Journal of Fish Diseases

Edited by:
R.J. Roberts and R. Wootten

Print ISSN: 0140-7775
Online ISSN: 1365-2761
Frequency: Monthly
Current Volume: 33 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 13/40 Fisheries; 34/87 Marine & Freshwater Biology; 28/134 Veterinary Sciences
Impact Factor: 1.54

TopAuthor Guidelines

Journal of Fish Diseases now accepts manuscripts electronically via an online submission site, ScholarOne Manuscripts (formerly known as Manuscript Central). Authors should submit online to the Author Centre at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jfd. Complete instructions for preparing and submitting manuscripts online are provided at the submission site. The review process is entirely electronically-based.

Copyright Transfer Agreement
Authors will be required to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) for all papers accepted for publication. Signature of the CTA is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. (Government employees need to complete the Author Warranty sections, although copyright in such cases does not need to be assigned). After submission authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various medium/circumstances (please see the form for further details). To assist authors an appropriate form will be supplied by the editorial office. Alternatively, authors may like to download a copy of the form from the journal website here. If you have any problems doing so, please contact Christine Kerr in the Editorial Office by telephone(+44 (0)1786 473171) or by e-mail (Christine.kerr@stir.ac.uk).

Please return the signed CTA via post to: Production Editor, Wiley Services Singapore Pte Ltd, 600 North Bridge Road, #05-01 Parkview Square, Singapore 188778; or email to jfd@wiley.com; or fax to +65 6295-6202.

Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material from other sources. If the paper is part of a larger study and you, or other authors, have written additional papers that have been published/submitted for publication using the study as the basis for the article, you must contact the Editor with details to ensure there is no breach of copyright. Any breach of copyright will be taken very seriously and appropriate action taken.

Electronic Submission
Authors must submit their manuscripts electronically to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jfd via their Author Centre. Complete instructions for preparing and submitting manuscripts online are provided at the submission site. Authors are notified promptly by e-mail that their manuscripts have been received. If this acknowledgement is not received within a week or so then authors should enquire at the Editorial Office to Christine.kerr@stir.ac.uk . The main author is responsible for entering details of any co-authors into the system when prompted.

A title page should contain the full title, author's name(s) and place of work, address for correspondence (including email) and short running title. Authors should retain one copy of text, tables and illustrations as the Editors cannot accept responsibility for damage or loss of manuscripts. Overseas authors may wish to consult an appropriate member of the Editorial Board prior to submission of material.

The text must be preceded by a short abstract not exceeding 200 words, followed by no more than six keywords, and should then proceed to sections of Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, and Discussion. Pages should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals, but tables, figure legends (including magnifications) and acknowledgements should be submitted on separate sheets. Tables and figures should be referred to in the text together with an indication of their appropriate position recorded in the text margin.

The full Latin specific name, including the authority with correct taxonomic disposition, should appear at least once for each species when first mentioned in the text or elsewhere, thus: Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L., turbot, Scophthalmus maximus (L.), snakehead, Channa punctatus (Bloch), rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum), i.e. authorities bracketed depending on first description (for further information see American Fisheries Society Special Publication No 12, A List of Common and Scientific Names of Fishes from the United States and Canada).

The reference list should be in alphabetical order and include the full title thus:

Chapman D.W. (1971) Production. In: Methods for the Assessment of Fish Production in Freshwater (ed. by W. E. Ricker), pp. 199-214. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford.

Wickens J.F. (1972) The food value of brine shrimp, Artemia salina L., to larvae of the prawn, Palaemon serratus Pennant. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 10, 151-170.

References in the text should use the Harvard System and be in full on first mention, e.g. (Brown, Smith & Williams 1975), subsequently abbreviated to (Brown et al. 1975). Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their references. References should only be cited as 'in press' if they have been accepted for publication. Manuscripts in preparation, unpublished reports and reports not readily available should not be cited. Personal communications should be cited as such in the text.

References in Articles
We recommend the use of a tool such as EndNote or Reference Manager for reference management and formatting.
EndNote reference styles can be searched for here:
http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp

Reference Manager reference styles can be searched for here:
http://www.refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp

Spelling should conform to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Units of measurement, symbols and abbreviations must be given in metric units but British or other equivalents may be included in parentheses. Where any doubt arises as to the correct abbreviations, reference should be made to Quantities, Units and Symbols, 2nd edition, 1975, published by the Royal Society, London (ISBN: 0 85403 071 9). Full stops are not used with abbreviations. The following are suggested as internationally accepted units: %, ºC, mm, cm, cc, mL, L, m, km, mg, g, kg, s, min, h, ha.
For sample issue please click here

Illustrations
Guidelines to submitting illustrations will be found at the submission site. We would like to receive your artwork in electronic form. Please save vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) in Encapsulated Postscript Format (EPS), and bitmap files (e.g. half-tones) in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Ideally, vector graphics that have been saved in metafile (.WMF) or pict (.PCT) format should be embedded within the body of the text file. Detailed information on our digital illustration standards is available here. Avoid using tints if possible; if they are essential to the understanding of the figure, try to make them coarse. Tables are part of the text and should be included, one per page, after the References.

All graphs, drawings, and photographs are considered figures and should be sequentially numbered with Arabic numerals. All figures should clarify the text and their number should be kept to a minimum. Details must be large enough to retain their clarity after reduction. Submit high resolution files of each illustration. Line drawings should be professionally drafted and photographed; halftones should exhibit high contrast. Incorporate linear size scale when relevant.

The author must pay for colour illustrations at a rate quoted by the publisher. In the event that the author is not able to cover the costs of reproducing colour figures in colour in the printed version of the journal, Journal of Fish Diseases offers authors the opportunity to reproduce colour figures in colour for free in the online version of the article (but they still appear in black and white in the print version). If an author wishes to take advantage of this free colour-on-web service, they should liaise with the Editorial Office to ensure that the appropriate documentation is completed for the Publisher. To download a ColorWork Agreement Form, click here.
Any article received by Blackwell Publishing with colour work will not be published until the form has been returned.

Proofs
The corresponding author will receive an email alert containing a link to a web site. A working e-mail address must therefore be provided for the corresponding author. The proof can be downloaded as a PDF (portable document format) file from this site. Acrobat Reader will be required in order to read this file. This software can be downloaded (free of charge) from the following web site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.

This will enable the file to be opened, read on screen and printed out in order for any corrections to be added. Further instructions will be sent with the proof. Hard copy proofs will be posted if no e-mail address is available. Excessive changes made by the author in the proofs, excluding typesetting errors, will be charged separately.

Early View
Journal of Fish Diseases is covered by Wiley-Blackwell's Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so Early View articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.

Offprints
Authors will be provided with electronic offprints of their paper. Additional paper offprints may be ordered online. Please click on the following link, fill in the necessary details and ensure that you type information in all of the required fields. If you have queries about offprints, please email: offprint@cosprinters.com

The cost is more if the order form arrives too late for the main print run. Offprints are normally dispatched within 3 weeks of publication of the issue in which the paper appears. Please contact the publishers if offprints do not arrive: however, please note that offprints are sent by surface mail, so overseas orders may take up to 6 weeks to arrive. Electronic offprints are sent to the first author at his or her first email address on the title page of the paper, unless advised otherwise; therefore please ensure that the name, address and email of the receiving author are clearly indicated on the manuscript title page if he or she is not the first author of the paper.

Author Services
Author Services enables authors to track their article - once it has been accepted - through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit here for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.


Reviews
One feature of Journal of Fish Diseases which has been particularly popular in the past, has been the occasional Review of a particular disease condition, sector of fish pathology or disease agent. It has been decided to increase the frequency of these and to make available up to 25 pages of several issues each year to this purpose if reviews are offered in sufficient numbers.

Such Reviews can cover any subject within the journal's remit. They will be peer reviewed via the Editorial Board and prospective authors are encouraged to review their ideas and raise any questions with a Board Member or with the Editors, should they wish.

Reviews should define the present level of understanding of their subject and suggest new insights or possible avenues for future investigation. The text should be produced on the same editorial basis as standard research papers in the Journal of Fish Diseases.

Short Communications
These should differ from full papers on the basis of scope or completeness, rather than quality of research. They may report significant new data arising from problems with narrow, well-defined limits, or important findings that warrant rapid publication before broader studies are complete. Their text should neither exceed 1500 words (approximately 6 pages of typescript) nor be divided up into conventional sections. When submitting Short Communications, authors should make it clear that their work is to be treated as such.

No academic journal can operate without the generous support of its referees. We wish to thank all of you who have helped us with the peer review process over the years. Without this support, all scientific standards are placed in jeopardy. We also hope that our enhanced journal will encourage you to continue to offer your quality papers to us for review. With your help, we will be striving to ensure that as it moves into its second quarter century, the Journal of Fish Diseases will continue to be the automatic choice for quality papers in fish and shellfish pathology.

Clinical Reports
We also welcome the submission of Clinical Reports on new conditions improvements in clinical diagnosis and new treatments.

Disks
Disks should be IBM-compatible. An accurate hard-copy must accompany each disk, together with the details of the type of computer used, the software employed and the disk system if known. Do not justify. Particular attention should be taken to ensure that any articles submitted in this form adhere exactly to the journal style in all respects.

Author material archive policy
Please note that unless specifically requested, Blackwell Publishing will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material 2 months after publication. If you require the return of any material submitted, please inform the Editorial Office or Production Editor as soon as possible if you have not already done so.