Research Ethics Guidelines

1. Ethical Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research

The editors will require that the benefits potentially derived from any research causing harm to animals are significant in relation to any cost endured by animals, and that procedures followed are unlikely to cause offense to the majority of readers. Authors should particularly ensure that their research complies with the commonly-accepted '3Rs':

• Replacement      of animals by alternatives wherever possible,
• Reduction      in number of animals used, and
• Refinement      of experimental conditions and procedures to minimize the harm to animals.

Any experimental work must also have been conducted in accordance with relevant national legislation on the use of animals for research.

Manuscripts containing original descriptions of research conducted in experimental animals must contain details of approval by a properly constituted research ethics committee. As a minimum, the project identification code, date of approval and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be cited in the Methods section. During the electronic submission process, authors will be asked to inform the Editor-in-Chief of any potential conflicts of interest.

1. Home Office. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures. Available online:http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc8889/hc01/0107/0107.pdf.

Veterinary Sciences endorses the ARRIVE guidelines (www.nc3rs.org.uk/ARRIVE) for reporting experiments using live animals. Authors and reviewers can use the ARRIVE guidelines as a checklist, which can be found at www.nc3rs.org.uk/ARRIVEchecklist.

2. Research Involving Human Subject

When reporting on research that involves human subjects, human material, human tissues or human data, authors must declare that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975 (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/), revised in 2008. According to point 23 of this declaration, an approval from an ethics committee should have been obtained before undertaking the research. As a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be cited in the Methods Section of the article. Data relating to individual participants must be described in detail, but private information identifying participants need not be included unless the identifiable materials are of relevance to the research (for example, photographs of participants’ faces that show a particular symptom). A written informed consent for publication must be obtained from participating patients in this case.

Editors reserve the rights to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.

Example of Ethical Statements:

All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code).

3. Research Involving Cell Line

Methods sections for submissions reporting on research with cell lines should state the origin of any cell lines. For established cell lines the provenance should be stated and references must also be given to either a published paper or to a commercial source. If previously unpublished de novo cell lines were used, including those gifted from another laboratory, details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval must be given, and confirmation of written informed consent must be provided if the line is of human origin.

An example of Ethical Statements:

The HCT116 cell line was obtained from XXXX. The MLH1⁺ cell line was provided by XXXXX, Ltd. The DLD-1 cell line was obtained from Dr. XXXX. The DR-GFP and SA-GFP reporter plasmids were obtained from Dr. XXX and the Rad51K133A expression vector was obtained from Dr. XXXX.

Potential Conflicts of Interest

It is the authors' responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest". This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflicts of Interest" section preceding the "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed in the "Acknowledgments" section.

 

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and, publication on the www.mdpi.com website.

Suggesting Reviewers

During the submission process, authors are pre encouraged to list three names of potential reviewers with the appropriate expertise to review the manuscript. The editors will not necessarily approach these referees. Please provide detailed contact information (address, homepage, phone, e-mail address). Proposed reviewers should be from different institutions to the authors. You may identify appropriate Editorial Board members of the journal as potential reviewers. You may also suggest reviewers from among the authors that you frequently cite in your paper.

English Corrections

This journal is published in English. To facilitate proper peer-reviewing of your manuscript, it is essential that it is submitted in grammatically correct English. If you are not a native English speaker, we strongly recommend that you have your manuscript professionally edited before submission or read by a native English-speaking colleague. Professional editing will mean that reviewers and future readers are better able to read and assess the content of your manuscript.  For additional information see the English Editing Guidelines for Authors.

Publication Ethics Statement

Veterinary Sciences is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We fully adhere to its Code of Conduct and to its Best Practice Guidelines.

The editors of this journal take the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors of Veterinary Sciences take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy.

Authors wishing to publish their papers in Veterinary Sciences are asked to abide to the following rules:

• Any      facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the      author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
• Authors      should accurately present their research findings and include an objective      discussion of the significance of their findings.
• Data      and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail      in the paper, so that other researchers can replicate the work.
• Raw      data should preferably be publicly deposited by the authors before      submission of their manuscript. Authors need to at least have the raw data      readily available for presentation to the referees and the editors of the      journal, if requested. Authors need to ensure appropriate measures are      taken so that raw data is retained in full for a reasonable time after      publication.
• Simultaneous      submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
• Republishing      content that is not novel is not tolerated (for example, an English      translation of a paper that is already published in another language will      not be accepted).
• If      errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of      their paper, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of this      journal so that appropriate actions can be taken. Please refer to      our policy regarding publication      of publishing addenda and corrections.
• Your      manuscript should not contain any information that has already been      published. If you include already published figures or images, please      obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under      the CC-BY license.
• Plagiarism,      data fabrication and image manipulation are not tolerated.

• Plagiarism is not acceptable in EJVS submissions.

Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source.

Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotes and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous works, these works must be explicitly cited.

If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we may publish a correction or retract the paper.

• Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image.

Irregular manipulation includes: 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image; 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels); or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or color balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information.

If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper.

Our in-house editors will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors' institutions or funders if necessary. If evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract the publication. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing with MDPI.