Notes for contributors

General

• Contributions in the form of original research papers, review articles and clinical case histories on all aspects of Companion Animal (excluding Equine)        veterinary medicine and surgery are invited.
• All submissions will be subjected to a full peer review.
• The work should be essentially European ie largely undertaken within Europe.
• Submissions are accepted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and that they are subject to editorial revision.
• All material published is the copyright of EJCAP, i.e. EJCAP has the distribution rights for all media. The author still has the right to i.e. make copies, post   the original or revised version on the internet, to present the article at meetings and to use the article in full or in part in a thesis or dissertation.

Format

• Manuscripts should be in the English language
• Manuscripts should be typed, double-line spaced, and with wide margins (3cm). The pages should be numbered. The lines should preferably be numbered.
• The manuscript should be sent by e-mail or on a CD-rom or memory stick to the address below. If a CD/memory stick is used, this should be accompanied by a printout of the manuscript.
• A covering letter with relevant contact data for the corresponding authour should be submitted together with the manuscript.
• All abbreviations should be spelt out in full the first time they are used in the text.
• Medicines should be referred to by the generic name. The proprietary name and manufactorer should be included in brackets when first mentioned.

 Papers

• The front page should include a concise title of not more than 20 words, plus the names, qualifications and addresses of each author. The name of the corresponding author should be marked
• The manuscript should be set out in the following sections: summary, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements and references. The summary should be on a separate page and should not exceed 200 words.
• A maximum of 4-6 key words separated by commas should appear immediately after the summary
• Clinical papers or case reports should follow a similar overall arrangements, modified appropriately.
• The text should be as concise as possible; the whole length should not exceed 4000 words except by special arrangement.
• Tables and figures should be presented as separate files, clearly labelled.

Measurements

• Measurements should be expressed in the metric system or in SI units. Temperatures should be given in °C.
• Centrifugation speeds should be given in g.
• Decimal points should be shown at the foot of the line e.g. 5.5 not 5,5 or with the point above the baseline.

Tables

• Tables should be presented separately from the text and numbered consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text.
• Table text should be placed above the table. The text should be brief, but should contain sufficient information for the table to be understood independently of the manuscript. Explanations should be given in footnotes.
• Tables should not duplicate information presented in figures.

Figures

• Figures should be referred to as 'Fig.' and numbered consecutively in the order in which they are referred to in the text.
• The figures should be as separate files and not be embedded in the main text file. The files should be clearly labelled. Figures should, when sent electronically, be in one of the following formats: JPEG, GIF, PNG or TIFF. Please do not paste the image into
  i.e. a Word or PowerPoint-file.
• Each figure should have a caption.
• Captions to figures, giving the appropriate figure number, should be typed on a separate page at the end of the manuscript; captions should not be written on the original drawing or photograph. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration with explanation of all symbols and abbreviations used.
• Photographs should be of good quality and preferably in an uncompressed format.
• Black and white prints are acceptable, while colour is preferred.
• X-rays should be submitted as high resolution electronic copies

References

• Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text.
• The reference list should be typed on a separate sheet from the main text.
• References should be listed sequentially as they occur in the text.
• Website references should be included in the reference list and should include the title of the page, website address and date accessed.
• In the text, references should be cited by a number in square brackets. The references should be set in Vancouver style. Please consult this page for sample references.
• Titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Consult the following web site for a list of journals indexed http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html

 Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements should be brief and must include reference to sources of financial and logistical support. Author(s) should clear the copyright of material they wish to reproduce from other sources and this should be acknowledged.

Conflict of interest
The Vancouver convention for co-authourship should be followed
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organisations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Ethics
Papers may be rejected on ethical grounds if the severity of the experimental procedure does not appear to be justified by the value of the work presented.

Checklist

Ensure that the following items are present before submitting a manuscript:

• One Author designated as corresponding Author:

o E-mail address

o Full postal address

o Telephone and fax numbers

• All necessary files have been attached

o Figures

o All figure captions

o All tables (including title, description, footnotes)

Further considerations

• Manuscript has been "spellchecked" and "grammar-checked"
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa.
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)

To ensure that your manuscript is successfully delivered: When submitting the manuscript electronically, please tick the box for notification when the mail has been successfully delivered

Last updated: 11th May 2010