About

Aims and scope

Animal Diseases focuses on the latest research and technology advances in animal diseases that are closely related to human health and explores challenges and countermeasures that environmental changes pose to animal and human. It provides rapid publication of the most innovative and quality papers that address the etiology and pathogenesis of infectious (viral, bacterial and parasitic) and non-infectious (genetic disorders, tumors, metabolic diseases etc.) diseases linked to animals, as well as the progresses towards their prevention and treatments, including, but not limited to, epidemiology, etiology, pathology, immunology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, prevention and treatments.
Original research articles will be published in the following headings:

Discovery of etiological agents for animal diseases
Epidemiology of animal and zoonotic diseases
Host tropism and transboundary spread of animal and zoonotic pathogens
Pathogenesis and biology of new and re-emerging animal diseases
Etiology of non-infectious diseases such as genetic, neoplastic and metabolic diseases
Immunology and host-pathogen interactions
Rational use and invention of veterinary drugs and novel therapeutics
Drug resistance and drug residues
Biomarker identification and novel diagnostic tools
Vaccines and prevention strategies for animal diseases

In addition, the journal publishes Editorials, Highlights, and Comments on current, significant events and topics in global animal disease fields with international interests.

Open access

All articles published by Animal Diseases are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Animal Diseases you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

The publication costs for Animal Diseases are covered by Huazhong Agricultural University so authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge.

Indexing Services

Animal Diseases is indexed in:

Baidu, Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts, CLOCKSS, CNKI, CNPIEC, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), DOAJ, Dimensions, EBSCO Discovery Service, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Google Scholar, Naver, OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service, Portico, ProQuest, SCOPUS, TD Net Discovery Service, Wanfang.

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BMC on SpringerLink.

We are working closely with relevant indexing services including PubMed Central to ensure that articles published in Animal Diseases will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Animal Diseases operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous. Single-blind peer review is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Citing articles in Animal Diseases

Articles in Animal Diseases should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors. Title. Journal Abbreviation [year];[volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL. Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Diagn Pathol 2009;1:115.

1:115 refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Animal Diseases should adhere to BMC's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies .

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Animal Diseases's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

Animal Diseases offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Animal Diseases gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Animal Diseases are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Animal Diseases’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Animal Diseases may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Animal Diseases. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Animal Diseases you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.