The Canadian Veterinary Journal (CVJ) provides a forum for the discussion of all matters relevant to the veterinary profession. The mission of the Journal is to educate by informing readers of progress in clinical veterinary medicine, veterinary research, and in other related fields of endeavor. The key objective of the Journal is to promote the art and science of veterinary medicine and the betterment of animal health.

A report suggesting that animals have been unnecessarily subjected to adverse, stressful, or harsh conditions or treatments will not be processed for publication. Experimental studies using animals will only be considered for publication if the studies have been approved by an institutional animal care committee, or equivalent, and the guidelines of the Canadian Council on Animal Care (1), or equivalent, have been followed by the author(s).

The CVJ welcomes manuscripts in English or French.

FORMAT

The CVJ publishes 2 categories of articles:

Non-peer-reviewed articles

These include feature articles, special reports, student papers, commentaries, letters to the editor (maximum 500 words), etc. Unsolicited material will be considered. Consideration for publication as a student paper is limited to those articles that were written by students while they were attending a Canadian veterinary college. Students interested in submitting a manuscript for publication in this category should consult with the Assistant Editor at their college.

Peer-reviewed articles

These include: 1) scientific articles, 2) case reports, 3) brief communications, and 4) review articles. Manuscripts are reviewed for possible publication by at least 2 peer reviewers, with the understanding that they are being submitted to one journal at a time and have not been published, self-archived as a preprint, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. This does not preclude consideration of a manuscript that has been rejected by another journal or of a complete report that follows publication of preliminary findings elsewhere, usually in the form of an abstract.

Guidelines for authorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article.

Authorship credit should be based only on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met. Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship (2).

Guidelines for acknowledgments

Include persons who have made substantive contributions to the study, but do not qualify for authorship, and persons who have contributed their skills (editorial, linguistic, graphic, photographic) to the preparation of the paper. Do not include recognition of secretarial assistance.

The CVJ publishes 4 types of peer-reviewed articles:

1. SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES

1) Original Study — These include reports on significant new investigations or observations, with appropriate experimental design and statistical analysis, especially those with application to veterinary practice in Canada.
ii) Retrospective Study — This type of article provides a critical review of case records, with statistical analy-ses where appropriate, that will contribute substantial new information to the veterinary literature.

2. CASE REPORTS

These deal with one or more cases that concern a new or rare condition, or a unique combination of features, that either will contribute substantial new information to the scientific/veterinary literature or will advance a testable hypothesis (3).

3. BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS

These include clinical notes and other short subjects.

4. REVIEW ARTICLES

These are usually commissioned, but unsolicited reviews are welcome upon prior consultation with a CVJ editor. A review article should be comprehensive and critical or analytical, or tutorial, in nature, so that it will provide practitioners with reliable facts and conclusions without their having to search the literature for themselves, or inform researchers where a field stands and in which directions research should go. Unpublished data should not be included in a review paper. A review article that simply documents the published literature is of limited value (4).

• text should not exceed 5500 words

STYLE

1. General style

The CVJ style follows accepted biomedical format (2). When submitting your manuscript, please:

• number lines continuously
• use single-sided paper
• double space
• left justify, 2.5-cm (1-in) margins
• begin each section on a separate page: title page, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgments, references, tables, figure legend(s), and figures
• provide the frame of reference for magnification of photographs and photomicrographs by means of a scale bar on the print and the value of the bar either on the print or in the legend
• number pages consecutively, beginning with the title page, in the upper right-hand corner of each page
• use 12-point font size
• spell English words according to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (5)
• spell medical terms according to Dorland’s Medical Dictionary (6)

2. Nomenclature for pathogens

Authors should refer to Virus Taxonomy: 8th Report of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses 2005, Elsevier Acad Pr, or the International Code of Virus Classification and Nomenclature, available at http://ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/ICTV/rules.html; the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria for bacteria (Salmonella), available at www.dsmz.de/bactnom/bactname.htm (http://www.bacterio.cict.fr/salmonellanom.html); Scientific Names for Parasites, available at www.biosci.ohio-state.edu/-parasite/taxonomic.
html; and the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature for fungi, available at http://www.bgbm.fu-berlin.de/iapt/
nomenclature/code/Saint Louis/001ICSLContents.htm

 

3. Guidelines for submission of electronic files (diskette) for manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be saved on CD or IBM-formatted diskettes, not those diskettes formatted for Macintosh. Documents should be saved in one of WordPerfect 6.0 (or higher) or Microsoft Word 6.0 (or higher). Manuscripts should be named according to their manuscript number. All tables should be included at the end of the manuscript. Please don’t send articles for peer review via e-mail.

Figures

Simple figures, such as line drawings, bar charts, and line graphs, should be incorporated at the end of the main manuscript, after the tables, so that they can be altered, if necessary; alternatively, they may be saved as separate files on the same diskette. If a figure file is too large to fit on the same diskette as the manuscript file, use of second diskette is acceptable. The following are general guidelines for figure format:

 

• It is not necessary to provide an electronic copy of a figure if it is a photograph; for example, photographs of an electrophoresis gel or gross post-mortem findings.
• Figures should not be downloaded from the Internet, as they do not have sufficient resolution. Photographs and figures may be scanned and submitted on a diskette, but they must be at least 500 dpi resolution, and they must be saved as *.tif files.
• Line drawings, bar charts and other figures should be in “encapsulated postscript” (*.eps) format.
• If a figure was created by using CorelDraw graphics software, it must be exported to Adobe Illustrator and saved there as an Illustrator file (*.eps) before it can be used.
• If scanning a line graph or drawing for submission on a diskette, or if providing only a paper copy of a figure, the lines used must be thicker than “hair-line”; they must be at least 0.03-cm (0.01-in) wide, or they will not scan clearly.

4. Title page

All title pages will include:

• the title of the article, which should be concise but informative without using abbreviations
• usual first name, initial(s), and last name of each author
• name and address of department(s) and institution(s) or practice(s) to which the work should be attributed
• name of corresponding author (plus the mailing address, if different from address above, and the e-mail address)
• disclaimers, if any
• a statement that reprints will not be available from the author, if so
• the source(s) of support in the form of grants, equipment, drugs, or all of these

5. References

• number references consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text
• identify references in text, tables, and legends by arabic numerals (in parentheses)
• number references cited only in tables or in legends to figures in accordance with a sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or illustration
• abbreviate titles of journals according to the style used in the List of Journals Indexed in Medline at
  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/terms_cond.html
• abbreviate titles of journals according to the style used in Index Medicus (consult the “List of the Journals Indexed,” which is printed annually in the January issue of Index Medicus, or visit www.medscape.com/Home/Search/IndexMedicus/IndexMedicus.html)
• use only refereed abstracts published within the last 5 years as references
• do not use “unpublished observations” and “personal communications” as references; references to written, not verbal, communications may be inserted (in parentheses)
• nclude among the references manuscripts accepted, but not yet published, by specifying the journal or book, year and volume number, if known, and adding “In press” (see example 8).
• cite information from manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted as “unpublished observations” (in parentheses)
• verify all references against the original documents
• provide 2 copies of references that are not readily or freely available to reviewers (for example, electronic publications where payment is required to obtain the full text).
• list all authors when they number 6 or fewer; when 7 or more, list only first 3 and add et al.

6. Tables

• use a separate sheet, double-spaced, for each table
• number consecutively, using arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, …)
• supply a brief title for each
• give each column a short or abbreviated heading
• place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading
• explain in footnotes all nonstandard abbreviations that are used in each table
• designate footnote by superscript letter (abc)
• identify statistical measures of variations, such as standard deviation and standard error of the mean
• omit internal horizontal and vertical lines
• cite each table in the text in consecutive order

7. Figures

• use only professionally drawn or photographed figures; send sharp, glossy, black-and-white photographic prints instead of original drawings, radiographs, or other material
• keep letters, numbers, and symbols clear and even throughout, and large enough to be legible when reduced for publication
• put titles and detailed explanations in the legend, not on the illustration itself
• include an appropriate scale for photomicrographs and electron micrographs in the legend, with an appropriate bar (measure) on the figure
• identify the stains used
• attach a label to each figure indicating the number of the figure, the names of the authors, and the top of the figure
• contrast symbols, arrows, or letters used in the photomicrographs with the background
• cite each figure in the text in consecutive order
• for electronic submission of figures, see point 3 under “style,” titled “Guidelines for submission of electronic files for manuscripts.”

Color illustrations will only be published if the author has agreed to pay the extra cost.

Please check the CVMA Web site (www.canadianveterinarians.net) for examples of how to set up tables and figures.

8. Units of measurement, abbreviations, symbols

• use Système International (SI) measurements throughout the manuscript (7,8)
• consult the references below (5–10) for correct abbreviations and symbols
• avoid abbreviations in titles, in the abstract, and at the beginning of a sentence
• when using an abbreviation, spell out the full term the first time it is used, unless it is a standard unit of measurement.

References

1. Canadian Council on Animal Care. Guide to the Care and Use of Experimental Animals, vols. 1 and 2. Ottawa: Canadian Council on Animal Care, 1993.
2. International Committee on Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Ann Intern Med 1988;108:258–265. Updated May 2000. www.icmje.org.
3. Maxie MG. On the value of the case report [editorial]. Can Vet J 1989;30:855.
4. Maxie MG. Critical writing and reading of review articles [editorial]. Can Vet J 1990;31:413–414.
5. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. Markham: Thomas Allen, 1993.
6. Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary. 29th ed. Toronto: WB Saunders, 2000.
7. Huth EJ. Medical Style and Format: An International Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. Philadelphia: ISI Pr, 1986.
8. Ballière’s Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary. Toronto: Ballière Tindall, 1988.
9. International Organization for Standardization. ISO Standards Handbook 3. Statistical Methods. 3rd ed. Geneva, Switzerland: International Standards Organization, 1989.
10. Council of Science Editors. Scientific Style and Format. The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. 7th ed. New York: Cambridge University Pr, 2006.