For Authors

Slovak Journal of Animal Science

ISSN 1337-9984 printed version
ISSN 1338-0095 online version

Slovak Journal of Animal Science (SJAS) is an open access international peer-reviewed scientific journal edited by National Agricultural and Food Centre (NPPC) – Research Institute for Animal Production Nitra, Slovakia and published by the SciCell publishing house.

Sections: Animal Biotechnology, Animal Husbandry, Animal Nutrition, Animal Product Quality, Animal Environment and Behaviour

All submitted manuscripts will be considered for publication free of charge.

Periodicity:  4x per year (March, June, September, December)

Papers are published under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 International Licence.

Abbreviation:  Slovak J. Anim. Sci.

Publisher: SciCell

For authors: downloadable document here as PDF

Licencing and Rights

All papers accepted for publishing in the SJAS are published under a CC-BY-NC licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). Published content can be shared (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapted (remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose) excluding commercial use, with specifying the author(s).
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Copyright

Author(s) retains the copyright to the manuscript. By submitting the manuscript for publication to SJAS, the author grants the publisher the permission to publish and distribute the manuscript in the Slovak Journal of Animal Science in accordance with the licence and ethical principles. 

Types of Articles

SJAS publishes peer-reviewed articles as follows:

• Original papers
• Review articles
• Short communications

Original papers – original scientific papers which have not been published yet, should not exceed 8 000 words (including tables and illustrations).

Review articles – focusing on special topics of interest and summarising latest scientific information, up to 10 000 words (including tables and illustrations). Contributions of authors with experimental experience and publications on the given topic are highly preferred.

Short communications – these may be of a preliminary nature but sufficient for immediate publication, up to 2 500 words (including tables and illustrations).

Before Beginning

Fees

Publishing in Slovak Journal of Animal Science is free for the author and the author’s institution. All submitted manuscripts will be considered for publication, and published if accepted, free of charge. No fees are required at any stage of the publications process.

Privacy

As part of the submission process, authors need to register using their email address. See the journal’s Privacy Statement, which ensures any data collected is used by this journal only to the extent necessary for publishing and improving this journal and to help maintain the integrity and public record of scholarly publishing. 

Publishing Ethics

Publishing ethic principles are based on the guidelines and standards developed and published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Statements regarding the publishing ethics can be found here.

Care of Use Animals

If the work involves the use of animals, the author should ensure that the work described has been carried out in according with the ARRIVE Guidelines, which were developed in consultation with the scientific community as part of an NC3Rs initiative to improve the standard of reporting of research using animals.

Originality

The author is responsible for originality of the paper, subject-matter and formal attributes of the paper. Papers are published in British English language. The author is responsible for translation into British English. In case of linguistic shortcomings the paper will be sent back to the author.

Plagiarism Policy

All articles in the SJAS are supposed to be original. Authors submitting manuscript declared  that submitted  manuscript is original and has not previously been published in thereof  and that no part of the article has been prepared from other published material.

Scicell s.r.o., as a publisher of scholarly/scientific publications, is a member of the Crossref – Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Registration Agency of the International DOI Foundation.

As a member of Crossref, the SciCell s.r.o. participate on publishers plagiarism prevention initiative and used service Similarity Check (Turnitin – database iThenticate), which helps editors compare of own submitted content/articles for originality/similarity to other published academic and non-academic content on the web.

Screening software is applicate by editors of the Slovak Journal of Animal Science (SJAS), too. Plagiarism control is a part of last evaluation process of manuscripts after paper submit and before the acceptance. Results this act are important for manuscript acceptation, or not. When plagiarism from 0 to 50 % has been detected, manuscript will be sent to author for content revision. In case of plagiarism detection >50 %, the manuscript will be rejected.

Types of plagiarism:

• plagiarism in the sense of the „use another person’s ideas or work and pretend that it is your own“ (Cambridge Dictionary) or „the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own“ (Oxford Dictionaries),
• self-plagiarism (re-use of significant parts of one’s own copyrighted work without citing the original source).

Manuscript Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted using the electronic submission form on the journal’s website. Unique MS Word file must be saved under the first author’s surname only.

The author’s declaration that the paper has not been published anywhere else should be enclosed. The Declaration must be carefully completed and signed by the first author.

The Corresponding Author should include his or her full name including all academic, scientific and pedagogic titles and the detailed address of the institution with postal code, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address.

Review Process

Reviewers’ evaluation

All scientific contributions will be peer-reviewed (blind peer review) on the criteria of originality and quality. Two reviewers, who have appropriate knowledge of the subject, are appointed for each paper. If need be, third referee will be asked. The reviewers are asked to return papers within 3 weeks. Editorial board of the journal decides on contributing publications, taking into consideration the standpoint of reviewers, scientific significance and quality of manuscript. The manuscript can be rejected if it does not comply with the subject of the journal. The editor makes every effort to explain to authors the reasons of rejection.

After reviewers’ evaluation

After the author receives the reviewers’ opinion he owes to return the corrected manuscript to the editorial office within three weeks. The authors may, however, request an extension of the re-submission deadline if necessary.  After incorporation of revisions it is necessary to send the new complete manuscript with tables and figures, also in case of minor revisions in the original manuscript. In an enclosure the author has to answer all the important comments of the reviewers clearly and in detail. The author is not obliged to respect the comments of reviewers but he has to explain in the enclosure why he does not accept the reviewers’ comments. If the author does not keep the term of sending back the revised manuscript, his paper is liable to be excluded from further processing.

Sending the corrected proof

The author has to return the made-up manuscript for proof-reading. He must send it back within two days. Within this stage of manuscript preparation for printing, corrections are done only for such errors that arise during the work in editorial office.

Article/Manuscript Structure

Title
The title should briefly but accurately characterize the aim of the paper. It is not advisable to use any abbreviation in the title.

Author(s)
All authors must have significantly contributed to the research in order to be included in the list of authors. Names of authors  should  be  without titles,  in capital  letters;  full first  name  SURNAME. Individual authors separated by comma:  e.g. Jan RAFAY,  Katarína BEZOVA, Pavel FLAK

Each author’s affiliation to an institution also needs to be indicated. Corresponding author needs to be indicated. The Corresponding Author should include his or her full name including all academic, scientific and pedagogic titles and the detailed address of the institution with postal code, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address.

Abstract
They should contain abbreviated exact subject of the paper without any added interpretation or criticism. It must (together with tables and figures that are published in the text, possibly with a reference to them) give the reader sufficient amount of information about the paper, namely about the objective, method and the most important results of the work (mentioned are statistical and numeric results). The abstract must not exceed 350 words.

KEY WORDS

They are arranged from more general terms towards more precise ones. They begin with small letter and are separated by semicolon. They should contain from 3 to 6 words.

INTRODUCTION – Heading

Shall give brief and clear information about the current state of the research in the given field in our country and abroad (references of authors) and about the objective of the work with explanation of scientific or social necessity to solve it. Quotation should serve as connection of the quoted place with the References. In the scientific journal Slovak J.Anim.Sci. the “method of utilization of the first entry and date” is used for quotation in agreement with the norms. Names of authors are written with small letters in brackets (e.g. Novak, 1999). It is recommended to include references to papers from peer periodicals only. Citations from non-available sources (reports, national journals, proceedings, etc.) should be omitted. Papers published by one or two authors are to be cited by their names, those published by three or more authors by the name of the first one, et al. If more than one paper by the same author/two authors/first author, et al., published in the same year is cited, they should be differentiated by YEARa,b,c both in the text and the list of References. Citation in text:  e.g.: …….. Clark and Davis (1980), ……   Citation within brackets: In case of more than one cited author in one paper, only first author and et al. are referred, e.g.: …. (Tesařík et al., 1986) …..     If the same problem is solved by several authors in separate works, then they are separated by semicolon, e.g.: (Blaho et al., 1980; Davis, 1990; Hyttel et al., 2000). Several papers cited together should be arranged according to the year of publication starting with the oldest one.

MATERIAL AND METHODS – Heading

Should describe the studied material as precisely as possible, as well as used methods of study and ways of evaluation of results. Used method of experiment is described only in case of original or modified method, or with quotation of author of the method. The description of method should enable the interested specialist to repeat the work. Statistical methods must be described in details including the software used.

RESULTS – Heading

In this part are mentioned only concrete results of work, and in text are mentioned also the most important numerical values and data mentioned in tables. Only significant differences should be commented. It is necessary to support the results by variation-statistical processing. Statistical evaluation of results must be logically explained and perfectly processed. Results should contain data that make it possible to verify them (e.g. with evaluation of significance of differences in two averages, it is necessary to give the average, number of determinations and standard deviation). Statistically significant differences must be unambiguously and clearly marked in tables or graphs.

DISCUSSION – Heading

It is necessary to assess results from various aspects mainly with respect to factors that could influence them, and to confront them with results of other authors in such a way as to show what is new in the obtained results and what differs them from results of other authors or hitherto knowledge or in which part they correspond to each other. Bibliographical reference of authors should be in the same form as in the introductory part.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION   May comprise one chapter.

CONCLUSIONS – Heading

It has to be clear and brief. It should define clearly the obtained new knowledge, the most important results, their scientific or practical significance and recommendations for the practice or for further research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (If applicable)

Authors are responsible for providing the information on financial support. At the end of the paper should be mentioned the number and title of project within which the problem was studied and the published results obtained. 

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Conceptualization,______.; methodology, _________; investigation, ____________; data curation,____________; writing—original draft preparation,________________; writing—review and editing, _____________; project administration, ______________. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

INFORMED CONSENT STATEMENT

(If applicable.)

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare no conflict of interest

REFERENCES – Heading

References must be provided by the authors. Bibliographical reference – set of data enabling identification of document (both primary and secondary sources)  that is connected in some way with creation of another document. If author used secondary sources in article, the references will be refer to the sources where the information were found, not the original source. 

References are set out in the alphabetical order of the first elements, with the year of publication  (author/first element and date method). References (reference list) should include the details of all  in-text citations. Each source is listed alphabetically A-Z by first element (first author surname/corporate author/title of anonymous document ) and then further sorted chronologically, if necessary.  Listed are only sources that are quoted in the text.

Slovak Journal of Animal Science encourages to cite research data sets/datasets in the manuscript text and to include data reference in references. Rules for dataset citing are described below.

Selected literary sources should be directly connected to the problems dealt with in the paper and they should consist only of peer-reviewed scientific journals. Listed should be only primary sources, based on results of the quoted authors.

Bibliographic references and quotations shall be written according to the APA style.  References in the text should agree with those in the list of references.

Examples of references:

• Print Book

Author, F. M. (Year of Publication). Title of work. Publisher City: Publisher.

Bishop, S. C. (2011). Breeding for disease resistance in farm animals. Cambridge, MA: CABI.

• Online Book

Author, F. M. (Year of Publication). Title of work [E-reader version]. Retrieved from URL or doi

Bishop, S. C. (2011). Breeding for disease resistance in farm animals [E-book]. Retrieved from http://www.cabi.com/bdrfa.pdf 

or

Bishop, S. C. (2011). Breeding for disease resistance in farm animals [E-book]. https://doi.org/10.14255/bdrfa

• Chapter in Print Book

Author, F. M. (Year of Publication). Title of chapter. In F. M. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. xx–xx). Publisher City: Publisher.

Price, D.  (1980). A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processes. In B. Griffith (Ed.), Key papers in information science (pp. 177–191). New York: Knowledge Industry.

• Chapter in E-book

Author, F. M. (Year of Publication). Title of chapter. In F. M. Editor (Ed.), Title of book [E-reader version] (pp. xx–xx). Retrieved from URL or https:// doi.org/xxxx

Price, D.  (1980). A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processes. In B. Griffith (Ed.), Key papers in information science [Online PDF] (pp. 177–191). Retrieved from http://biblo.org/kpis.pdf

or

Price, D.  (1980). A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processes. In B. Griffith (Ed.), Key papers in information science [Online PDF] (pp. 177–191). https://doi.org/10.2154/kpis80

• Paper in print journal

Author, F. M., Author, F. M. & Author, F. M. (Year of Publication). Article title. Journal Title, Volume Number(Issue Number), page range.

Tančin, V. , Ipema, A. H. & Hogewerf, P. (2007). Interaction of somatic cell count and quarter milk flow patterns.  Journal of Dairy Science, 90(5), 2223–2228.

• Paper in online journal

Author, F. M. (Year of Publication). Article title. Journal Title, Volume Number(Issue Number), pp–pp. http://dx.doi.org/xxxx or Retrieved from homepage URL

Tančin, V. , Ipema, A. H. & Hogewerf, P. (2007). Interaction of somatic cell count and quarter milk flow patterns.  Journal of Dairy Science, 90(5), 2223–2228. https://doi.org/10.2154/xxxxx

or

Tančin, V. , Ipema, A. H. & Hogewerf, P. (2007). Interaction of somatic cell count and quarter milk flow patterns.  Journal of Dairy Science, 90(5), 2223–2228. Retrieved from http://www.xxxxx

• Datasets/databases

Author/Creator. (PublicationYear). Title. Version. [data set]. Publisher. ResourceType. Identifier

Cool, H. E. M., & Bell, M. (2011). Excavations at St Peter’s Church, Barton-upon-Humber [Data set]. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000389

Manuscript Format

Main text

The manuscript should be delivered in text editor Microsoft Office (Word, Excel) for Windows. The text should be in non-formatted style (unjustified).  It is necessary to number all the lines in the text and pages.

If any abbreviations are used in the paper, they must be appropriately explained when they are used in the text for the first time. It is not advisable to use any abbreviation in the title of the paper or in the abstract.

Scientific names or Latin words are to be written in italics. 

For units follow internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international system of units (SI). If other units are mentioned, please give their equivalent in SI.

In case of mathematical formulae please submit math equations as editable text and not as images. Present simple formulae in line with normal text. Variables are to be presented in italics. Number consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately from the text

Tables and figures  (photographs, graphs and other images)  should not comprise a part of the text – approximate place is marked within the text where they should be placed as follows: one empty line, then the table No. should be written, followed by an empty line and then the text. They are to be submitted on separate pages appended to the article. Each table or illustration has a caption. Table: above, figure: below. All figures (photographs, graphs and drawings) to be indicated as figures (Fig.).

The words should not be divided; between words just one stroke should be left; no style, macro should be adjusted; should be written only as basic text, no reduction and increase in font size is admissible, indices should be written with upper index and lower index; only ‘enter’ should be used to end the paragraph.

Headings / Level of heading

(centered, left, intended :: uppercase, lowercase; :: boldface, normal, italicized, …)

Tables
Tables should be prepared as editable text and not as images.  Font type:  Times New Roman, font size: 9; simple spacing; well-arranged and as much simple as possible, typed in format – Table : Insert (each entry has to be done in separate cells); width 16.4 cm x height 23 cm = one page per table (maximum size inclusive of title and explanatory notes below the table); Arabic numerals are to be used for marking the tables (e.g. Table 1: …); no vertical lines should be used; significance of differences is marked in the same line as numbers, not as an index (e.g. 0.55++ or 0.55ab); abbreviations in description of tables should not be used; SI units have to be used.

Figures
Graphs
Graphs should be inserted as image; simple and well-arranged, without shadowy outline and background, and without grid, of width 16.4 x height 23 cm = one page per graph (maximum size of graph together with all explanatory notes below the graph); charts in MS Excel format (xls) will be accepted when submitted with their underlying table data.

Photographs and other images Format tiff, gif, jpg, psd, eps – in CMYK; resolution min. 300 dpi; they are published black and white for the present, the author must expect the coloured photograph to be published in degrees of grey colour (on the website, the photographs are in colour);  width 16.4 x height 23 cm = one page per figure (maximum size inclusive of title and explanatory notes); photographs and figures including written text has to be in group format; photographs, graphs and drawings to be indicated as figures (Fig. 1: … etc).