Preparing a manuscript in animal sciences or veterinary research demands more than sound results. Editors and reviewers also look for ethical rigour, transparent reporting, and careful presentation, because these studies involve living animals and findings that influence practice and welfare. A well-prepared manuscript moves through screening and review far more smoothly. The guidelines below cover what to prepare — ethics approval, study design, statistics, tables, references, and a final checklist — before you send your work to a journal.
Ethics is the first thing editors check in an animal study, and a missing or vague statement is a common reason manuscripts stall before review. Every study involving animals must comply with the institutional and national regulations for animal care and use where the work was done. Include an explicit Ethics Statement giving the full name of the approving committee — an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) or equivalent ethics board — with the approval or protocol number. Approval must be obtained before the study begins; retrospective approval is generally not acceptable.
Describe the welfare protections in your protocol: housing and husbandry where they affect results, humane endpoints, anaesthesia and analgesia for any painful procedure, and the method of euthanasia where applicable. Show how you applied the 3Rs — Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement — for example by justifying your sample size instead of simply stating it. For clinical studies on client-owned animals, state that informed owner consent was obtained; for field or wildlife work, cite the relevant permits. If your institution has no formal committee, state which national or international guidelines were followed. Our publication and ethics policies explain how these requirements are applied during screening.
The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments), updated as ARRIVE 2.0, are the international standard for describing animal research, and reviewers increasingly expect them to be followed. Their "Essential 10" ask you to report: the study design and groups; the sample size and how it was decided; inclusion and exclusion criteria; whether allocation was randomised; whether investigators were blinded; the outcome measures; the statistical methods; details of the animals (species, strain or breed, sex, age, weight); the procedures in repeatable detail; and the results for each group, with measures of variability.
Two points deserve special care. First, define your experimental unit: when animals are group-housed or fed by pen, the pen — not the individual animal — is usually the unit, and treating animals as independent inflates your sample size. Second, account for every animal: state how many started, how many finished, and explain every exclusion, death, or missing observation. If allocation was not randomised or assessors were not blinded, say so and explain why.
Before writing, carefully review the target journal's 'Instructions for Authors' and format the manuscript to them from the first draft — reformatting later wastes time and introduces errors. The standard structure is: Title, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgements, and References. Each section has one job: the Introduction ends with the question the study answers, the Methods let the work be evaluated and repeated, the Results report findings without interpretation, and the Discussion interprets them.
Because the Global Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences uses double-blind peer review, author names, affiliations, and funding belong on a separate title page; the manuscript file itself must be anonymous, with identifying acknowledgements and file metadata removed. Use SI units throughout, italicise Latin binomial names at first mention (Bos taurus, Staphylococcus aureus), state breed or strain, sex, and age in the Methods, and define abbreviations at first use. Check your topic fits the scope on our journals page before formatting.
Animal science research relies heavily on robust statistical analysis, and statistics are the section reviewers probe hardest. Describe your experimental design first — treatments, replicates, and control groups — then name each test, the software and version used, and the significance threshold adopted. Report exact p-values where the software provides them, and support conclusions with effect sizes and confidence intervals rather than the word "significant" alone. State how test assumptions (normality, homogeneity of variance) were checked, and describe any transformation applied.
Be precise about variability: say whether values after a mean are standard deviations (which describe the data) or standard errors (which describe the precision of the mean), and never switch between them within a paper. Distinguish the experimental unit from the number of observations, so the analysis does not commit pseudoreplication. Keep the raw data organised, and make sure every value in the text matches the tables and figures exactly — manuscripts returned for statistical clarification lose weeks.
Tables and figures should carry your results efficiently and stand on their own. Give every one a descriptive title, units in the column and row headings, and footnotes for abbreviations and statistical markers. Number them consecutively in the order cited, and cite every one in the text. Do not repeat table values sentence by sentence — use the text to highlight the patterns and exceptions that matter.
For figures, use files of sufficient resolution that labels stay legible at final size, label every axis with its unit, and define error bars in the legend (standard deviation, standard error, or confidence interval). Choose axis scales that represent differences honestly, and include images of animals or procedures only where they add scientific information.
Your abstract is often the only part readers — and screening editors — see before deciding whether to read on. Summarise the objective, the animals and methods in brief, the key findings with their numbers, and the practical implication, within the journal's word limit (commonly around 250 words). An abstract saying a treatment "improved performance" without saying by how much tells the reader almost nothing. Choose four to six keywords covering species, intervention, and outcome, favouring terms not already in your title.
Your conclusions must directly answer the research question posed in the Introduction. State what the study adds, under the conditions actually tested — a single feeding trial supports conclusions for its own diet, breed, and setting, not for all production systems. Introduce no new data or claims, and acknowledge limitations honestly: reviewers trust authors who state plainly what their study could not show.
Follow the journal's citation style exactly — in-text format, ordering, and reference-list punctuation — from the first draft. Cite primary sources for methods and factual claims rather than a review's summary of them, and read every work you cite. Check that each in-text citation appears in the reference list and every listed reference is cited, and include DOIs where available. Recent literature also shows reviewers the study sits against the current state of the field. Small errors signal carelessness; a reference manager helps, but proofread its output.
Before you submit, work through this list one final time:
When every item is done, submit your manuscript through the journal's submission page and keep the confirmation and manuscript ID.
Most manuscripts become difficult to write because the story was never settled before drafting began. Before you open a blank document, write one paragraph that states the research question, the primary outcome, the comparison being made, and the population to which the findings might apply. If that paragraph is vague, the Introduction, Methods, and Discussion will all drift in different directions. A clear question also makes it easier to judge whether a result is central to the paper or belongs in supplementary material.
Next, decide the order in which results will be presented and sketch each table and figure before writing the text around them. Tables and figures are not decorations added at the end; they are the evidence the argument rests on. When the display items are settled, the Results section can describe them in order, and the Discussion can return to the same order without introducing findings that were never shown. This discipline also reveals gaps early: a comparison promised in the Introduction but missing from the Results, a subgroup mentioned in the Discussion but never defined in the Methods, or an outcome measured but never reported.
Finally, agree the scope with all co-authors at the planning stage. Decide which analyses are primary and which are exploratory, what will be treated as a limitation rather than explained away, and who is responsible for each section and for checking the data against the tables. Manuscripts written this way need fewer rounds of internal revision, and reviewers receive a paper whose question, methods, results, and conclusions visibly belong together.
A Methods section should be a recipe, not a summary. A reader who knows the field should be able to reconstruct what was done, in what order, and under what conditions, without having to guess at missing details or write to the authors for basic information. That standard applies to every element: the animals, the setting, the intervention, the measurements, and the analysis.
Begin with the animals and their source. State the species, breed or strain, sex, age or weight range, and health status at entry, and explain how animals were sourced, acclimatised, and allocated. Describe housing in enough detail to matter for the outcome: group or individual housing, pen or cage size where relevant, bedding, lighting schedule, temperature range, and access to feed and water. For nutrition studies, give the composition of each diet in full, including the basal diet, the level and form of any additive, how diets were mixed and stored, and the feeding schedule. For drug or vaccine studies, give the product, dose, route, frequency, and timing in relation to the outcome, using generic names alongside any trade name at first mention.
Then describe the procedures in chronological order, with a timeline the reader can follow. State when baseline measurements were taken, when treatments started and ended, when samples were collected, and how samples were handled, stored, and analysed, including assay names and laboratory methods with enough detail or a cited reference for a standard method. If a procedure was adapted from a published method, cite it and state exactly what was changed; a citation alone does not excuse an incomplete description when the adaptation could affect the result. Include humane endpoints and the criteria for withdrawing an animal, and report any adverse events, even when they seem unrelated to treatment.
Worked example — defining the experimental unit. Suppose a feeding trial assigns diets to pens of broilers, with several birds in each pen sharing one feeder. The diet is applied to the pen, so the pen is the experimental unit, even though measurements are taken on individual birds. The correct analysis therefore summarises or models the data at pen level, and the sample size is the number of pens per treatment, not the number of birds. If the same trial housed dairy cows individually and fed each cow separately, the cow would be the experimental unit. Stating this reasoning in one or two sentences — what was randomised, to what, and why — prevents one of the most common statistical criticisms in animal sciences manuscripts.
Worked example — a sample-size sentence reviewers can check. Rather than writing only that a certain number of animals was used, explain the basis for the choice: the primary outcome, the size of difference the study was designed to detect, the variability expected from pilot data or earlier work, and the power and significance level adopted. If no formal calculation was possible, say so plainly and explain how the number was chosen instead, for example from precedent, welfare limits, or availability. A transparent justification, even when it is not a formal calculation, is far stronger than an unexplained number.
ARRIVE is the starting point for animal research, but it is not the only reporting standard a manuscript may need. The right additional guideline depends on the study design. A randomised clinical trial in client-owned animals, for example, benefits from the CONSORT reporting approach adapted for trials, with a flow diagram showing enrolment, allocation, follow-up, and analysis. An observational study — a cohort, case-control, or cross-sectional study — is clearer when reported along STROBE lines, with careful attention to how animals were selected, how exposures and outcomes were defined, and how confounding was handled. A systematic review or meta-analysis follows a different structure again, with a documented search, screening process, and assessment of the included studies.
The point is not to cite every guideline, but to use the one that matches the design and to follow it honestly. Mention in the Methods which guideline was followed, and use its checklist while drafting rather than after the manuscript is finished, when missing information is hardest to recover. Where guidelines overlap, ARRIVE remains the backbone for animal details, and the design-specific guideline adds the structure for that type of study. If a checklist item does not apply, it is better to note that briefly than to leave a reviewer wondering whether it was forgotten.
Field studies and wildlife work raise their own reporting needs. State the study area and season, the permits held, how animals were captured or observed, how disturbance was minimised, and how individual animals were identified to avoid double counting. For surveys and questionnaire-based work with owners or farmers, describe the sampling frame, the response rate, and the wording of key questions, or include the questionnaire as supplementary material. Reviewers judge field work by whether the conditions under which data were collected are recoverable from the text.
A title should name the species or population, the intervention or exposure, and the outcome, without promising more than the study shows. Compare a vague title such as "A Study of Animal Nutrition" with a specific one such as "Effect of a Fermented Feed Supplement on Growth Performance and Faecal Microbiota in Weaned Piglets". The second title tells a reader, an editor, and a search system exactly what the paper is about, and it sets an expectation the abstract and conclusions must then meet. Avoid abbreviations in the title, avoid sensational words, and do not claim a benefit in the title that the results support only weakly.
Keywords should complement the title rather than repeat it word for word. Choose terms a researcher would actually search for: the species, the condition or production trait, the intervention, the method, and the setting where relevant. Include both a common term and a more precise one where both are used in the field — for example, a disease name alongside its causative agent — because different readers search with different vocabulary. Check that keywords are spelled consistently with the text, and avoid keywords so broad that they describe almost any paper in the field.
The abstract must then deliver on the title. If the title promises an outcome, the abstract must report that outcome with its numbers, direction, and measure of variability, and the conclusions must stay within the same scope. Mismatches between title, abstract, and conclusions are easy for reviewers to spot and hard for authors to defend, so read the three together as a single unit before submission.
Results should be reported in the same order as the Methods, so a reviewer can move between the two sections without hunting for a missing analysis. Lead with the primary outcome, then secondary outcomes, then any additional or exploratory findings, labelling exploratory results as exploratory. Give the number of animals contributing to each analysis, because a table total and a text total that differ, or an analysis that silently drops animals, will draw questions. Report results for all groups, including control groups and groups where nothing changed, since a null result is still a result and selective reporting undermines trust.
Interpretation belongs in the Discussion, and it should be proportionate to the design. A study in one herd, one season, or one breed supports conclusions about that setting, and any wider claim needs explicit justification, not assumption. Distinguish what the data show, what they suggest, and what remains speculation. Phrases such as "tends to" or "may indicate" are appropriate only when the evidence is genuinely uncertain; used routinely, they blur the line between finding and guesswork. Where results conflict with earlier work, address the difference directly — different dose, different breed, different endpoint, different setting — rather than ignoring the earlier study or dismissing it without reason.
Limitations deserve their own honest paragraph. State the constraints that most affect interpretation: sample size, lack of blinding where it was not feasible, a single site or season, measurement error, or a control group that differed in more than one respect. A limitation stated plainly, with its likely effect on the conclusions, strengthens a paper; a limitation hidden or minimised invites a reviewer to find it and to doubt what else was minimised. End the Discussion by returning to the original question and stating, in plain terms, what is now known that was not known before, and what the next study should test.
Reviewers increasingly expect the data behind a paper to be organised and available, and authors should prepare for that expectation during the study, not after acceptance. Keep a single, checked dataset from which every table and figure is generated, with variable names and units documented, so that a query about one number can be answered from the source rather than reconstructed from memory. When the journal offers a data-availability statement, use it to state precisely where the data can be found, what is included, and any restriction that genuinely applies, such as owner privacy in clinical data.
Supplementary material should contain what supports the main paper without interrupting it: detailed diet compositions, extended tables, additional figures, questionnaires, or step-by-step protocols. Each supplementary file needs a clear title and a citation in the main text, and it should be checked with the same care as the manuscript itself, since errors in supplementary files are still errors in the published record. Do not use supplementary material to hide a key method or a result that belongs in the main text; if a reviewer needs it to judge the paper, it should be visible in the paper.
Where analysis code was used, keep it with the dataset and note the software and version, as already required for the statistical methods. Where images are supplied, keep the original files unaltered and describe any adjustment honestly in the legend. Adjustments that change what an image shows — removing, moving, or enhancing a feature — are not acceptable, and figures assembled from several images must make the joins clear. For photographs of animals, include only images that add scientific information, and ensure any identifiable owner, farm, or location details are removed unless permission to show them was given.
Authorship should be agreed before submission, on the basis of contribution, not seniority or courtesy alone. Every listed author should have contributed to the conception, design, data collection, analysis, or writing, and should have read and approved the final manuscript. Contributors who do not meet the authorship standard — technical staff, field assistants, or colleagues who provided advice or samples — belong in the Acknowledgements, with their permission. The corresponding author carries particular responsibility: for the accuracy of the submission, for communication with the journal, and for ensuring that all authors have seen the version being submitted.
Many journals now ask for a structured statement of contributions, describing who did what. Preparing this statement early avoids disputes later, especially in multi-institution studies where roles can blur. Record contributions while the work is fresh, and revisit the author list if roles change during revision, for example if a new analysis is added by a colleague who was not originally an author. Changes to authorship after submission require the agreement of all authors and an explanation to the editor, so it is far simpler to settle the list correctly the first time.
Funding and competing interests must be stated completely. List every source of financial support, including in-kind support such as donated feed, drugs, or equipment, and state the role, if any, the funder played in design, analysis, or writing. Declare personal or institutional interests that could be seen to influence the work, including employment, consultancy, or product involvement, even when the author believes they had no influence; disclosure lets readers judge for themselves. If there is no funding and no competing interest, say so explicitly rather than leaving the section blank.
Clear language is a scientific virtue, not a cosmetic one. Write short sentences, prefer active constructions where they clarify who did what, and define every abbreviation at first use, including abbreviations that seem standard in a subfield. Avoid jargon that a reader from a neighbouring discipline would not understand, and be consistent: do not switch between two names for the same treatment, two spellings of a breed, or two units for the same measurement within one paper. A manuscript that is consistent is easier to review, and a manuscript that is easy to review is more likely to be judged on its science.
Biological nomenclature needs the same consistency. Italicise genus and species names, give the full binomial at first mention, and use accepted common names thereafter. For pathogens, follow current taxonomy and state the strain where it matters. For drugs, use generic names, give doses per unit of body weight with the route and frequency, and state withdrawal periods where relevant to food-producing animals. For breeds, use the recognised breed name and note crossbred composition where it affects interpretation. These details take little space and remove a whole class of reviewer queries.
Authors writing in English as an additional language should not be discouraged by language alone; editors judge the science first. Still, it is worth budgeting time for a careful language check by a colleague or a professional service, and for reading the manuscript aloud, which exposes long sentences and missing words that silent reading misses. Keep the journal's own guidance in mind as well: our guide to double-blind peer review and the GJVAS author guide explain how anonymity and journal requirements interact in practice.
The cover letter is brief and purposeful. In a few paragraphs, state what the study asked, what it found, why it fits the journal's scope, and that the work is original, has not been published elsewhere, and has been approved by all authors. Mention ethics approval and any prior presentation of the work, such as a conference abstract, so the editor is not surprised by it later. Do not repeat the abstract, do not overstate the importance of the findings, and do not suggest that the paper must be accepted; editors respond better to a confident, factual summary than to superlatives.
Assemble the submission package as a set of checked files: the anonymised manuscript, the separate title page, each table and figure in the required format, supplementary files, and the statements on ethics, funding, conflicts, and data availability. Check file names, check that the manuscript file opens cleanly, and remove author details from file properties and from figure files, since metadata is a common cause of accidental unblinding in double-blind review. Finally, confirm the contact details of the corresponding author and keep the submission confirmation; if a revision is requested, that confirmation and the manuscript identifier are the starting point for the next stage.
When reviewer comments arrive, preparation pays off again. Answer each comment in turn, state what was changed and where, and where you disagree, explain why with evidence rather than assertion. A point-by-point response that is courteous, specific, and tied to page and line numbers makes the editor's job easier and gives the revised manuscript the best chance of a favourable decision. For guidance on choosing a trustworthy venue in the first place, see our article on how to avoid predatory journals.
| Guideline | What it covers | Official source |
|---|---|---|
| ARRIVE | Reporting of animal research | arriveguidelines.org |
| COPE | Publication ethics and misconduct | publicationethics.org |
| ICMJE | Authorship and reporting standards | icmje.org |
| DOAJ | Directory of trusted open access journals | doaj.org |
| CC BY 4.0 | Open licence used by this journal | creativecommons.org |
These authoritative external resources explain the standards and tools mentioned in this guide:
Do I need ethics approval before I start the study?
Yes. Approval from an institutional animal ethics committee (such as an IACUC) or an equivalent board must be in place before the work begins, and the manuscript must state the committee name and protocol number. Retrospective approval is generally not acceptable.
What are the ARRIVE guidelines, and must I follow them?
ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments), updated as ARRIVE 2.0, is the international reporting standard for animal research — a checklist asking authors to describe design, sample size, randomisation, blinding, outcome measures, and the animals in full, making the study easier to review and repeat.
How do I prepare my manuscript for double-blind peer review?
Keep all identifying information — names, affiliations, funding, acknowledgements — on a separate title page, and remove it from the manuscript file itself, including author details stored in the file's properties.
Is the Global Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences open access?
Yes. It is the veterinary and animal sciences journal of Global Academic Publishers, published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence, so articles are free to read and reuse with credit to the authors. The journal is new and in its launch phase, and we state its status openly.
Where do I submit my animal sciences manuscript?
Check your topic against the scope on the journals page, work through the checklist above, then submit through the journal's submission page.
What is the experimental unit, and why does it matter?
The experimental unit is the smallest unit to which a treatment is independently applied — for example, the pen when a diet is fed to a whole pen, or the individual animal when each animal is treated separately. Analysing at the wrong level, such as treating animals in the same pen as independent replicates, inflates the sample size and can make results look stronger than they are.
How do I justify my sample size if I did not do a formal power calculation?
Explain the basis honestly: the primary outcome, the difference the study aimed to detect, the variability expected from pilot or earlier work, and any practical or welfare limits on numbers. If no formal calculation was possible, state that and describe how the number was chosen instead. A transparent explanation is stronger than an unexplained number.
Which reporting guideline should I use besides ARRIVE?
It depends on the design. Randomised clinical trials, observational studies, and systematic reviews each have their own widely used reporting structure, and the best choice is the guideline that matches your design. Mention the guideline followed in the Methods, and work through its checklist while drafting rather than afterwards.
Can I include results that were not in my original plan?
Yes, but label them clearly as exploratory or additional analyses, and distinguish them from the primary outcome. Exploratory findings can be valuable, but they should not be presented with the same weight as a pre-planned primary analysis, and the Discussion should not turn an unexpected finding into the paper's main claim.
What should I do if a co-author disagrees about the author list?
Resolve authorship on the basis of contribution before submission, and record who contributed what while the work is fresh. Changes after submission need the agreement of all authors and an explanation to the editor, so settling the list early avoids delays and disputes.
What makes a good cover letter?
A short, factual letter stating the research question, the main finding, why the paper fits the journal's scope, and that the work is original and approved by all authors. Mention ethics approval and any earlier conference presentation, and avoid repeating the abstract or overstating the findings.
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