Submissions

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Author Guidelines

The Journal of Shelter Medicine and Community Animal Health (JSMCAH) welcomes work that advances shelter and community animal health, welfare, and access to veterinary care. Every submission is assessed by an editor against the journal's aims and scope, and those that fit are sent for double-blind peer review.

Before you write, choose your article type and download its template. Each type has its own word limit, abstract requirement, and section structure: Original Research, Short Reports, Reviews, Case Reports or Case Series, Community Case Study, Data Paper, and Opinion. The Instructions for Authors cover what applies to every submission, and the Style Guide covers formatting and AMA reference style.

JSMCAH is a diamond open access journal. There are no submission, processing, or publication charges.

Review is double-blind, so the manuscript file must not identify the authors or their institutions, in either the text or the file metadata. Author names and affiliations belong on a separate title page, uploaded as its own file.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to publish any material included with the submission, such as photographs, records, and datasets, and everyone listed as an author must consent to being identified as one. Research involving animals, people, shelters, or medical records should have been reviewed and approved before it began. If you are unsure what applies, start with the animal research ethics decision guide or the human participant research ethics decision guide.

An editor may decline a submission without review if it falls outside the journal's scope, if the study design cannot support the conclusions drawn, or if the manuscript departs substantially from the requirements above.

Submission Preparation Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

  1. The submission has not been published previously and is not under consideration by another journal. Posting on a preprint server is permitted, per our preprint policy.
  2. The manuscript is prepared using the JSMCAH template for the selected article type and is within the word limit for that type.
  3. Identifying information has been removed from both the manuscript text and the file metadata, and identifying details have been replaced with "masked for review."
  4. A separate title page has been uploaded, giving all author names without degrees, affiliations, corresponding author contact information, the corresponding author ORCiD, and a running title of no more than 40 characters and spaces.
  5. The manuscript includes page numbers and line numbers.
  6. Where the work involved animals, people, medical records, or identifiable information, the Methods section names the reviewing body and approval number, or describes the ethical assessment used when formal review was not required.
  7. The manuscript includes an author contributions statement using CRediT and a conflict of interest and funding statement.
  8. The manuscript includes an artificial intelligence use statement, either describing the tools used and what they were used for, or stating that none were used. AI tools are not listed as authors.
  9. All references have been checked for accuracy and completeness and are formatted in AMA style.
  10. Tables and figures are numbered, carry legends that can be understood without reference to the text, and are placed at the end of the manuscript.
  11. Permission has been obtained to publish all photographs, datasets, medical records, and other material provided with this submission, including any identifiable animals, people, or organizations.

Copyright Notice

Authors retain copyright of their work. By submitting to the Journal of Shelter Medicine and Community Animal Health, authors agree that if the manuscript is accepted it will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), with first publication rights granted to the Association of Shelter Veterinarians.

Under this license anyone may copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the work for any purpose, including commercially, provided appropriate credit is given, a link to the license is provided, and any changes are indicated.

In some cases an employer or a contract may hold copyright instead of the author. Authors must disclose any such relationship when signing the Author Agreement.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any copyrighted material included in the manuscript. Submitting a manuscript affirms that all necessary permissions have been obtained.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.