Instructions for Authors

1. Scope

The Japanese Journal of Veterinary Research (JJVR) accepts Regular Papers, Short communications, and Review Articles principally related to veterinary science of 3 research categories (Experimental Research, Clinical Case Report, and Regional Study) and 19 scientific fields described below. The livestock sciences, i.e., livestock farming, livestock breeding, and livestock feeding trials, are not acceptable and will be rejected without peer review. Manuscripts are selected for publication according to an editorial assessment of suitability and reports from referees.

2. Ethical considerations for article submission

Manuscript submitted to JJVR should be original, not be published and not being considered for publication elsewhere, either in whole or in part, other than as conference proceedings and dissertations. JJVR require that all authors have seen and approved the final version of the submitted paper. JJVR uses the plagiarism detection software iThenticate to check instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts.

3. Preprint

JJVR also accepts articles previously published on preprint servers that has not necessarily been peer-reviewed, on non-commercial servers officially approved by relevant research communities before or during the submission process.

4. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted technology

Authors are requested to fully disclose the use of any AI-assisted technology in the preparation of their manuscript, including but not limited to the writing of a manuscript, the production of images or graphical elements, or data collection and analysis. This disclosure should be basically placed in the Materials and Methods section. If AI was used for writing assistance, describe this in the Acknowledgements section. AI tools cannot be named as authors. Authors (humans) must be ultimately responsible and accountable for the content of the work. Authors should confirm that there is no plagiarism in their paper produced by AI.

5. Animal experiments/experiments involving human participants or human biospecimens

Papers will be rejected if ethics standards for animals or human subjects have not been adhered to. For papers reporting experiments involving human participants or human biospecimens, all authors should ensure that the planning, conduct, and reporting of human research are in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. All experiments involving animals, human participants or human biospecimens must have been approved by the institution the authors are affiliated with through evaluation by an appropriate committee. When necessary, informed consent should be obtained. Authors should state all ethical conditions in the manuscript.

6. Conflict of interest (COI)

All authors are requested to disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest including but not limited to any financial, personal, or other relationships with other people or organizations that might be perceived as influencing their work. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this in the Conflict of Interest section.

7. Funding

All funding sources for the conduct of the research/or preparation of the article should be listed in the Acknowledgements section.

8. Copyright

The copyright of articles, which appear in JJVR, is held by the Editorial Committee. Authors may upload their articles to institutional or other non-commercial repositories and make them publicly available immediately after publication. When uploading their article to a repository, authors should include the DOI of the article corresponding to the official version so that the link to the official version can be made correctly.

9. Submission of manuscript

JJVR uses an Editorial Manager system to maintain the quality of the peer review process. The Editorial Manager is an online manuscript submission, review, and tracking system. Reviewing and processing is performed by the editorial board of JJVR or by outside experts. Approval by at least two independent reviewers followed by editor approval is required for acceptance of manuscripts. In the on-line submission, the authors should select one of each of 1) Article type, 2) Research category and 3) scientific field for each manuscript.

  1. Article type:
    • Regular Paper
    • Short Communication
    • Review Article
  2. Research category:
    • Experimental Research: Articles covering experimental studies in any category of the veterinary science field.
    • Clinical Case Report: Articles covering novel research reported as case reports in clinical veterinary medicine of types of diseases, covering the relevant clinical and diagnostic issues.
    • Regional Study : Articles covering wide aspects of epidemiology, control and prevention of infectious diseases, wildlife conservation and environmental toxicology, and others.
  3. Scientific fields:
    • Anatomy
    • Physiology
    • Biochemistry
    • Pharmacology
    • Microbiology
    • Infectious diseases
    • Parasitology
    • Laboratory Animal Science and Medicine
    • Internal Medicine
    • Surgery
    • Pathology
    • Theriogenology
    • Molecular Medicine
    • Public Health
    • Radiation Biology
    • Toxicology
    • Wildlife Biology and Medicine
    • Veterinary Hygiene
    • The other fields related to veterinary science*

    * The livestock sciences, i.e., livestock farming, livestock breeding, and livestock feeding trials, are beyond the scope of the JJVR.

10. Format of manuscripts

The manuscript should be in standard English and be typed at 24 lines per A4 page-size with margins of about 25 mm on all sides. In the main text, consecutive page numbers on the footer and consecutive line numbers through all pages on the left margin of the page should be provided. To avoid delays in the review process of the manuscript, JJVR strongly recommends that authors whose native language is not English have their manuscripts proofread by English-speaking scientists or English editing service providers before submission.

11. Preparation of manuscripts

  1. The first page should include the title (which should begin with a capital letter), full name of authors, affiliations, and address(es) with the postal code of the institution(s) in which the work was done, as well as the name, address, and e-mail address of the corresponding author. The first page should also contain a running head not exceeding 40 letters.
  2. The second page of a Regular Paper and Review Article should contain an abstract (250 words or less) and key words (5 or fewer, in alphabetical order). The second page of a Short Communication should contain an abstract (120 words or less) and key words (3 or fewer, in alphabetical order).
  3. The body of the manuscript on and after the third page of a Regular Paper should in principle be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conflict of Interest, Acknowledgements, and References. For Short Communication, captions such as Introduction, Materials and Methods, and Results should not be used, and Conflict of Interest and References should follow the text.
  4. Proper nouns should begin with a capital letter. The scientific names of animals, plants and microorganisms must be italicized.
  5. Abbreviations, except those listed in Item 6, should be written in parentheses after the fully spelled out word(s) at the first appearance in the manuscript.
  6. In the manuscript, Arabic numbers should be used for quantities. As a rule, units and abbreviations should conform to the following examples: M, mM, μM, %, m, cm, mm, μm, nm, pm, cm2, l, ml, μl, nl, fl, kg, g, mg, μg, ng, pg, hr, min, sec, msec, Hz, Bq, μBq, mBq, kBq, cpm, dpm, ppm, °C, ∫, Kj, lux, CPE, LD, T, xg.
  7. The list of References should be arranged in alphabetical order by author’s surname and numbered consecutively. The names of journals should be abbreviated as in PubMed, or spelled out for journals not listed in PubMed. In the text, references should be cited with superscript numbers. The author is responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the references. The following are examples of references.
    1. Journal
      Holman RT, Wiwse HF, Smith AN. Essential fatty acid deficiency. Am J Vet Res 40, 221-230, 1976. doi: 10.2460/ajvr.1976.40.221.
    2. Book
      Author(s)
      Jones EC, Tayller QR. Anatomy of the Cat, 2nd ed. Vol. 1, Academic Press, London. pp. 20-35, 1976.
      Section or chapter
      Sligh EG. Neutral lipid storage disease. In: Biochemistry of Lipids, 5th ed. Deyer WJ, Nardly JH. eds. Univ. California Press, Berkley. pp. 471-476, 1992.
    3. In press
      Takahashi Y. … Jpn J Vet Res In press.
    4. Website
      Office of Pharmaceutical Industry Research. 2009. Clinical Development and Review Times of New Drugs in Japan. https://www.jpma.or.jp/opir/en/issue/en_rs_047/en_rs_047.html#/ [accessed on May 31, 2019].
  8. Tables should not use vertical lines and each term or phrase should begin with a capital letter. Any explanation essential to the understanding of the table should be given as a footnote at the bottom of the table. References in footnotes should be designated by superscript letters in the order a, b, c, etc.
  9. Figures must be created on separate pages from the text and must not be embedded in the text. The number of the figure (e.g. Fig. 2) and the name of the first author should be written on the figure. We encourage the authors to send us the highest quality figures possible. Their quality will be drastically reduced, if you do not supply your images in appropriate format and resolution.
  10. Figure titles and legends must be typewritten on separate sheets.
  11. Supplementary files (up to 50 MB) will be published online without editing or typesetting. The file formats listed below may be used for supplementary files; MS Office, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PDF, MOV, WAV, TXT file format.

12. Limitation of the number of pages

The length of papers, including tables, figures, and appendices, should not exceed 10 pages in PDF file for a Regular Paper or Review Article, and 6 pages in PDF file for a Short Communication.

13. Graphical abstract

Authors are encouraged to provide a graphical abstract, which is published with their online article. The graphical abstract should be a summary of the content of the manuscript and will help readers to understand the article at a glance. Our preferred file formats for graphical abstracts are JPEG, GIF, PNG file format.

14. Publication fee

For publication, authors will be charged JPY20,000 for a Regular Paper or Review Article not exceeding 10 pages in PDF file, and JPY20,000 for a Short Communication not exceeding 6 pages in PDF file.
Authors will be charged extra for the following:

  1. English language revision when deemed necessary by the Editorial Board.
  2. Type-setting of any portion of the text exceeding the length described above (JPY5,000 per page in PDF file).
  3. Charges for reprints (only when requested by authors). The price list of reprints will be sent to the corresponding author with the galley proof.

You may choose to make the payment either by bank transfer or credit card. For bank transfers from countries other than Japan, the authors must pay the publication as well as the fees for the bank transfer of both the banks of the country of payment and Japan. The JJVR editorial office recommends payment by credit card for authors outside Japan. Please return the order form for page charges, and reprints in the attached file after filling in the blanks.

The Japanese Journal of Veterinary Research
Editorial Office
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Hokkaido University
Kita-18, Nishi-9, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-0818, Japan
TEL:+81(11)-706-5179, FAX:+81(11)-706-5190
E-mail