Instructions for Authors

Animal Welfare
ISSN 0962-7286

Editors-in-Chief: Huw Golledge and Birte Nielsen
Universities Federation for Animal Welfare
The Old School, Brewhouse Hill, Wheathampstead, Herts AL4 8AN, UK
Tel:+44 (0)1582 831818
Email: ufaw@ufaw.org.uk
Website: www.ufaw.org.uk

Managing Editor: Steve Weddell Tel: +44 (0)1434 382922
Email: journal@ufaw.org.uk

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Aim and scope of the journal

Animal Welfare is an international scientific and technical journal. It publishes the results of peer-reviewed scientific research, technical studies and reviews relating to the welfare of kept animals (eg on farms, in laboratories, zoos and as companions) and of those in the wild whose welfare is compromised by human activities. Papers on related ethical, social, and legal issues and interdisciplinary papers will also be considered for publication.  Studies that are derivative or which replicate existing publications will only be considered if they are adequately justified.

Papers will only be considered if they bring new knowledge (for research papers), new perspectives (for reviews) or develop new techniques. Papers must have the potential to improve animal welfare, or allow us to better understand animal welfare challenges, and the way in which they achieve this, or are likely to do so, must be clearly specified in the section on Animal welfare implications.

The journal also includes letters to the editor, and commentary on topical issues such as developments in legislation and codes of practice

Abstracting

The journal is covered by the Science Citation Index and is abstracted in: Biological Abstracts; CAB Abstracts; Current Contents/Agriculture, Biology and Environmental Sciences; Current Primate References; EMBASE; Focus on: Veterinary Science & Medicine; Humans & Other Species; Research Alert; SciSearch; Toxicology Abstracts; Veterinary Update; it is indexed in Zoological Record.

Refereed papers in Animal Welfare include:

• Original articles
• Invited essays
• Review articles
• Short communications of less than 2000 words. These may be original, interpretative or review papers; factual accounts of field workers' practical experiences in dealing with welfare problems; constructive critiques of other papers, etc
• Technical contributions for example, on practical methods of improving animal welfare or on aspects of research methodology or technology

Access to papers published in Animal Welfare and open-access arrangements

Articles published in Animal Welfare are available 1) through subscription to the journal, 2) as 'pay per view' at IngentaConnect, or 3) as Open Access for articles that have been published as such.

The journal offers a number of routes for open and other access:

Paid for Open Access (Gold Open Access)

The article processing charge for open-access publication is £1,800 per manuscript. Papers published on a Gold Open Access basis will be available free to all at the IngentaConnect website and will also be included, in the usual way, in the paper copy of the Journal. Please contact the UFAW office, no later than at the time of acceptance of the manuscript, if you wish to arrange or discuss open access and the appropriate licence.

If you have paid for Gold Open Access and wish to share your article with others, please do this by providing the link to the published article on the journal website (https://www.ufaw.org.uk/the-ufaw-journal/open-access) rather than by sending a file.

Self-archiving on a non-commercial repository or website (Green Open Access)

Below are the conditions under which the author(s) may self-archive their manuscript in different formats. We will be using the following terminology and definitions:

• A preprint is the original version of the manuscript submitted to the journal.
• A postprint is the final version of a manuscript following peer-review but without the formatting, minor technical editing, and layout of the journal.
• The published article is the version of the paper as it appears when published in Animal Welfare, i.e. formatted and presented in the layout of the journal.

1.      Authors can share preprints of their manuscript prior to or at the time of submission for publication in Animal Welfare.  Availability on a preprint server does not disqualify the manuscript for submission to the journal. If the paper is accepted for publication, it is good practice to link the preprint to the final publication via its DOI, and we encourage you to do so to allow your readers to cite the research effectively.

2.      The postprint may be archived on the authors’ institutional repository, which is an archive for collecting and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. In an institutional repository, the postprint is accessible only to members of the community at the research institute hosting the repository. This self-archiving can be done as soon as the article has been allocated a DOI by the journal, and the DOI should be included to enable linking to the final publication in the journal. You must not make any changes to the archived postprint so as to make it resemble the published article in the journal Animal Welfare. Please note that all self-archived postprints must have attached a CC-BY-NC-ND Licence, (see Creative Commons).

3.      The postprint may be archived on a non-commercial repository or website, on condition that public access to the manuscript is enabled only after an embargo period of 12 months from the publication date of the issue of the journal in which the paper is published. This embargo period is needed to allow the journal to provide value to paying subscribers. The postprint must have attached a CC-BY-NC-ND Licence, (see Creative Commons) and should link to the final publication via the final publication’s DOI. This allows your readers to cite your research effectively. You must not make any changes to the archived accepted manuscript so as to make it resemble the published paper in the journal Animal Welfare

4.      As the author, you may share a printed or PDF version of the published article with your students and colleagues for their personal use as soon as the article has been published.

Open Access in developing countries

In pursuit of its charitable objective to promote welfare through education and to make the welfare information published by UFAW accessible to a wide worldwide audience, UFAW has partnered with HINARI a World Health Organisation programme to make Animal Welfare available online, free or at very low cost, to staff members and students in qualifying not-for-profit organisations based in developing countries throughout the World. Organisations in these countries able to access the journal include national universities, medical schools (including nursing, pharmacy, public health, and dentistry schools), research institutes, teaching hospitals and healthcare centres, government offices, national medical libraries and local non-governmental organisations  (a list is available at this link). The journal is also linked through the OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment) scheme led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the AGORA program (Access to Global Online Resources in Agriculture), set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. 

Policy on studies involving live animals

Animal Welfare will not include papers based on work that involves unnecessary pain, distress, suffering or lasting harm. Manuscripts describing research involving live animals must include appropriate details, in the methods section, of animals used, housing and feeding, experimental design, experimental procedures, ethical considerations, and licences and approvals under which the work was carried out (see Materials and methods).

In preparation of manuscripts describing work on live animals, authors should use the ARRIVE or PREPARE guidelines as a checklist. In addition, the STRANGE framework may be taken into consideration.

Other restrictions

Material submitted must not have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Papers should not normally exceed 10 000 words (c20 pages of the journal including tables, diagrams and references).

Publication of additional/supporting material that is related to, but not part of, the paper

Additional supporting material such as data sets or appendices that are relevant to, but which do not form part of, the paper itself can be submitted for online publication on the Animal Welfare website. Such additional material (up to a maximum of 20 A4 pages) should be submitted in the appropriate file format, including videos, at the same time as the manuscript. Where such additional material is available, reference should be made to this at an appropriate point or points in the text of the manuscript. When the paper is published, the website address of the additional material will be inserted at this point or points.

Review articles

A good review article has the following features:

(1) Originality.

(2) Advances knowledge and original thinking.
(3) Theory-based.

(4) Evidence-based.

(5) Accurate, comprehensive and rigorous.

(6) Provide recommendations for future enquiry.

(7) Stimulates debate.  

See Hagger MS 2012 What makes a ‘good’ review article? Some reflections and recommendations. Health Psychology Review 6: 141-146.

It is important that writers of reviews explicitly state in the methods section the methodology used in their review:

• Databases searched
• Search terms
• Any restrictions on the search, eg date limits
• Criteria for inclusion or rejection from the review
• Any further searches, eg use of references in articles found in the initial search.

The following paper provides a good example in the methods section as to how this should be done. Gilliam MB, and Schwebel DC 2013 Physical activity in child and adolescent cancer survivors: a review. Health Psychology Review 7: 92-110. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2011.603641

Submission of manuscripts

Papers should be submitted through our ScholarOne Manuscripts site: http://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/ufaw-aw. Please refer to the section above on Aim and scope of the journal before submitting a paper. The author should keep a copy of all submitted material. All manuscripts must be word in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format.

The author will be required to confirm that:

• legal and ethical requirements regarding use of animals or collection of data from human subjects have been met, see Policy on studies involving live animals and Other restrictions above, and also the Materials and methods section in Preparation of manuscripts below;
• written permission has been obtained to reproduce text, illustrations or data or to quote from published works, and that suitable acknowledgements of source have been made;
• for multi-author papers, all authors have agreed the final text for publication.
• articles will typically be scrutinised by a minimum of two referees before being accepted or rejected and authors are encouraged to suggest and provide the names and contact details of up to three referees suitable for peer reviewing of their manuscript (these may or may not be selected by Section Editors to undertake the peer review).

Style

Papers must be written in the English language. Articles should be written in a style that is readily comprehensible. It will greatly help the processing of the manuscript if the style outlined below has been applied upon submission.

Preparation of manuscripts

Authors should consult a recent edition of the journal to familiarise themselves with the journal's conventions on format.

Manuscripts should be word processed in Microsoft Word using Times New Roman font, double-spaced with lines numbered. The pages should be numbered consecutively. The contents will usually be organised into an Abstract (followed by keywords), Introduction, Materials and methods section (including statistical analyses), Results, Discussion, Conclusion and Animal welfare implications, followed by a Declaration of Interest and Acknowledgements. A running title must be supplied (of no more than 7 words).

Title page

Give the full title and running title of the paper and the name(s) of the author(s). For multi-author papers the full e-mail, telephone, fax and postal addresses of the correspondent should be given, plus the addresses of the other authors. The correspondent must be clearly indicated.

Centre the title in bold letters. Name(s) and institutional address(es) of author(s) should be centred under the title in upper and lower case, eg

Advances in the assessment of animal welfare
AN Other
University of Wheathampstead

Abstract

To consist of not more than 250 words. It should outline clearly and concisely the main findings without reference to the text and end in a brief statement on the paper's conclusions and animal welfare implications. The abstract should not contain references or details of statistical analyses (eg P > 0.01).

Keywords

Six keywords should be noted in alphabetical order below the abstract. These should include 'animal welfare' and the common name of the main species involved (where appropriate). The keywords will be used for abstracting and indexing the article.

Materials and methods

The description of the methods should be sufficiently detailed to allow replication of the work. In studies involving animals, provide details of numbers used and of species, strain, age, sex, source and other relevant characters.

In preparation of manuscripts describing work on live animals, authors should use the ARRIVE or PREPARE guidelines as a checklist. In addition, the STRANGE framework may be taken into consideration.

Full details should be given of experimental design, procedures and testing or observational regimes. Description of the statistical analyses should also be included as a subdivision of the methods section (see recent paper for format). If the animals were kept in captivity, provide relevant details of housing, feeding and management (eg type of housing and environment, diet and feeding regime, group size and composition, and acclimation and routine management procedures).

Where ethical considerations arise (eg if procedures compromise animal welfare or give rise to other ethical concerns, such as when human subjects are involved), these should be addressed in the methods section. Any ethical implications and justifications of the experimental design or procedures should be described; details should be provided of licences or other permissions required for the work (eg from ethical review bodies). If ethical permission was not required to carry out the study, this should be made explicit, and a justification given in the methods section. Measures undertaken to minimise the adverse welfare impact on animals involved, including choice of sample size, use of pilot tests and predetermined rules for intervention, should be described. The fate of all animals used in the study should be detailed. Steps taken to enhance the welfare of animals involved (eg through environmental enrichment) should also be outlined.

Data should be subjected to appropriate statistical analyses, with the chosen methods clearly described. Relevant references or details of software packages should be cited.

When expressing statistical probabilities, the exact P-value with at least two significant digits should be indicated, eg P = 0.29, P = 0.036. For P-values less than 0.001, the use of P < 0.001 is fine (capital, italic P, single space either side of < or = sign). Please use the following style: n = 7; ns - not significant;  F_5,25 = 2.61; (or, where appropriate, indicate the number of degrees of freedom (as df = 3).

Animal welfare implications

To be set out at the end of the text as a subdivision of the discussion or conclusion.

Declaration of interest

A conflict of interest can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal, and can arise in relationship to an institution, organization, or another person. For all authors, please provide details of all known financial, professional, and personal relationships that could bias the work. Please also clarify whether the funder of the work played any role in the study design; collection, analysis and interpretation of data; writing of the paper; and/or decision to submit to Animal Welfare.

If there are no conflicts of interest, please write ‘None’ in this section.

Acknowledgements

As well as acknowledging individuals that provided help and advice, please provide information on the sources of financial support for all authors. Individuals who contributed to the article but do not meet the full criteria for authorship should be acknowledged here. It should also be mentioned if the research was conducted as part of a thesis.

References

List at the end of the text in alphabetical and chronological order of authors with the minimum of punctuation. Book and journal titles should be quoted in full, with the original spelling and punctuation, and italicised. For example, American spellings of 'behavior' and 'color' are to be used if they have been published as such. Supply details of editor(s) and name and location of publisher for books and published conferences/symposia. For unpublished proceedings etc supply exact details of title, venue, date, location and sponsoring organisation. Additionally, we would ask that authors ensure any doi numbers for references are included.

References must be listed in the following style:

Wathes C 2010 Lives worth living? Veterinary Record 166: 468-469. https://doi.org/10.1136/vr.c849

Rehnberg LK, Robert KA, Watson SJ and Peters RA 2015 The effects of social interaction and environmental enrichment on the space use, behaviour and stress of owned housecats facing a novel environment. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 169: 51-61.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2015.06.002

Kovács L, Kézér FL, Bakony M, Jurkovich V and Szenci O 2018 Lying down frequency as a discomfort index in heat stressed Holstein bull calves. Scientific Reports 8: 15065. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-33451-6

Rochlitz I 2014 Feline welfare issues. In: Turner DC and Bateson P (eds) The Biology of the Domestic Cat, Third Edition pp 131-153. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139177177.015

Yang Y 2007 Thermal conductivity. In: Mark J (ed) Physical Properties of Polymers Handbook pp 155-164. Springer: New York, USA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-69002-5_10

 

Main headings

On a separate line, left-aligned in bold title case, eg

Animal health

Subheadings

On a separate line left-aligned in bold italics, eg

Respiratory disorders

Sub-subheadings

Avoid if possible; otherwise they should be on a separate line left-aligned in italics.

Abbreviations

Acronyms should be in full the first time they appear, eg World Health Organisation (WHO). Full stops should not be used in contractions, for example ie etc eg, nor within acronyms. Figure or Table should not be abbreviated.

Footnotes

Footnotes to tables are to be indicated using superscript numbers and placed below the table. Footnotes in the text are not permitted.

Foreign words and phrases

Should be in italics except for common phrases (eg 'post mortem'), amputated phrases (eg 'post hoc') and abbreviations. However, 'et al' should be in italics.

Locations

Give as latitude and longitude (specifying degrees, minutes and seconds).

Measurements

To comply with the abbreviations in the International System of Units (SI).

Numbers

One to nine should be written in words unless they precede units of measurement. Numbers 10 and above should be written as numerals except at the beginning of a sentence. The 24 hour clock should be used for times of day, eg 1400h and, if relevant, corrected to standard local time. Zero should be inserted before the decimal point for values less than one, eg P = 0.05. A space should separate groups of three digits in whole numbers exceeding four digits (100, 1000, 10 000 etc).

References within the text

Cite with minimum punctuation, eg:

• '... carried out by Smith and Jones (2019) ...';
• '... (Smith & Jones 2019)...' ie use an ampersand when reference is in parentheses;
• '... (Smith 2019; Jones 2020; Smythe 2020), ...' ie put two or more references in chronological and then alphabetical order, and separate each author's references by a semi-colon;
• '... (Smith et al 1999)...' ie use et al for three or more authors;
• '... (Smith 2004a, b; 2013)...' ie by an author in the same and in a subsequent year;
• '... (Smith in press)...' ie has been accepted for publication but is not yet published;
• '... (Smith 1999, 2004, 2013; Jones 2020, 2021)...' ie group all references to one author's work together.

For detailing specific points within multi-chapter or lengthy volumes the reference may include the chapter or page numbers, eg (Smith 1987 Ch 7) or (Smith 1987 p 3-4). Citations of personal communications and unpublished data should be avoided if possible. When they have to be used they should include the named source of the personal communication and the date.

Please carry out the following reference checks before submitting your manuscript:

• Check that spellings of authors' names and publication dates in the text and references are consistent.
• Ensure that all references in the text appear in the reference section.
• Ensure that all references in the reference section are cited in the text.

Scientific and common names

When first mentioned in the paper, species should be described by the common English name and defined by the full scientific name, eg rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Thereafter either rabbit or O. cuniculus may be used, preferably the former. Names of genera and species or subspecies should be in italics. Nomenclature for outbred laboratory animals should conform to that recommended by the Committee on Nomenclature, Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, Washington DC, USA.

Spelling

This should be British English and - except for quotations and references - conform to the first entry in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

Trade products

Give the brief address from where the product may be obtained eg '...Kong Ball' (supplied by the Company of Animals, Chertsey, Surrey)...'. Denote any ™ or ® marks required.

Tables

Each table should be typed on a separate sheet and its place in the text indicated. Tables should be numbered with Arabic numerals (eg Table 1, Table 2 etc). Table headings should be brief and self-explanatory, needing no reference to the text. The heading should be placed above the table. Similar tables should have the same heading format and similar titles/captions, so they can be easily compared.

Additional information, such as the key or acknowledgement, should be shown below. Wherever possible, tables should be created using the table feature. Tables must be portrait (not landscape) and designed to fit the journal page format.

Figures

To avoid having to re-draw your figures after acceptance of your manuscript please use the format below.

Figures should not be larger than A4 size, and must be cited in the text at least once.

Figures should be as simple as possible; particularly avoid three-dimensional graphics. There should be no enclosing lines on graphs or keys. Arial font should be used throughout for all text. Axis labels should be in arial 8 point bold throughout and tick labels should be in arial 7 point regular (ie not bold). Decimal points must be full stops and not commas.

Standard deviations or error bars should be shown where possible. For data points these extend below and above the point with short horizontal lines denoting the ends. Sometimes one direction error bars can be used if it improves the clarity of the Figure. For histograms error bars extend above each block with a short horizontal line denoting the end.

Whenever possible, figures should be submitted in a format that allows them to be edited and formatted as per our in-house style post acceptance. This requires them to be submitted as Word, Excel or Illustrator files (ie not as TIF files or as scanned images).

Captions (Figure number plus title)

The figures should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and 'Figure' written in full, (eg Figure 1, Figure 2 etc). This should be accompanied by a brief title and a caption that is self-explanatory, needing no reference to the text.

Similar figures should have the same format and similar titles/captions, so they can be easily compared.

Figures that share captions should be marked (a), (b) etc in the top left-hand corner and if they have the same x-axis and/or y-axis measurement it may be possible to share axis labels. Whenever appropriate, for two or more figures using the same unit of measurement, axes should be drawn using the same scale for ease of comparison.

Labels

All axis labels to be in arial 8 point bold. All tick labels to be in arial 7 point regular (ie not bold).

All letters in lower-case except the first letter of the first word.

No full stops after labels and no underlining.

Graph axis headings should include both parameter and unit.

All decimal points should be full stops and not commas.

Système International (SI) units should be used, noted in negative exponent form and in brackets at the end of the heading (as used in the Journal of Zoology; Applied Animal Behaviour Science; Nature), eg 'Plasma corticosterone concentration (ng ml^-1)'.

Keys

Keys should be included within the graph in a blank space, preferably at the top right-hand corner (not enclosed in lines).

Use large and preferably solid symbols (circles, triangles, and squares) for data points. When using colours, please ensure that different treatments can be distinguished when viewed/ printed in black and white. If possible, please consider a colour choice that makes it easier for colour blind readers.

Only use shadings which are sharp and are easily distinguished from each other. Black, white and greyscale are preferred.

Photographs

Photographs are welcomed, and should be submitted as high resolution (minimum 300dpi) GIF, TIF, BMP or JPEG images along with the original submission. A bar scale with relevant units should be shown, or the magnification indicated where relevant. Any photographs that would be suitable for the journal cover should also be submitted.

Permissions

Any figures that have been taken directly from other manuscripts must have copyright permission from both the author and the publisher, or only the author if the material is unpublished. This permission must be submitted in writing with the necessary signatures when the manuscript is submitted.

Letters

Readers are invited to submit and respond to observations and opinions on topical animal welfare issues, as well as on material published in the journal. Publication will be subject to editorial discretion and the journal reserves the right to edit for clarity and style.

The Editor, or appropriate Section Editor, will carry out an initial assessment of submissions regarding their suitability for the journal. Suitable papers will then typically be sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality and any ethical issues raised by the paper. The journal uses a single blind review process. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor's decision is final. 

Proofs

These are supplied in advance of publication by e-mail and must be returned by the specified date; any delay in returning the proof may result in the paper being held over until a subsequent issue. Only essential corrections should be made. Charges may be levied for authors' errors.

Copyright

Unless otherwise agreed with UFAW,, the copyright of each paper published in the journal becomes the property of UFAW and written permission must be sought to reproduce any part or whole of the paper. However, UFAW will not put undue limitations on the author to use the material in other works. Alternative licencing arrangements can be made for open-access papers where the authors have paid an article processing charge (see Creative Commons).

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose any conflicts of interest that might either influence or be thought to influence the submitted work. These may include employment, ownership of stocks, grants or patients, any financial benefit, or personal links. Reported conflicts of interest will be considered by the editorial team when they make a decision about publication, and the Editor may require this information to be included in the article as a condition of publication.

Section Editors

Companion animals other than Equines

Professor Xavier Manteca
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Spain

Ethics and philosophy 

Professor Herwig Grimm
University of Vienna
Austria

Social sciences

Professor Mara Miele
Cardiff University
UK

 

Humane killing and slaughter

Dr Jess Martin
University of Edinburgh
UK

Farmed pigs

Dr Abbie Viscardi
Kansas State University
USA

Farmed ruminants

Professor Marina von Keyserlingk
University of British Columbia
Canada 

Farmed fish

Professor Jimmy Turnbull
University of Stirling
UK

Horses and other equines

Associate Professor Hayley Randle
Charles Sturt University
Australia

Other farmed mammals

UFAW Editorial Office
The Old School
Wheathampstead
UK

General animal welfare science

Dr Rebecca Meagher
Dalhousie University
Canada

Laboratory animals

Professor Jann Hau
University of Copenhagen
Denmark

Poultry

Professor Bas Rodenburg
University of Utrecht
The Netherlands

Wild animals

Dr Sandra Baker
University of Oxford
UK

Zoo animals

Dr Fay Clark
University of Bristol
UK