Instructions for Authors

Updated June 21, 2026

After confirming that your manuscript is a good fit for the JSMCAH aims and scope, use the information below and the submission preparation checklist to ensure you have conformed to the requirements before beginning the submission process. The JSMCAH style guide provides a "cheat sheet" to ensure that your manuscript follows the most important aspects of the AMA Manual of Style. The Editorial Process and Editorial and Publishing Policies guides should also be reviewed before submission. Note that submissions begun but not completed (submitted) within 60 days will be automatically deleted.

Table of contents

1. General information
2. Manuscript preparation
3. Submission preparation

General information

Article types accepted by the journal

Article word limits are exclusive of the abstract, specific sections (acknowledgments, conflict of interest, etc), references, and tables. If you have an article type you believe may be of interest but is not listed here, email eic@sheltervet.org.

Article type	Description	Word limit*	Abstract structure and word limit	Figures and tables
Original Research	Report the results of original research investigations	3500	300 words, structured	Up to 6
Short Reports	Brief reports of data from original research that may stimulate further research. Generally these either convey updated results from a previously published study or negative results.	1000	200 words, unstructured	Up to 2
Reviews	Review articles identify, synthesize, and summarize the available evidence and information about a specific topic and may be either systematic or narrative. Please consult the Editor at eic@sheltervet.org before submitting a Review.		250 words, unstructured
Case Reports or Case Series	Detailed reports of individual cases or groups of cases of relevance and interest to shelter or community veterinary medicine practitioners. These will only be considered if they offer unique information or insights.	2000	200 words, unstructured	Up to 3
Community Case Study	Similar to a case report, but covers an intervention at a shelter or community level.	4000	200 words, unstructured	Up to 6
Data Paper	The primary purpose of a data paper is to describe data and the circumstances of their collection, rather than to report results and conclusions. Data papers facilitate the sharing of data in a standardized framework that provides value, impact, and recognition for authors.	2000	200 words, unstructured	Up to 3
Opinion	Perspective, opinion, and commentary based in evidence that promotes constructive discussion, proposes new hypotheses, or encourages new ways of thinking.	1500	None	As needed
Special Articles	These may include consensus statements, decision-making guides, guidelines, statements from task forces, or recommendations. Note that these undergo editorial review rather than peer-review. Please consult the Editor at eic@sheltervet.org before submitting.

*Word limits may be extended when necessary; if you require more, please include a note in your cover letter to the editor with a brief justification.

Ethical approval, informed consent, and permission for publication

Ethical research planning should occur before a study begins, not only when a manuscript is being prepared for submission. Authors are responsible for ensuring that all research involving animals, people, shelters, medical records, operational data, surveys, interviews, photographs, or other potentially identifiable information is conducted ethically and in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and institutional requirements.

If you are unsure whether your project requires ethical review, informed consent, permission for publication, or other safeguards, start with the appropriate JSMCAH decision guide:

• Animal research ethics decision guide
• Human participant research ethics decision guide

These guides are intended to help authors identify ethical considerations early in the research process and determine when formal IACUC, IRB, institutional, or other ethics review may be needed. They are especially important for authors who are new to research or who are conducting research outside of a university, hospital, government agency, or other organization with a formal ethics-review process.

Additional details are available in JSMCAH’s animal research ethics policy and human participant research ethics policy. These policies explain JSMCAH’s expectations for ethical and humane research, informed consent, privacy, confidentiality, permission for publication, and reporting of ethics review.

JSMCAH’s ethics resources are intended to support ethical study planning and transparent reporting. They do not replace applicable legal, regulatory, institutional, IACUC, IRB, or other ethics-review requirements.

The editors of JSMCAH reserve the right to reject manuscripts on ethical or welfare grounds when, in their opinion, studies involve unnecessary pain, distress, suffering, harm, or potential harm to animals or people.

Reporting guidelines

We strongly encourage authors to refer to a reporting guidelines checklist appropriate for the research study design. These checklists can be a helpful guide for writing your manuscript and are referred to by our reviewers during the peer review process. During submission, you will have the option to upload a completed checklist, which may expedite the review process.

Guides for common study designs include:

• Randomized controlled trials
• Clinical trials in dogs and cats (PetSORT)
• General randomized controlled trials (CONSORT) - includes extensions for variations to standard methodology such as pragmatic, non-inferiority and equivalence, and multi-arm parallel-group randomized trials
• Observational studies (STROBE or STROBE-VET), including cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies
• Systematic reviews (PRISMA)
• Case reports (CARE)

Additional reporting guidelines and extensions for specific study designs can be found via the EQUATOR network, Meridian network (reporting guidelines specifically for studies involving animals) or National Institutes of Medicine Research Reporting Guidelines site.

Removal of identifying information

To support our double-blind peer review process, be sure to remove identifying information from all documents, both metadata and text. Substitute "masked for review" for identifying text (such as the institution granting institutional approval) during the review process. Learn how to remove identifying metadata from Microsoft Word.  Be sure that the abstract you enter into the submission software is also redacted. Kindly upload a separate title page with author information.

Plagiarism Check

The Journal of Shelter Medicine and Community Animal Health uses Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) to screen all submissions for plagiarism before publication. Authors can also use iThenticate to screen their work before submission, although this is not free.

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscript file format

Files are accepted in Word format. We recommend editing in Google docs or SciFlow due to the ease of collaboration, integration with several common reference managers, and ease of formatting. Documents edited in SciFlow or Google docs can be downloaded as a Word document.

Organization and basic formatting of the manuscript

Manuscripts should have page numbers and line numbers. Please do not number headings. Use a maximum of three levels of headings made clear by orthographic indicators, i.e. capitals, italics, bold, etc. Click the type of article in the article type table for formatting details.

Preferred writing style

The default language style is American English, and the writing style American Medical Association (AMA). See the JSMCAH style guide for more information on style, including references. The manuscript does not need to be in the preferred writing style until the revision stage.

Specific manuscript sections

Author contributions

The JSMCAH requires authors to use the CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy to categorize author and non-author contributions. Author identity should be masked during the review process. Consistent with guidance from COPE and WAME, artificial intelligence (AI) tools cannot be authors. The use of AI tools to generate text should be noted in acknowledgments and described in Methods, as specified in WAME Recommendation 2.

Acknowledgments

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section of the title page, i.e. not listed in the main manuscript. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance (including AI tools), or a department chairperson who provided only general support. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged. We strongly encourage acknowledgment of people and organizations who generated data used in the manuscript, as without the hard work on the front lines, there would be nothing for authors to analyze and write about.

Conflict of interest and funding

Authors are responsible for disclosing financial support from the industry or other conflicts of interest that might bias study design, conduct, or the interpretation of results. All submitted manuscripts must include a 'Conflict of interests and funding' section listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). If no competing interests exist, please state in this section, "The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest".

Author notes

The author notes section should be included when material contained in this manuscript has been covered in a public forum, such as a poster, abstract, preprint, or thesis.

Ethical approval, informed consent, and permission for publication statement

Manuscripts should include an ethical approval, informed consent, and/or permission for publication statement in the Materials and Methods section, as applicable.

For studies that have undergone IACUC, IRB, institutional, or other formal ethics review, authors should state the name of the reviewing body and the project, approval, or exemption number, as applicable. Identifying information may be masked during peer review and restored in the unmasked manuscript after acceptance or when requested by the editorial office.

If the work was not subject to formal IACUC or IRB review, authors should describe the process used to assess the study against applicable ethical and humane research standards. In some cases, this may include review by an ad hoc ethics committee.

Authors should also state whether informed consent was obtained when people or owned animals participated in the study, including animals owned by an animal shelter. Consent or permission for publication should be documented when an animal, person, organization, location, or case may be identifiable in the manuscript, images, case descriptions, or supplementary materials.

Authors who are unsure what statement is appropriate should consult JSMCAH’s animal research ethics decision guide or human participant research ethics decision guide before submission.

Submission preparation

In addition to your manuscript containing all information with the exception of a title page, you should have the following files and information readily available for the submission process. Please note that the submitting author will be the principal contact for editorial correspondence throughout the peer review and proofreading process, if applicable.

Required or recommended at initial submission

Files

Title page

The title page (uploaded separately, see template) should show the manuscript title, names of all authors (but not their degrees) and the name of the institution or department where the work was done, as well as the name, postal address, telephone number and email address of the author to whom correspondence should be sent. Names of universities and other institutions, departments, laboratories, etc. should be given in English. If there is a strong reason to use the non-English name — for example, a funding agency or employer requires it — the editor should be informed. Omit acronyms in addresses. An e-mail address is included for the corresponding author only. The title of the manuscript should be informative and accurate and trigger the interest of the reader. In addition to the full title, a running title not exceeding 40 characters and spaces should be provided on the title page.

Reporting guideline checklist

Although not required, a completed reporting guideline checklist is likely to expedite the review process.

Information

Cover letter

The cover letter to the editor, submitted via the "Cover Letter to the Editor" section of the submission application, should include the following:

• The article type
• Briefly, how the article is a good fit for the aims and scope of the journal 
• Three suggested reviewers qualified to review the manuscript and without conflicts of interest, including their affiliation and email address
• Optionally, any reviewers that you would prefer not to be solicited
• Optionally, whether the submission is time-sensitive (and if so, on what timeline) or related to a publication requirement, such as for graduation from residency

Keywords

Please be prepared to provide 5-10 keywords. Avoid using the same words as in the title. Medical keywords should be drawn from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), as appropriate. MeSH is a standardized set of medical keywords that makes it easier to find relevant articles. You can automatically identify MeSH keywords by pasting your abstract at MeSH on Demand. Note that you must enter the keywords one at a time followed by a return - they cannot be pasted in as a single row of text separated by commas.

ORCiD

All corresponding authors are required to submit their ORCiD ID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID). The ORCiD ID is a unique digital identifier, and registration is quick and free. You will have the opportunity to solicit ORCiDs from your co-authors during the submission process.

Files required after acceptance (revision stage)

Unmasked version of manuscript

For manuscripts with a determination of "Revision required" provision of the revisions in unmasked form may speed the copyediting and typesetting process.  

Tables, figures, and supplementary material

Be sure that your main document file contains the tables, figures, and supplementary material at the end of the document for ease of review. These materials should also be uploaded separately, although this is not required until after the manuscript is accepted (revision stage).

Tables

Tables may be uploaded as Excel files. Google sheets is able to export spreadsheets in Excel format. Tables should be named by the order that they appear in the manuscript, i.e. Table 1.xlsx.  Table upload is not required on initial submission as long as the tables submitted in the main text are adequate for review.

Figures

Figures may be uploaded as an image file in the appropriate format and named according to their order in the manuscript, i.e. Figure 1.eps.  Image upload is not required in the initial submission as long as the images submitted in the main text are adequate for review.

Image-based

300 dpi plain and unlabeled, 600 dpi labeled. Minimum width 3 inches. File type Tiff preferred.

Line art

Vector format such as EPS is preferred if the image does not include transparency. 600 dpi, minimum 5 inches, and the file type of Tiff preferred for line art with images.

Graphical Abstract

A graphical abstract is required after the manuscript is accepted.  Your acceptance email will contain a request for this document. This should be a Word document that includes an eye-catching graphic and 1-2 sentence(s) of text to summarize the key findings of the article.

The graphic should:

• Be simple and informative
• Convey the message of the article
• Be original, unpublished artwork created by one of the authors or with necessary permissions for use
• Not contain logos, trademarks or brand names

Learn more about graphical abstracts. Many freelance sites, such as Upwork or Fiverr, offer reasonably priced graphical abstract creation.  Several sites, such as Pictogrammers, the Noun Project, and BioRender, have helpful icons.  Note that no endorsement of these specific sites, nor endorsement by them of us, is implied.