Information For Authors

Author Guidelines

Aim and Scope

Letters in Animal Biology (LIAB) is an open access, peer-reviewed international journal that publishes the results of original research pertaining to animal biology. LIAB encompasses a broad range of topics on animal production, health, and welfare along with the fundamental aspects of genetics, physiology, nutrition, medicine, microbiology, biotechnology, biochemistry, reproduction, and animal products. Articles published in LIAB cover research topics on all domestic animals, birds, and companion animals; however, the topics on wildlife species, laboratory animals, and other aquatic species will be considered for publication as long as they have direct or indirect implications on animal production, health, or other biological aspects. LIAB publishes high quality research articles, reviews, short, communications, and case reports.

Authorship policy

Authorship should be restricted to those who have contributed substantially to the study intended for publication in LIAB. The authors must have contributed to at least one of these categories:

  1. Study concept and design
  2. Data collection
  3. Data analysis
  4. Contributed to new methods/models
  5. Wrote the manuscript

It is the sole responsibility of the corresponding author:

  1. To provide correct names, addresses, and affiliations of all authors
  2. To obtain institutional approvals, wherever required
  3. To ascertain that all authors have seen and agreed to a submission

Types of articles

Research Articles: Articles should be as concise as possible and should not normally exceed limit of 8000 words, including main text, references, illustrations, and tables. Results of research in manuscripts submitted to LIAB must not have been published in or submitted to any another scientific journal prior to receiving a decision from LIAB. However, a preliminary presentation at any scientific meeting or the use of data in field-day reports or similar documents, does not preclude the publication of such data in LIAB.

Short Communications: Short communications should not normally exceed limit of 3000 words, including main text, illustrations, tables, and references. Short communications shall report original scientific data and LIAB will consider publication of short communications only that are hypothesis-driven and report novel results. Case Reports will be published as short communications. Case reports must present one or more of the following: a) Unusual observations b) Adverse response to therapies c) Unusual combination of conditions leading to confusion d) Illustration of a new theory e) Question regarding a current theory f) Personal impact

Reviews: Review articles falling within the scope of LIAB are welcomed and shall be subjected to the limit of 11000 words. Reviews must provide systematic, comprehensive, and authoritative coverage of key research areas. The datasets on which the conclusions of the reviews rely should be available to readers.

Publication policy

LIAB is an open access journal - all the manuscripts published in it are freely available online to anyone. There are no submission, publication, or subscription charges. Also, LIAB does not charge for production of coloured figures in the manuscripts.

All the manuscripts submitted to LIAB will be subjected to plagiarism check and there will be outright rejection of manuscripts having a similary index of more that 25%. Even self-plagiarism is not permitted for submissions made to LIAB. 

The authors must adhere to the COPE Guidelines for good publication practice.

Advertising policy

Currently, LIAB does not consider any advertisements. However, in future, if required it will be done by the journal owner in consultation with the editorial board. The advertisements, if considered, will be separate form the published content and will not influence the the editorial decisions in any way.

Frequency of publication

The LIAB will be published biannually (two issues per year).

Manuscript preparation

All manuscripts submitted to LIAB should be double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font with 1 inch margin all around using A4 paper size. Automatic page and line numbering function to number the pages and lines in the manuscript should be used and the line numbers should be in a single continuous sequence. Greek letters and special symbols should be inserted using the symbol palette. Authors are advised to use italics for emphasis, tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar, and the table function to make tables, not spreadsheets. The manuscript should be prepared in the following format:

Title page: The title page should contain the following information

Title of the study, which should be concise and informative

A short title, which should not be more than 45 characters (including spaces)

Full author names and their affiliations denoted by use of symbols behind authors’ last name

Clear cut indication of the corresponding author and his/her e-mail address

The information on the title page should not be included in the main 'Manuscript file'. However, the title of the study should be repeated again in the main 'Mnuscript File'.

Abstract

An abstract should be a single paragraph of no more than 300 words which summarises the purpose of the study, results, and major conclusions of the study. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Key words

The authors are required to provide 4 to 6 key words used for indexing purpose. It is advised not to use the words already in the title of the study. Separate the key words by coma.

 

The main text of the manuscript should be divided in to following headings – Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Each heading should be numbered consecutively (1, 2, 3, ……, and so on). The sub-headings under each heading should be numbered as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, ……, and so on. However, under each heading there should be no more than three levels of sub-headings.

Introduction

The introduction section should establish the framework which justifies the conduct of study with a clearly stated hypothesis and the consequent objectives. The rationale behind the study should be supported by the existing literature; however, the excessive citations of the existing literature is discouraged. 

Materials and Methods

LIAB considers reproducibility and transparency in the research as a basic essence of science. The design and setting of the study should foster the reproducibility of the research undertaken with ease. A clear description of all the biological, analytical, statistical procedures should be provided. However, a reference to any established methodology or procedure should be preferred with a description of modification, if any. The materials used in the study must be referred to by the product name followed by the manufacturer/vendor and their location at first mention only. Appropriate statistical methods should be adopted with clearly defined experimental unit and number of experimental replicates. This section of the manuscript must begin with a statement on animal ethics and care and there must be a clear mention of the approval authority and approval number.

Results

This section contains the results of the research undertaken either in the text or as tables and figures. The results should be in sufficient detail to allow the readers to interpret the data with less efforts. However, the results given in the tables and figures should not be repeated in the text and vice-versa. Quantitative measures of significance (P-values) should be given. The exact P-value (P = 0.001) should be preferred over (P < or > 0.05).

Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data. Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. 

Discussion

LIAB strongly discourages the repetition of the results in this section. This section interprets the results of the research undertaken and discusses the implications of the findings in the context of existing research. This section should be clear and concise, and address the biological mechanisms to offer the explanations of the results along with highlighting the limitations of the study. No reference to the tables and figures, or inclusion of P-values is permitted in this section. Authors have the option to create a single Results And Discussion section, but LIAB strongly discourages it. However, only combined Result And Discussion is permitted for Short Communications.

Conclusions

This section should state concisely and clearly the main conclusions and implications or relevance of the study. This section can be a separate heading of the main text or a separate paragraph under Discussion section.

Declarations (do not include in numbering)

All the manuscripts must contain the following sections under this heading:

  • Funding: All the sources of research funding should be stated clearly.
  • Conflict of interests: All the authors must state clearly the financial and/or non-financial relationships with other people/organisations which could affect the outcome of their research work. The potential conflicts of interests could be employment, consultancy, patent application, funding, stock ownership, etc. If there are no such conflicts, please state "The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests of any kind".
  • Ethics approval: A statement pertaining to the ethics of animal care and welfare should be made here. Authors should clearly mention the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s approval number if appropriate. If the study involves humans include a statement of ethics approval and consent of participation.
  • Availability of data and material: All manuscripts should have a statement on ‘Availability of data and materials’. LIAB encourages data sharing for convenient interpretation, replication, and building upon the findings of the research. However, when the privacy issues do not allow such open data sharing, there should be the statement of conditions for accessing the data.
  • Acknowledgements: Authors should acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the manuscript being submitted to LIAB who does not meet the criteria for authorship.
  • Authors' contributions: This is optional, but LIAB  encourages the authors to provide the contribution of each author.

References

  • All references cited in the text should be in the list of references and vice-versa. The authors‘ names and dates should be carefully checked and be exactly the same in the text as in the reference list.
  • In the text, refer to the citation by using first author‘s last name and et al. for other authors followed by year of publication. However, if there are only two authors use the last name of both the authors separated by ‘AND’ and followed by year of publication. Examples: Mir et al. 2020; Mir and Kumar 2020; Mir et al (2020); Mir and Kumar (2020). However, LIAB strongly discourages the use of et al. in the list of references, instead all the authors should be mentioned.
  • References cited together in the text should be arranged chronologically. The list of references should be arranged alphabetically by authors‘ last name(s) and chronologically by author. If an author in the list is also mentioned with co-authors the following order should be used: publications by the single author, arranged according to publication dates; publications of the same author with co-authors. Publications by the same author(s) in the same year should be listed as 2020a, 2020b, etc. 
  • The titles of journals mentioned in the list of references should not be abbreviated. 
  •  Citations of personal communications should be avoided.

Examples of reference formats:

Journal articles: Mir NA, Tyagi PK, Kumar F, Biswas A. (2020). The art of writing scientific literature. Letters in Animal Biology 12(3): 363-368.

Books: Mir NA, Tyagi PK, Kumar F, Biswas A. (2020). The art of writing scientific literature. Publisher name, City name, State name.

Book Chapters: Mir NA, Tyagi PK, Kumar F, Biswas A. (2020). The art of writing scientific literature. In: Mandal AB, editor, Scientific literature writing. Publisher name, City name, State name. Page number range.

For Online documents: Mir NA. (2020). Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. Link to the document. Accessed on (date).

Thesis: Mir NA (2016). Value addition of broiler chicken meat by dietary means. MVSc/PhD thesis, University name, City name, Country name.

Conference paper: Authors (Year). Title of paper. Conference name, date, place of conference (city & country), Page no. range.

NOTE: For initial submission of manuscripts following the journal reference style is optional. However, following the journal reference style is mandatory on revision of manuscript.

Tables and Figures

All the tables and figures must be placed at the end of the manuscript. They should be prepared to be understood without referring to the information in the body of the manuscript. Each table/figure should be placed on a separate page and numbered using Arabic numerals.

Tables must be created by using Word Table function, column headings should be explained in foot notes, if required, and there should be no use of vertical lines.

All figures should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi for colour and grayscale images and 600 dpi for line art. Figures should be submitted in JPEG, TIFF, PDF, or DOC formats. Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts.

Peer-Reviewing Process

LIAB adopts a double-blind system for peer-reviewing; both reviewers' and authors’ identities remain anonymous . The paper will be peer-reviewed by two or three experts; one is an editorial staff and the other two are external reviewers. As an acknowledgement of the services provided by the reviewers, LIAB has a policy of publishing the reviewer(s) name(s) in the manuscripts accepted for publication. 

The editor will pass the manuscripts that are accepted for publication to the publishing section of LIAB which publishes its own articles under the Creative Commons license.