1. General guidelines

1. Observational & experimental articles
2. Title page
3. Abstract
4. Keywords
5. Acknowledgments
6. Grant support
7. Conflict of interest
8. Statement of animal rights
9. Layout
10. Style

2. Tables and figures

1. Figure preparation and layout
2. Tables
3. Figures
4. Graphs and histograms
5. Labelling
6. Captions
7. Vector graphics
8. Raster graphics
9. Raster elements within vector files

3. References

1. References examples

1. General guidelines

Submission of a manuscript should be accompanied by a cover letter explicitly stating that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

1.1 Observational & experimental articles
The text of observational and experimental articles is usually (but not necessarily) divided into sections according to the following order: Title, Running Title (a less than 10 word title which may be used in the heading of the published paper), Summary, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion (IMRAD structure), Acknowledgments (if appropriate), Grant support (if appropriate), References, Tables, Figure legends and Figures. Research papers should not be longer than 7000 words.
Three levels of headings can be used in the text. Level 1 is reserved for the principal titles (usually: Summary, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements and References).
All other headings and subheadings remain short as well as descriptive; full sentences should be avoided. Manuscripts must be concise, avoid repetition and redundancies. Please, do not include a summary or discussion in the ‘Introduction’ that duplicates other sections of the manuscript, do not present discussion in the ‘Results’ section and cite only essential references. The presentation of figures and tables is encouraged if they facilitate the reading.
Manuscripts submitted as short communications, rapid communications and editorials should not be divided in sections and should generally be concise. Short communications should not be longer than 2500 words, rapid communications should stay within the 2000 words, whereas editorial should remain within 1000 words.
Manuscripts submitted as case reports and reviews may be divided in sections to better convey their message. Authors are encouraged to structure these kinds of manuscripts as they see fit. Case reports and reviews should not exceed 5000 words.

1.2. Title page
The title page should include only the manuscript’s title, authors should pay particular attention to remove any reference, such authors’ names and affiliations.

1.3 Abstract
Please provide an abstract no longer than 200 words. Abstracts should clearly describe the topic of the paper, methods and results. Undefined abbreviations or unspecified references are to be avoided. Italian authors should also provide an Italian version of the abstract, which should be submitted as a ‘supplementary file’. In this case, authors are at liberty of producing a longer (Italian) abstract, up to 800 words.

1.4 Keywords
Please provide up to eight keywords, which can be used for indexing purposes. Keywords should be arranged in alphabetic order and separated by a comma.

1.5 Acknowledgments
A section with the acknowledgments should be added once the review process has been concluded. Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from persons acknowledged by name.

1.6 Grant support
Indicate financial support (grant or contract numbers) and funding agency here and not in the Acknowledgments section. Please, note that such information should be provided only once the review process has been concluded.

1.7 Conflict of interest
At the end of the text, under a heading ‘Conflict of interest statement’, authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that may compromise or inappropriately influence or bias their work. Please, note that such information should be added in the manuscript only once the review process has been concluded. Authors are asked to disclose any conflict of interest to the editors during the online submission procedure.

1.8 Statement of animal rights
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

1.9 Layout
Careful preparation of the manuscript will expedite both review and proof reading processes as well as ensuring earlier publication. Authors are requested to submit manuscripts in MS Word. Sections should be numbered and all tables and figures must be quoted in the order in which they appear in the text. They should be referred to in the text at the place at which the author wishes them to be incorporated. Captions should be a single, concise sentence. Extensive footnotes should be avoided. Information provided should illustrate, not duplicate, that given in the text (a table or figure can conveniently and effectively replace a complicated list or paragraph in the text).

1.10 Style
All manuscripts submitted to Veterinaria Italiana must be written in clear and concise (British) English. Manuscripts that are not written in acceptable standard English or are incorrectly prepared will be returned to the author without review. Please, avoid beginning sentences with a figure or an abbreviation and acronym, especially those that begin with a lower case letter (for cDNA, use Complementary DNA), numbers appearing at the beginning of a sentence should be written in words, e.g. ‘ten’ rather than ‘10’.
All abbreviations, acronyms and names of genes, gene products, proteins and protein products should be defined at first mention, unnecessary abbreviations should also be avoided. Standard abbreviations for units of measure and abbreviations widely understood may be used without definition (ml, g, km, IU, UV, DNA, RNA, ELISA, etc.). Please, do not use the possessive form in eponymous terms: use Dulbecco modified Eagle medium, not Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium; Hanks solution, not Hanks’ solution or Hank’s solution; etc.

2. Tables and figures
For the best quality of the final product, authors are required to submit tables, figures, graphs, photographs, line drawings, etc. in an electronic format separately from the file of the manuscript and in the formats specified below. Such files will then be produced to the highest standards with the greatest accuracy to detail. Published work will directly reflect the quality of the provided files. Tables are assigned Roman numerals, while figures Arabic numerals.

The following may be of assistance when creating digital images to ensure high-quality printing.
Digital figures have a resolution which indicates how many pixels or dots per inch (ppi or dpi) were used to create them. The higher the number of pixels or dots the better the quality of the figure will be.
Tables and figures will be printed as a single column (7,6 cm or 2.99") or over the full width of the page (16 cm or 6.3"). Figures will be reduced where possible.

2.1 Figure preparation and layout
Please, consider the impact that font and/or label size and position will have when reduced and provide graphs in a similar fashion to ensure consistency throughout the manuscript.
Particular attention should be paid to the quality of lines, symbols and patterns; fine lines may disappear and heavy lines may be blurred if and when reduced. Avoid shading and dot patterns on bars, as these will not reproduce well. Use open and solid bars with colours. A key should be used to explain colour codes on graphs. Do not use 3-dimensional graphs to show 2-dimensional data.
Multiple parts within a figure must be assembled in a single file as they will appear in print with identifying letters (Fig. 3a, 3b, 3c).
If different graphs will be repetitive or relational, it may be advantageous to combine them into a ‘plate’. All figures would appear together but be labelled individually and referenced separately in the figure legends.
Do not place unnecessary graphics, such as a border, in or around the figure.

2.2 Tables
Each table should be numbered consecutively (I, II, III) according to the order of citation in the text.
Numbers within tables should be rounded to the nearest whole number or significant digit. Numbers smaller than 1 should include a zero to the left of the decimal point.
Tables should be as simple as possible and be composed entirely of text characters. Large or complex tables or tables that include graphics should be submitted as figures. If in doubt, please contact the journal for advice.

2.3 Figures
Photographs, diagrams, graphs, maps and drawings are considered as figures.
They should be submitted individually using the original format, e.g. jpg, tiff, eps, xls, etc.
If a figure has been published previously, the original source should be acknowledged after written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material has been received.
Each figure should be formatted so that it occupies no more space than is necessary to convey critical information; no margins or borders should appear around figures.

2.4 Graphs and histograms
Graphs should be created using Microsoft Excel®. Data used to create the graph must be included in the file in which the figure is presented. The editor should be able to make changes to the colour, text, background fill, etc.

2.5 Labelling
The x- and y-axes should be labelled clearly with measurement units. Molecular standards should not be identified with a kDa label; use Mr x 10–3 (molecular weight [relative molecular mass]) or kb (kilobase) as appropriate. Please, check figures carefully to ensure that necessary and accurate information is included in the lettering and labelling. Use decimal points instead of commas and italicise species or genes.
 
2.6 Captions
Captions should appear below the figure in double-spacing. Methods or results should not be discussed there. Use numbers and letters consistent in style (i.e. upper or lower case letters) with those used in the illustration. Do not use special symbols. Special symbols in the figure should be shown in a key that accompanies the figure and described in the caption. All abbreviations that appear on the figure should be described. The scale used for micrographs (e.g. bar=1 µm or Original magnification x200) should be indicated and is best placed at the foot of the scale bar.

2.7 Vector graphics
Vector graphics are suitable to illustrate models, diagrams, schemas, etc.
Vector graphics may be created with Illustrator®, FreeHand®, Corel Draw™, Inkscape (open source) and should be saved/exported as EPS file at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

2.8 Raster graphics
Raster graphics can originate from scanned figures, digital photos, electron microscope, etc. or they can be create with Photoshop®, GIMP (open source), or similar, and should be saved as PSD, TIF, JPG or PNG file at a minimum resolution of 600 dpi. PSD files should be with open levels. When saving files as TIF, always use LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) compression to reduce file size and to ensure no data is lost.

2.9 Raster elements within vector files
If a raster element is pasted or imported into a vector program, the raster element must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi when sized at final print size before pasting or importing into the vector program. This figure file will contain both raster and vector elements. The file must be saved in EPS format to retain vector qualities.

3. References
Authors should pay particular attention to the accuracy of references and should ensure that all references are cited in the text. Publication delays will be caused if references are not formatted correctly. Thomson Reuters has published an online EndNote® style for Veterinaria Italiana, authors are strongly encouraged to use this tool for formatting the references of their submissions.
Meeting abstracts, summaries, submitted and unpublished manuscripts cannot be included as references. All personal communications and unpublished data should be presented within brackets in the body of the text without a reference number. Provide the initial/s, followed by the family name/s, and ‘personal communication’ or ‘unpublished data’, i.e. ‘(A.B. Smith and G.W. Winter, unpublished data)’. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for such citations.
Only references that can be accessed should be listed. URL addresses can be added.
Citation within the text should be placed in round brackets following the (author year) format. Each entry in the reference list should include the name, initial/s of all authors, year of publication, full title, journal or publisher, volume and issue or location of publisher and page numbers, as shown in the examples below. Conference proceedings should give the place and dates of the meeting, in addition to the information listed above.
If a manuscript has been accepted but does not yet have citation information, the name of the journal in which the paper will be published should be given, followed by ‘(in press)’. The same applies to an ‘in press’ book reference, which should include the name and location of the publisher.

3.1 References examples

Journal article (list all authors, and all initials, irrespective of number)
Flanagan M. & Johnson S.J.B.W. 1995. The effects of vaccination of Merino ewes with an attenuated Australian bluetongue virus serotype 23 at different stages of gestation. Aust Vet J, 72, 455-457.

Journal article published ahead of print
Colaro Z.A., Bellis Z.P., Alsom A.R. & Stone P.G. 2006. Teratogenicity of a mutagenised Rift Valley fever virus (MVP 12) in sheep. Biol Reprod, 9 January 2006, 10.0306/ biolreprod.103.019364.

Chapter in an edited book or Conference proceedings (include all authors and editors)
Smith G., Steele A., Giacometti K. Dimitoglou B. & Dupré W. 2007. The threat of bovine tuberculosis for the lion (Panthera leo) in southern Africa. In Proc. 5th Pan-African Conference on animal diseases, Harare, 13-16 March 2006. Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise ‘G. Caporale’, Teramo (in press).

Chapter in edited book
Mertens P.P.C. 1999. Orbivirus and Coltivirus. In Encyclopedia of virology, 2nd Ed. (A. Granoff & R.G. Webster, eds). Academic Press, London, 1043-1074.

Conference proceedings
Johnson S.J., Hoffman D., Flanagan M., Polkinghorne I.G. & Bellis G.A. 1992. Clinico-pathology of Australian bluetongue viruses for sheep. In Bluetongue, African horse sickness and related orbiviruses (T.E. Walton & B.I. Osburn, eds). Proc. Second International Symposium, Paris, 17‑21 June 1991. CRC Press, Boca Raton, 737-743.

Online publication
Institute for Animal Health 2005. The RNAs and proteins of dsRNA viruses (P.P.C. Mertens & D.H. Bamford, eds). (www.iah.bbsrc.ac.uk/dsRNA_virus_proteins/ accessed on 3 October 2005).

Theses and dissertations
Delécolle J.-C. 1985. Nouvelle contribution à l’étude systematique et iconographique des espèces du genre Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) du nord-est de la France. Thesis, Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg, UER Sciences, Vie et Terre, 238 pp.

Legal texts
Reference to legal text should not be added to the reference list but reported in a footnote following this example:

European Commission (EC) 2003. Commission Regulation of 4 August 2003 amending Regulation (EC) No. 174/1999 laying down special detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EEC) No. 804/68 as regards export licences and export refunds in the case of milk and milk products (EC/1392/2003). Off J, L 197, 05/08/2003, 3-4.