I mentioned in my previous message that the journal staff has been working hard to provide updated author guidelines for the journal with the most notable change being the implications section.1 I wanted to focus on some of the other changes that are now in the author guidelines, which will be reflected in published manuscripts you will see moving forward.
You will now find on the journal website an updated version of the author guidelines. Within the author guidelines, you will see a new table (Table 1) referring to manuscript genres and formatting requirements. The objective of this table is to help authors format their manuscripts correctly and subsequently help with the peer-review process. As I said in my last message, “a correctly formatted manuscript does facilitate a smoother peer-review process, as a correctly formatted manuscript is easier for reviewers to review.”1 I often find a quick reference guide, such as Table 1 in the Journal of Swine Health and Production (JSHAP) author guidelines, to be quite helpful, so we have provided one for our submitting authors. Historically the JSHAP has not had a word limit on manuscripts. But you will notice in this new table that there are now imposed word limits for our manuscripts in all genre sections. At the risk of seeming repetitive, it is becoming increasingly more challenging to find time to peer-review manuscripts and find peer-reviewers. A long manuscript can be overwhelming and time consuming to review. It can be difficult for reviewers to find time to commit to review a long manuscripts resulting in a delayed peer-review process. Often, manuscripts guilty of being too long really do benefit from being shortened and written with a slightly more succinct message. We feel the word limits that JSHAP has adopted are what are typically found in scientific journals and will not restrict the ability of an author to describe their work appropriately.
What else is new? Another author tool JSHAP has provided is an author checklist. This document reflects all the information that is described in full detail within the author guideline document. But the checklist is just that – a quick list of key style and format criteria to check prior to manuscript submission. For those authors who appreciate a checklist, the journal staff hopes this tool will appeal to you and we encourage all submitting authors to work through the checklist prior to submitting a manuscript.
The journal also now has manuscript templates for authors to use. We will be asking all submitting authors to utilize these genre-specific manuscript templates when preparing their manuscripts for submission. This is just one more tool to help authors with correct formatting.
The full author guidelines are available on the journal section of the AASV website (www.aasv.org/shap/guidelines). You will find an abbreviated version published in this issue with information guiding authors to the website for full details and genre templates.
All these changes are very exciting for the journal staff, but it is not just about us! As a reader of the journal, there should be no noticeable change in the final published manuscript except for the change in the implications section. As a submitting author, our hope is that these tools and requirement changes will help you to prepare your manuscript and make efficient use of your time doing so. As a reviewer, our hope is that the peer-review process will be more streamlined for you too.
I have just described these changes in 2 very short editorial messages. In my previous message, I wrote about the changes to the implications section1 and in this message about all the other improvements. The process to develop and implement these tools has taken considerable time and effort. I would like to acknowledge the journal staff and editorial board members for all their hard work and thought that has gone into the process. And, I would like to acknowledge Sherrie Webb specifically for her efforts to get these documents in place. Thank you.
Terri O’Sullivan, DVM, PhD
Executive Editor
Reference
*1. O’Sullivan T. Implications [editorial]. J Swine Health Prod. 2019;27(3):115.
* Non-refereed reference.