Editorial content is restricted to original papers on the following areas:
- Viral zoonosis
- Parasitic zoonosis
- Bacterial zoonosis
- Fungal zoonosis
Article Types
Zoonoses publishes research articles, review articles, commentaries, editorials, short communications, case report articles, letters to the Editor and study protocols.
- Research Articles
The text of research articles should be divided into sections with the headings:
- Abstract
- Key words
- Introduction
- Methods
- Results
- Discussion
- Acknowledgements
- Conflict of interest
- References
The prescribed word count for research articles is no more than 5000 words (excluding Abstracts, Acknowledgements, References, figures, and Tables).
- Review Articles
It is expected that these articles would be written by individuals who have done substantial work on the subject or are considered experts in the field.
The manuscript should have an unstructured English abstract (250 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles will depend upon the topic reviewed.
Authors submitting review articles should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and analyzing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.
Post-publication updates on the subject of review covering the advances in the areas should be sent as a letter to the editor, as and when major developments occur in the field.
The prescribed word count is no more than 10,000 words excluding tables, and the Abstract, Acknowledgements, References, figures, and Tables sections.
- Short Communications
The text of Short Communications should be divided into sections with the following headings:
Abstract (structured, Objective/Methods/Results/Conclusion, approximately 250 words)
Keywords (3 to 10)
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
Acknowledgements
Conflict of interest
References
The prescribed word count for Short Communications is no more than 2,500 words (excluding Abstracts, Acknowledgements, References, figures and Tables). Approximately 20 references can be included.
- Study Protocol
The text of Study Protocols should be divided into sections with the headings:
Abstract (unstructured, Objective/Methods/Results/Conclusion, approximately 300 words)
Keywords (3 to 10)
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
Acknowledgements
Conflict of interest
References
The prescribed word count for Study Protocols is no more than 4,000 words (excluding Abstracts, Acknowledgements, References, figures and Tables). Approximately 30 references can be included.
- Commentaries
Commentaries are commissioned by Editors, and free contributions are not accepted. The manuscript should have an unstructured English abstract (200 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles will depend upon the topic presented.
The prescribed word count for Commentaries is no more than 2,000 words (excluding Abstracts, Acknowledgements, References, figures and Tables). Approximately 20 references can be included.
- Editorials
Editorials are written by editorial board members commissioned by Editors, and free contributions are not accepted. The manuscript should have an unstructured English abstract (200 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles will depend upon the topic presented.
The prescribed word count for Editorials is no more than 2,500 words (excluding Abstracts, Acknowledgements, References, figures and Tables). Approximately 20 references can be included.
- Case report
The text of Case report should be divided into sections with the headings:
Abstract (unstructured, approximately 150 words)
Keywords (3 to 10)
Introduction
Case presentation
Discussion
Acknowledgements
Conflict of interest
References
The prescribed word count for Case report is no more than 1,200 words (excluding Abstracts, Acknowledgements, References, figures and Tables). Approximately 15 references can be included.
- Letter to the Editor
The manuscript should have an unstructured English abstract (150 words) representing an accurate summary of the article. The section titles will depend upon the topic presented.
The prescribed word count for Letter to the Editor is no more than 1,000 words (excluding Abstracts, Acknowledgements, References, figures and Tables). Approximately 5-10 references can be included.
Figures/Tables: One simple table or one figure
Supplemental Material: Not permitted.
Online Article Submission
Submissions to Zoonoses are made using ScholarOne, the online submission and peer review system. Registration and access are available at https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/zoonoses.
Papers submitted to the Journal should present previously unpublished data or interpretations; they should not be submitted elsewhere while under editorial consideration. Manuscripts should be clear and credible in argument, have a clear hierarchy, use concise headings and have an appropriate mix of text, figures and tables.
Text
Presentation
Text should be double-spaced and free of all corrections. Word format is preferred. Figures should be separate from the text; each figure should be presented on a separate A4 sheet.
Style
- Author’s addresses and affiliations should be on the first page. Authors should provide all their names, professional titles, academic degrees and full work addresses including email address information.
- An Abstract. The length of the text should generally not exceed the equivalent of about 12,000 words.
- Please provide the name and serial number of the fund project if the research is supported by a research fund or the relevant government departments or social organizations.
- All mathematical formulae should be numbered consecutively within parentheses at the end of the formula; formulae should be presented on separate lines; longer formulae should be broken at an operation symbol.
Illustrations and Tables
The number of illustrations submitted should not exceed six. Authors should pay particular attention to the clarity and spelling of any lettering on the diagrams, and some reduction in size should be allowed for. All figures must be colour and of a resolution suitable for reproduction.
All illustrations should be clearly numbered with the figure number and caption clearly indicated on the bottom of the figure.
Accepted file formats include JPG or TIF. Vector files should be CDR format.
Table numbers and names should be centred; table footnotes should be included at the bottom of the table; table symbols and units should be clearly designated. Authors are requested to express decimal fractions with full-stops, not commas. Tabulated ‘raw’ data should be kept to a minimum.
References
Only those references cited in the text, tables and figures should be listed numerically in the bibliography. There should be a minimum of 10 references in each article.
Examples of style are:
Article within a journal
Surname A, Surname B, Surname C: Article Title. Zoonoses 2021, 13:266-267.
Article within a journal supplement
Surname A, Surname B, Surname C: Article Title. Zoonoses 2021, 43(Suppl 3):149-170.
In press article
Surname A, Surname B, Surname C: Article Title. Zoonoses 2021, in press.
Published abstract
Surname A, Surname BC, Surname C: Article Title [abstract]. Zoonoses 2021, 42:s250.
Article within conference proceedings
Surname AB, Surname B: Article Title. In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Zoonoses: 27-30 June 2020; New York. Edited by Surname AB. Publisher Location: Publisher Name; 2021:16-27.
Book chapter, or article within a book
Surname A: Article Title. In Zoonoses. Volume 1. 2nd edition. Edited by Surname AB. Publisher Location: Publisher Name; 2019:53-76.
Whole issue of journal
Surname A, Surname BC (Eds): Article Title. In Zoonoses 2018, 10:1-72.
Whole conference proceedings
Surname A (Ed): Proceedings of the First National Conference on Zoonoses: 27-30 June 2020; Publisher Location: Publisher Name; 2021.
Complete book
Surname A: Book Title. Publisher Location: Publisher Name; 2020.
Monograph or book in a series
Surname AB, Surname B: Chapter Title. In Book Title. Edited by Surname AB. Publisher Location: Publisher Name; 2015:54-56. [Surname A (Series Editor): Series Title, vol 1.]
Book with institutional author
Advisory Committee on Zoonoses: Annual Report. Publisher Location; 2019.
PhD thesis
Surname A: Thesis Title. PhD thesis. University Name, University Department; 2015.
Link/URL
Tumor Biology Database [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/cancer_links.html] Accessed on date XX
Abbreviations
Terminology, quantities, units of measurement and symbols should all adopt the international standard and should be consistently used throughout the manuscript.
Competing Interests
Conflict of interests/competing interests can be defined as factors which could influence the judgment of an author, reviewer or editors, and may be personal, commercial, political, academic, or financial in nature. Put simply, they are interests which, if revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.
Ethics in publishing
Please see our information pages on our Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statements.
Supplementary Material
Supplementary material is defined as any content that supports, but is not key to, the understanding of a published item’s message. Supplementary material is exclusively published online and can include video, audio, large datasets, figures and tables. Supplementary files will be subject to the usual journal peer review process.
Most common types of supplementary material
Datasets, tables, and other textual material can be submitted as PDF, Excel, or Word files.
Submission procedure
Supplementary files should be submitted at the point of initial manuscript submission. Some supplementary material may not be able to be submitted through our online peer review systems, due to file size or compatibility problems. In such cases supplementary material can be sent directly to the editorial office, preferably by FTP, with an email notification to editorialoffice@zoonoses-journal.org.
File naming
Supplementary material files should be clearly identified as such. For instance, if John Brown includes a series of supplementary material tables to be published with his article, the file should be labeled <<Brown_supp file 1.pdf>> etc.
Referencing supplementary material within the article
Please include a citation to the supplementary material, within brackets, in the appropriate place in the manuscript text.
Supplemental file submission requirements
Audio files
- Preferred formats: mp3 or mp4
- Maximum file size 15Mb
Video files
Video files should be submitted according to the following specifications.
- Preferred formats: mpg/mpeg, mp4 or mov
- Maximum file size: 15Mb
- Minimum dimensions: 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels deep
- Verify that the videos are viewable in QuickTime or Windows Media Player
Other acceptable file formats
Accepted formats: pdf, doc/docx, xls/xlsx, ppt/pptx, jpeg, tiff, png, and zip
Data and Materials Sharing
Zoonoses is committed to improving scholarly communications and as part of this commitment, authors may make materials, data and associated protocols available to readers. The preferred way to do this is to publicly deposit the data as noted below. Supplemental material can mean anything from tables to datasets, filesets to presentations, video to audio files. Including supplemental material with your article makes it more discoverable, and Zoonoses will ensure it is effectively linked to within your article.
Why include supplemental material with your journal article?
- It makes your article more discoverable, giving people another route to find your research.
- Other researchers can cite your supplemental material, increasing the impact of your work.
- Funders are able to identify clear links to data, ensuring you meet your funding requirements.
- Your supplemental data is effectively preserved.
- Research shows that articles with supplemental material are downloaded and cited more often.
To support this, if you wish, Zoonoses can include links on your article abstract to the associated data.
How do I link my article to its data?
If you are considering publishing an article with us, and wish to link to supplemental material hosted in a particular data bank, please follow these steps:
- Submit your datasets to an appropriate public data repository. Data should be submitted to discipline-specific, community-recognized repositories where possible, or to generalist repositories if no suitable community resource is available.
- Where suitable domain-specific repositories do not exist, authors may deposit in, for example, Dryad, Dataverse, the Open Science Framework, or an institutional repository and provide the correct access information with the manuscript. Alternatively, authors may choose to deposit non-standard data (including figures, posters, rich media) on Figshare for example. In all cases, the correct data DOI reference (where applicable) should be provided when submitting the final version of your article.
- In all cases, the correct accession/deposition reference numbers/data DOIs must be provided in the manuscript.
- Remember to check that the licensing policies of the data repository that you choose are suitable for your purposes. The DataCite organisation has a growing list of repositories for research data.
- Please remember to update your chosen data bank with the article DOI on publication.
Are my data files subject to peer/editorial review?
No, we don’t expect that the data files will be subject to any special data review or scrutiny.
Standards of Reporting
The journal requires all authors to follow the correct standards of reporting regarding biomedical research. Please refer to EQUATOR for guidelines for health research and MIBBI for guidelines and tools for bioscience reporting. Authors are strongly encouraged to use these guidelines as a checklist when writing their manuscripts.
Other available checklists include CONSORT for randomized controlled trials, PRISMA for systematic reviews, STROBE for observational studies, MOOSE for meta analyses of observational studies, STARD for diagnostic accuracy studies, RATS for qualitative studies, and CHEERS for economic evaluations.
Authors of systematic reviews must provide a link in the Methods section that shows all details of the search strategy. Refer to Cochrane Reviewers’ Handbook for examples of the presentation of search strategies.
Authors must use standardized gene nomenclature. The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee details human gene symbols and names. Information on other species can be found at https://www.genenames.org/help/faq/; the Human Genome Variation Society provides guidelines on mutation nomenclature.
Where appropriate authors should follow CARE guidelines for case reports, STREGA guidelines for genetic association studies and SRQR guidelines for qualitative studies.
Authors are expected to comply with current field-specific standards regarding the preparation and recording of data (https://fairsharing.org/search?fairsharingRegistry=Standard), while also maintaining strict patient confidentiality. In addition, when using unpublished data, authors must make contact with the owners of the data before starting their own research.
Human and Animal Testing
All human or animal studies should be approved or exempted by the appropriate institutional human and/or animal subject review committee, or if no formal ethics committee is available, are in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. This approval or exemption should be stated in the Methods section of the article.
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals are followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare and ARRIVE guidelines https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines.
Patient Consent
All authors must declare that, where relevant, patient consent has been obtained (or the consent of their parent or guardian in the case of children under 16) and that all reasonable steps have been taken to maintain patient confidentiality, including illustrations, which should be anonymized as far as possible.
Clinical Trials Registration
The journal adheres to ICMJE’s Clinical Trials Registration Statement. All clinical trials published in the journal must be registered in a public trial’s registry at or before the onset of participant enrolment. Manuscripts should include the exact URL and unique identification number for the trial registration at the time of submission. This information will be published in the article and we ask that you include the URL and identification number on the title page of your manuscript.
For any clinical trials commencing prior to 2008, retrospective registration will be accepted. A list of recommended registries can be found on the ICMJE website. Results posted in the same clinical trials registry in which the primary registration resides will not be considered prior publication if they are presented in the form of a brief abstract (500 words or less) or a table.
Clinical trials must be reported according to the relevant reporting guidelines, i.e. CONSORT for randomized controlled trials, TREND for non-randomized trials, and other specialized guidelines as appropriate. The intervention should be described according to the requirements of the TIDieR checklist and guide. Submissions must also include the study protocol as supporting information, which will be published with the manuscript if accepted.
Authors of manuscripts describing the results of clinical trials must adhere to the CONSORT reporting guidelines appropriate to their trial design, available on the CONSORT Statement web site. Any deviation from the trial protocol must be explained in the paper. Authors must explicitly discuss informed consent in their paper, and we reserve the right to ask for a copy of the patient consent form.
Registration of Systematic Reviews
The prospective registration of systematic reviews is welcomed, and we encourage all authors to register their systematic reviews in a suitable registry (such as PROSPERO). Please include the registration number in the last line of the manuscript abstract.