research is an open access journal that publishes high quality and novel research and review articles focusing on all aspects of infectious diseases and host-pathogen interaction in animals.

Food animals, companion animals, equines, wild animals (if the infections are of zoonotic interest and/or in relation with domestic animals), laboratory animals and animal models of human infections are considered. Studies on zoonotic and emerging infections are highly appreciated.

Topics published by the journal include:

• New knowledge on pathogens (viruses, bacteria, protozoa, helminths, fungi and prions) and on host-pathogen interactions. Papers elucidating molecular mechanisms of interactions between hosts and microbes are highly appreciated.
• Immunity to pathogenic micro-organisms and systemic and mucosal immunology of infected organisms. This topic encompasses fundamental studies on the immune system of animals. The development and evaluation of new vaccines against pathogens will be considered.
• Epidemiological papers should provide new knowledge on pathogen-host interactions and/or host-population interactions related to infectious diseases. Manuscripts dealing with spread and/or transmission dynamics of infectious diseases will be favoured. Studies using mathematical modelling and developing or applying new epidemiological methods will be welcome if based on a biological application. It is important that manuscripts are of general interest, have a general applicability, and are not solely policy-oriented. Descriptive epidemiological studies, meta-analyses and studies providing information of geographically limited interest will not be considered.

The journal welcomes review articles focusing either on a pathogen or on analyses of the mechanisms of host-microbe interactions including epidemiological studies. The articles should present comprehensive, critical summaries of current knowledge in the field and should not be limited to a discussion of the author's work. Thematic issues composed of solicited review articles are also published.

Specific aspects of treatment of diseases, pathological and clinical studies (including case reports), diagnosis tests and technical reports, do not fall within the scope of the journal. Studies that are preliminary, of weak originality as well as negative results, are also not appropriate to the journal. Merely descriptive and correlative studies are not a priority.

The journal is aimed at scientists working in research institutes, universities, governmental institutions or non-governmental organisations, private firms and the pharmaceutical industry.

The journal was previously published by EDP Sciences and for any queries about the previous content, please contact the editorial e-mail address at:veterinary.research@jouy.inra.fr

Open access

All articles published by Veterinary Research are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in Veterinary Research are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Veterinary Research therefore levies an article-processing charge of £975/$1500/€1150 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a Member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. For further details, see our article-processing charge page. A limited number of waivers for article-processing charges are also available at the editors' discretion, and authors wishing to apply for these waivers should contact the editors.

Indexing services

All articles published in Veterinary Research are included in PubMed, the most widely used biomedical bibliographic database service, which is run by the US National Library of Medicine. Other bibliographic databases that index articles published in Veterinary Research include:

• BIOSIS
• CABI
• CAS
• Current contents
• Embase
• Global Health

• MEDLINE
• PubMed
• PubMed Central
• Science Citation Index Expanded
• Scopus

The full text of all research articles is deposited in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and other digital archives including e-Depot (The Netherlands).

Veterinary Research is tracked by Thomson Reuters (ISI)and has an Impact Factor of 4.06.

Publication and peer review process

Criteria for publication

Veterinary Research considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research and clinical trial outcomes.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research.

Peer-review policies

All peer review for Veterinary Research is closed, meaning that the identities of the reviewers are kept confidential. Before being sent to reviewers, manuscripts are pre-screened by the editorial office to check that they agree with the criteria for publishing in Veterinary Research: accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, nature of the study, originality of the results, quantity and quality of data, general conclusions, and presentation of the work with a good quality of English language. If the paper does not fulfil these criteria, it may be rejected at this stage without review.

Manuscripts deemed suitable for review will be sent to a minimum of two experts chosen by the Editors in Chief, and possibly a statistical reviewer if necessary, to determine originality, scientific merit, and significance to the field. Reviewers are asked to declare any competing interests they may have in reviewing a manuscript. Only papers of high quality and novelty and of general significance are published. If minor revisions are recommended by the reviewers, authors are expected to make the appropriate revisions within one month. For manuscripts requiring major revisions, the revised version must be sent to the Editorial Office within two months (four months if additional data are needed). Revised manuscripts may be reviewed a second time. Revised manuscripts that are received after the deadline will not be considered.

The journal aims for a first decision to be made within eight weeks of receipt of the submission and the Editors-in-Chief make the final decision on publication.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My Veterinary Research, a personalized section of the site.

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Supplements

Veterinary Research will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. All full length articles (proceedings, reviews or research articles) are indexed by PubMed. PubMed displays the title of the supplement only in the case of meeting abstract collections. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Veterinary Research should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Citing articles in Veterinary Research

Articles in Veterinary Research should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Vet Res [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Vet Res 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Why publish your article in Veterinary Research?

High visibility

Veterinary Research's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

Veterinary Research offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Veterinary Research, BioMed Central and PubMed Central and will also be included in PubMed.

Flexibility

Online publication in Veterinary Research gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Veterinary Research are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Veterinary Research's pages and on the BioMed Central homepage.

In addition, articles published in Veterinary Research may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Veterinary Research. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Veterinary Research retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BioMed Central, please click here.