How to Format References for Animal Science Manuscript Submission

By Muaz Dave

Formatting is usually the last thing an author thinks about — and the first thing an editor checks. Before a manuscript reaches a reviewer, it passes a technical screening — and a paper that ignores the formatting rules is often sent back for correction unread. In animal science, where one paper may combine growth data, feed formulations, Latin species names and a long reference list, inconsistencies multiply quickly. This guide covers what matters most: section order, headings, SI units, species nomenclature, tables and figures, and — where the most avoidable errors occur — in-text citations and reference formatting, with worked examples. Where journals differ, we say so: your target journal's Guide for Authors always has the final word. For the broader submission requirements in this field, start with our animal sciences manuscript guidelines.

Manuscript structure and section order

Most journals in this field expect the same basic order: title page, abstract with keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusions, acknowledgements, declarations, and references. Keep that order unless the journal's own template says otherwise. The title page carries the full title, author names, affiliations and the corresponding author's contact details; under double-blind review, those details go in a separate file so the manuscript stays anonymous. The abstract is a self-contained summary — question, method, main results, conclusion — within the journal's word limit, followed by four to six keywords not simply repeated from the title. In the materials and methods, describe animals, diets, design and statistics in enough detail for another researcher to repeat the work, and include the ethics statement most journals in this field require: that animal procedures were approved by the relevant institutional committee, with the approval number where one was issued.

Headings, units and species names

Use a clear, consistent heading hierarchy — main headings in one style, sub-headings in another, no numbering unless the journal asks for it. Define every abbreviation at first use, in the abstract and again in the main text, because readers do not always read a paper in order.

Reporting measurements in SI units

Report measurements in SI units, on the basis the field expects: feed composition and nutrient intakes, for example, are normally expressed per kilogram of dry matter. Write a space between number and unit (25 kg, 37 °C) unless the journal's style says otherwise, and use numerals rather than spelling numbers out.

Binomial nomenclature for species names

Species names follow binomial nomenclature: genus and species in italics, the genus capitalised and the species in lower case — Bos taurus, Ovis aries, Escherichia coli. Give the full name at first mention, then abbreviate the genus (B. taurus). Common names (cattle, broiler, lamb) and breed names (Holstein-Friesian, Ross 308) are not italicised. Check the currently accepted name first: taxonomy changes, and reviewers notice outdated names.

Tables and figures

Number tables and figures in the order they are first mentioned in the text (Table 1, Table 2; Figure 1, Figure 2), and cite every one of them — an uncited table is a table the editor will ask you to remove. Each table needs a short, self-explanatory title above it and notes below it defining abbreviations and explaining the statistics shown, such as standard errors and significance levels. Submit tables as editable text, never as screenshots, so the production team can work with them. Use the text to highlight what a table shows rather than repeating its numbers line by line.

Figure resolution and axis labels

Prepare graphs and images at the resolution the journal requests — 300 dpi is a common minimum for photographs — and make sure axis labels carry their units and error bars are defined in the caption. A figure that is unreadable at printed column width will be sent back, however good the data behind it.

In-text citations

Most animal science journals use the author–year system. Cite a single author as (Moyo, 2019), or in the running text: "Moyo (2019) reported that…". For two authors, name both: (Moyo and Dube, 2020). For three or more authors, give the first surname followed by et al.: (Moyo et al., 2021). When several references support one point, list them in a single set of brackets in the order the journal specifies — chronological and alphabetical are both in use, so check the guide. Cite only work you have actually read, and match every in-text citation to one entry in the reference list, and every list entry to at least one citation. Unpublished data and personal communications are usually mentioned in the text only, not in the reference list — again, confirm your journal's rule before you submit.

The reference list, with examples

Arrange the list alphabetically by the first author's surname, and format every entry completely and consistently. Give journal titles in the form your journal requires — abbreviated or in full — and add the DOI whenever one exists, because it is the most reliable route to the source. The examples below use one common author–year format; punctuation and ordering vary between journals, so treat them as a pattern to adapt, not as a law.

Choosing and applying your journal's reference style

Animal science journals do not share one reference style, and that is where many manuscripts go wrong. One journal may abbreviate journal titles, another may print them in full. One may put the year directly after the authors, another may put it at the end of the entry. One may use "and" between the last two authors, another may use an ampersand. None of these choices is more correct in the abstract — what matters is that you follow the style of the journal you are submitting to, consistently, from the first citation to the last entry.

Start by downloading the current Guide for Authors and, if the journal provides one, its template file. Read the reference section properly rather than skimming it: note the order of elements, the punctuation between them, how journal titles are treated, how volume and page numbers are shown, and whether a DOI is required, recommended, or not mentioned. Then look at two or three recently published articles in that journal and check the guide against what you actually see on the page. Guides are occasionally out of date, and recent articles show how the production team is currently applying the rules. If the guide and the recent articles disagree, follow the guide and, if you are unsure, ask the editorial office before submission — a short question at this stage is far cheaper than a returned manuscript.

Once you have chosen the style, apply it before you start writing, not after you finish. Set up your reference manager, or your manual list, in that style from the first citation. Reformatting a finished list of eighty references by hand is slow and error-prone, and it is exactly the job where an author introduces the inconsistencies — a missing comma here, a full journal title there — that a technical check is designed to catch. If you change target journal after a rejection, reformat the whole list for the new journal before resubmitting. Editors notice immediately when a manuscript still wears the previous journal's style, and it signals that the paper has simply been sent on without revision.

Be particularly careful with author names. Some journals invert every author (surname first, then initials); others invert only the first author. Some separate authors with commas throughout; others use commas until the final author, then a conjunction. Initials may or may not carry full stops and spaces, and some styles require full given names. Copy the pattern from the guide for a two-author paper, a paper with many authors, and a paper with a corporate author, and keep those three patterns in front of you while you build the list. The same care applies to capitalisation: article titles are often set in sentence case, with only the first word and proper nouns capitalised, while book titles may use title case. A list that mixes the two looks unfinished, even when every source is real and correctly cited.

The anatomy of a reference entry

Every reference entry, whatever the style, answers the same questions for the reader: who wrote it, when, what is it called, where was it published, and how can I find it? If any of those answers is missing or wrong, the reader cannot verify your source, and the editor cannot either. Checking each entry against those five questions is a practical way to proofread a long list.

Author names: who wrote the source

"Who" means the authors in the order shown on the source itself, not the order in which you happen to remember them. Do not reorder authors, do not drop a middle author to shorten the list, and do not replace a long author list with "et al." in the reference list unless the journal's style explicitly tells you to do so — "et al." in the list is a style rule, not a shortcut. For a corporate author, such as a ministry, an international organisation, or a breed society, give the organisation's full name as the author, exactly as it appears on the publication. If the same organisation is also the publisher, most styles still list it once as author and once as publisher, or shorten the second occurrence; follow your journal's example rather than inventing your own.

Publication dates and the precision they need

"When" is usually the year of publication, but for some sources it needs more precision. A conference paper needs the year of the conference or the proceedings; a report needs the year it was issued; a website needs the year it was published or last updated, plus the date you accessed it, because web pages change. "What" is the title, copied accurately, including any subtitle after a colon. Check spelling in the title against the original, especially for species names and chemical terms, which are easy to mistype and hard to spot once they are buried in a long list.

Where the source was published

"Where" depends on the source type. For a journal article it is the journal title, volume, issue where required, and page range. For a book chapter it is the book title, the editor or editors, the publisher, the place of publication where required, and the chapter's page range. For a thesis it is the degree, the university, and the location. "How can I find it" is increasingly the DOI for journal articles and many books and chapters. A DOI is a permanent identifier: unlike a web address, it does not break when a publisher reorganises its website. Copy DOIs from the article itself or from the publisher's page, and check that each one resolves before you submit. A DOI typed from memory, with a transposed digit, is worse than no DOI at all, because it leads the reader to the wrong paper or to a dead link.

Finally, keep the same level of completeness for every entry. A list in which some journal articles carry DOIs and others do not, some books carry a place of publication and others do not, or some entries give an issue number and others omit it, reads as a list assembled from different sources at different times — which is usually exactly what happened. Standardise as you go, and leave no entry half-finished on the assumption that you will complete it later. Later rarely arrives before the submission deadline.

Worked examples for sources animal scientists cite most often

The examples in the earlier section cover the most common source types. The sources below cause more trouble, because authors meet them less often and guess at the format. As before, adapt punctuation and ordering to your journal's style; the point here is which elements belong in each entry.

Two habits prevent most errors with these less common sources. First, record the full details at the moment you first read the source, while the document is open in front of you, rather than reconstructing them weeks later from a half-remembered file name. Second, keep a note of where you found each source — the publisher's page, the repository, the library catalogue — so that when an editor queries an entry, you can check it in minutes rather than searching again from scratch.

In-text citations: the tricky cases

Straightforward citations — one author, two authors, three or more — are covered earlier in this guide. The cases below are where authors most often hesitate, and where examiners and reviewers most often notice a slip.

When you cite several works in one set of brackets, order them as your journal directs and keep that order throughout the paper. Some journals require chronological order, so the reader can follow the development of an idea; others require alphabetical order, so the list is easy to scan. Mixing the two orders in one manuscript is a visible inconsistency, even though the content of the citations is correct. Separate the entries with semicolons in most author–year styles, and check whether your journal wants a comma or a semicolon between the author and the year inside each entry.

A secondary citation — citing work you know only through another author's discussion of it — should be used sparingly, and honestly. Write it in the form your style prescribes, typically naming the original work and then the work you actually read, so the reader can see that you did not consult the original. Better still, obtain the original where possible. A chain of secondary citations is how errors propagate: a result quoted slightly wrong by one author is quoted again, slightly more wrong, by the next, and a reviewer who knows the original literature will spot it.

Quotations need a page number in most styles, even when paraphrases do not. If you quote a definition, a threshold value, or a passage from a code of practice, give the page on which it appears. Keep quotations short and purposeful: in a scientific paper, a quotation should be reserved for wording that must be exact, such as a definition or a regulatory requirement. Everything else should be paraphrased in your own words, with the citation attached to the paraphrase. A paragraph that strings together quotations reads as a literature review assembled from other people's sentences, not as your own synthesis.

Citations belong where the claim is made, not at the end of a long paragraph that mixes your results with other people's findings. If a paragraph contains three claims from three different sources, each claim needs its own citation, placed close enough to the claim that the reader can tell which source supports which statement. This matters most in the introduction and discussion, where your own interpretation sits alongside the published record. A single citation at the end of such a paragraph leaves the reader guessing, and a reviewer will ask you to clarify.

Finally, do not cite a source for a statement it does not support. This sounds obvious, but it happens when an author cites a review article for a specific numerical result that the review itself took from an earlier paper, or cites a paper's abstract for a conclusion that the full text qualifies or contradicts. Check the passage you are relying on, in the full text, before you cite it. Reviewers in a specialist field know the key papers, and a citation that does not support its claim undermines confidence in the rest of the manuscript.

Common formatting mistakes that delay review

The same errors appear in editorial offices again and again. References formatted in a different journal's style — or in no recognisable style at all — are the most common reason a paper is returned before review. Close behind are citations with no matching list entry (and list entries never cited), species names that are not italicised, and a mixture of imperial and SI units in the same table. Editors also flag tables pasted in as images, abbreviations that are never defined, and figures too small or too faint to read. None of these mistakes reflects the quality of your science — but each one costs days or weeks while the file goes back and forth. An hour with the checklist below is cheaper than a month of delay.

Final formatting checklist

Before you upload your manuscript, work through this list:

• Sections in the journal's required order, with page numbers
• Author details removed from the manuscript file, if review is double-blind
• Ethics approval statement included for all animal procedures
• Every abbreviation defined at first use, in the abstract and the text
• SI units throughout, applied consistently in text, tables and figures
• Genus and species names italicised and taxonomically up to date
• Every table and figure numbered, titled, and cited in the text
• Figures at the required resolution, with units on all axes
• Every in-text citation matched to the reference list — and vice versa
• References in one consistent style, with DOIs included where available

If you are preparing a paper for the Global Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, work through its Guide for Authors alongside this checklist, and your manuscript will clear the technical check the first time.

Numbers, statistics and units in detail

Animal science papers are dense with numbers — live weights, daily gains, feed intakes, digestibility coefficients, milk yields, egg production rates, and the statistics that summarise them. Consistent number formatting makes those results readable and, just as importantly, makes errors visible. Decide your conventions before you write the results section, and apply them in the text, the tables, and the figures alike.

Consistent decimal places for measurements

Use the same number of decimal places for the same kind of measurement throughout the paper. If live weight is reported to one decimal place in Table 1, it should not appear to two decimal places in the text and to none in a figure. The number of decimals should reflect the precision of the measurement: reporting a feed intake to three decimal places when the scales used measure to the nearest ten grams implies a precision the data do not have, and a reviewer will notice. For very large or very small values, follow your journal's preference for thousands separators and for scientific notation, and keep the same choice in every table.

Report statistics in the form your journal expects, and define every term. A mean on its own tells the reader little; state whether the variation shown alongside it is a standard deviation, a standard error of the mean, or a confidence interval, and say so in the table notes as well as in the methods. When you report a test result, give the test used, the test statistic, the degrees of freedom where the style requires them, and the probability value. Write probability values in a consistent form, and follow the journal's rule for very small values rather than writing a long string of zeros. State the significance threshold you used before presenting the results, and do not shift it after seeing the outcome.

Where treatments are compared, show the comparison clearly. Superscript letters are a common convention in this field: means sharing a letter do not differ significantly, while means with different letters do. Define that convention in the table notes, use the letters in the same order in every table, and make sure the letters in the table match the description in the text. A table in which the letters contradict the written conclusion is one of the first things a reviewer will flag, because it suggests that either the table or the text was updated without the other. The same discipline applies to ranges and intervals: state whether a range is a minimum to maximum, an interquartile range, or a confidence interval, and use the same separator — usually an en dash — throughout.

Units deserve the same consistency. Convert all measurements to the unit your journal expects before you start writing, rather than converting piecemeal as you draft. Check every table column heading, every figure axis, and every value in the text for the same unit, and watch for the quiet unit errors that survive proofreading: grams where kilograms were meant, millilitres where litres were meant, and percentages calculated on different bases in different tables. In feed work, state the basis explicitly — as fed, or on a dry matter basis — every time it could be ambiguous, because a value without its basis cannot be compared with another study's value.

Tables and figures in depth

A well-built table does one job well. Before you construct a table, write down in one sentence what it is meant to show — for example, that one diet improved growth without changing feed intake, or that mineral content varied by season but not by pasture type. If a table needs two sentences to explain its purpose, it is probably two tables, or a table plus a figure. Remove columns that do not serve that purpose, even if the data took effort to collect; a table is not a storehouse for every measurement, and material that does not advance the argument belongs in supplementary material where the journal provides for it.

Give every table a title that lets the reader understand it without reading the surrounding text: what was measured, in which animals, under which treatments. Place the title above the table, and place the notes below it. Use the notes for everything the reader needs to interpret the table: abbreviations, the number of animals or replicates behind each mean, the statistical test used, what the error term represents, and what the superscript letters mean. Footnote symbols should follow a consistent order, and the same symbol should not mean one thing in Table 1 and something else in Table 2.

Choosing the right figure type

Figures need the same discipline. Choose the figure type that matches the message: a line graph for a trend over time, a bar chart for comparisons between treatments, a scatter plot for a relationship between two variables. Avoid three-dimensional effects, unnecessary gridlines, and colours that carry no meaning, because each one makes the data harder to read. Label every axis with the variable and its unit, keep the font large enough to read at the size the figure will actually be printed, and make sure the caption states what the figure shows, how many animals or replicates it represents, and what any error bars represent. A caption that merely repeats the axis labels wastes the one place where the reader looks for interpretation.

Colour and accessibility are part of formatting, not decoration. If your figure relies on colour to distinguish treatments, check that it remains readable when printed in greyscale, because some readers still print papers, and some journals still charge for colour or convert figures automatically. Use different line styles or markers as well as different colours, and avoid colour combinations that are difficult for colour-blind readers to distinguish. Test this by viewing the figure in greyscale yourself before submission; a figure that collapses into indistinguishable grey lines in print has failed, however clear it looked on screen.

Finally, keep the text, tables, and figures in agreement. Every number in the text that also appears in a table should match that table exactly, including rounding. Every figure should be discussed in the text, not merely inserted and left to speak for itself. When you revise a manuscript — after reviewer comments, for example — update all three places together. The most common late-stage error is a corrected table alongside an uncorrected sentence that still quotes the old value.

A reference management workflow that prevents errors

Most formatting errors are not made at the keyboard; they are made in the workflow. A reference list assembled from memory, from PDFs saved under vague file names, and from citations copied from other papers will contain errors no amount of final proofreading will reliably catch. A simple, repeatable workflow prevents most of them.

Start a reference library for the manuscript as soon as you start reading for it, not when you start writing. For each source, import or record the full bibliographic details from the publisher's page or the library catalogue, and attach the PDF or a link to it. Give files clear names based on author and year, so you can find a paper again without opening a dozen files. When you read a paper, note the exact pages that support the claims you may cite, so that you can check a citation later without rereading the whole article.

Remove duplicates as you go. The same paper imported from two databases often appears twice with slightly different details — one with a full journal title, one abbreviated, one with a DOI, one without — and a manuscript built from such a library can end up citing the same work twice under slightly different entries. Merge duplicates early, and keep the version with the most complete details. The same applies to author names: a single author recorded once with a middle initial and once without will sort as two different people in your list.

Before submission, run a mechanical cross-check in addition to reading the list. Search the manuscript for every in-text citation and confirm that it has a matching list entry; then read the list from start to finish and confirm that every entry is cited at least once. Reference managers can generate a list, but they cannot tell you that you cited a paper you never read, or that a citation in the discussion still points to a paper you removed from the introduction during revision. That check needs a human reader — ideally you, reading slowly, with the guide for authors open beside you.

Keep a clean version of the manuscript and its reference library together. When reviewers ask for changes, work from that version, and keep a note of what changed and why. If a revision adds new references, add them to the library first and then to the manuscript, so the library and the paper never drift apart. When the paper is accepted, the production team will work from your files; a tidy, consistent submission makes their job easier and reduces the corrections you will be asked to approve at proof stage.

Fixes for the most frequent formatting problems

The earlier section names the mistakes that delay review. The fixes below turn each one into a concrete action you can take before submission.

• Wrong journal style: reformat the entire list for the target journal, using its guide and two recent articles as your pattern, rather than patching individual entries.
• Citation with no list entry, or list entry never cited: run the mechanical cross-check described above, and delete or cite every orphan in either direction.
• Species name not italicised: search the manuscript for every genus name and check its formatting at first mention and at every later mention, including in tables, figures, and captions.
• Mixed units: convert every measurement to the journal's expected unit and basis before drafting, then search for the old unit to catch any value you missed.
• Table pasted as an image: rebuild the table as editable text, with a title above and notes below, and check that the numbers match the text.
• Undefined abbreviation: search for each abbreviation in turn and confirm it is defined at first use in the abstract and again in the main text.
• Figure too small or faint: view the figure at the size it will be printed, in greyscale as well as colour, and enlarge labels or simplify the design until it is legible.
• DOI that does not resolve: click or check every DOI in the list, and replace any that leads to the wrong paper or to a dead link.
• Reference list in two styles at once: this usually means entries were copied from different sources; standardise punctuation, journal-title form, and author format across the whole list in one pass.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which reference style do animal science journals use?
Most journals in this field use an author–year system, but punctuation, journal-title abbreviations and ordering details differ between journals. Your journal's Guide for Authors is the authority — follow it exactly, not the style of a paper you have read.

Do species names always go in italics?
The genus and species names do, and so do subspecies. Common names, breed names and production terms (cattle, Holstein-Friesian, broiler) stay in ordinary type. When in doubt, check how the name is treated in the journal's recent articles.

How many references should my paper contain?
There is no set number. Cite the work your claims genuinely rest on: a focused study needs fewer references than a review article. Padding the list — or leaving obvious gaps — attracts reviewer comments.

My manuscript was returned for formatting problems. Can someone fix it for me?
Yes. Our author services include manuscript formatting and reference checking against your target journal's guidelines, so the paper goes back in the correct style.

What should I do if my target journal's guide and its recent articles disagree?
Follow the guide, because it is the document the editorial office will check against. If the difference affects many entries — for example, journal titles abbreviated in recent articles but printed in full in the guide — a brief question to the editorial office before submission will settle it and save a round of corrections.

Should I cite a review article or the original study?
Cite the original study for a specific result, and cite a review when you are referring to the state of the field as a whole. Citing a review for a precise finding you have not checked in the original is a common source of error, because reviews summarise and sometimes simplify.

How do I cite a source in another language?
Give the reference as your journal directs, which usually means the original title with a translation in square brackets where the style provides for it. Do not translate author names or journal titles on your own initiative, and note the language of the source if the style asks for it.

Can I cite unpublished work, such as a thesis that is not publicly available?
Many journals allow theses and reports in the reference list, and some prefer unpublished material to be mentioned in the text only. Check the guide, and in either case give enough detail — author, year, title, institution — for an interested reader to request the work.

What if a paper I want to cite has no DOI?
Older papers, theses, reports, and some conference proceedings have no DOI. Give the full details that let a reader find the work through a library catalogue or the issuing body, and do not invent a DOI or borrow one from a different version of the work.

How do I handle an author whose name changed, or a name with a prefix or particle?
Use the name as it appears on the published work you are citing, and follow your journal's rule for alphabetisation of prefixes. Consistency matters more than any single convention here: the same author should appear the same way every time they are cited in your paper.

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