Animal Genetics

Published on behalf of the Stichting International Foundation for Animal Genetics

Edited by:
Editor: Chris Moran

Print ISSN: 0268-9146
Online ISSN: 1365-2052
Frequency: Bi-monthly
Current Volume: 41 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 2/45 Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science; 73/138 Genetics & Heredity
Impact Factor: 2.459

TopAuthor Guidelines

General
Manuscripts should be submitted through the Animal Genetics - ScholarOne Manuscripts (formerly known as Manuscript Central) electronic editorial office.

The corresponding author will need to create an account (top left hand corner) the first time he/she accesses the site. The author will be asked to provide a full postal address, email address, and telephone and fax numbers. Animal Genetics - ScholarOne Manuscripts will then create a user name and password which should be retained for future access to the site. Once the author is logged into the system, the Main Menu will be displayed. Clicking on the Author Centre will bring up instructions for uploading the manuscript and associated files.

If the author is unable to submit the manuscript through Animal Genetics - ScholarOne Manuscripts, he/she should send three hard copies of the paper to the Editor (Chris Moran, address as above), as well as the manuscript submittal form. However, papers submitted in this way will be handled by the Animal Genetics Editorial Office through the U.S. postal service, including requests for reviews and responses to the authors. This is in contrast to those manuscripts submitted through the Animal Genetics - ScholarOne Manuscripts site, for which all correspondence will be handled by email.

Detailed instructions for authors are published annually (Animal Genetics 2005, 36, 94-96) as well as herein. Manuscripts that are not prepared in accordance with these detailed instructions will be returned to the authors. Manuscripts must be grammatically and linguistically correct (see below for advice for non-native English speakers). The Editor reserves the right to return manuscripts that are not grammatically correct. Papers must not have been submitted for publication elsewhere. Revision of the manuscript must be received by the Editor within three months or the revision will be considered a new submission.

Spelling should conform to the Concise Dictionary of Current English (UK spelling) and units of measurement, symbols and abbreviations with those in Units, Symbols and Abbreviations (4th edn, 1988), published and supplied by the Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London W1M 8AE UK. This specifies the use of SI (Systeme International) units.

Pre-submission English-language editing
Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/english_language.asp . All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.

Copyright
Authors are no longer required to assign copyright in their paper. Instead, once accepted, authors will be required to assign the exclusive right to publish their paper to Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Stichting International Foundation for Animal Genetics. Assignment of the exclusive license is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless exclusive licence has been assigned. (Papers subject to government or Crown copyright are exempt from this requirement.) Authors can download a copy of the exclusive licence form here and should complete both the first and second pages of the form before returning it to the Production Editor.

Online Open
OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley InterScience, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, see http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/authorresources/onlineopen.html#OnlineOpen_Terms.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form AND exclusive licence form available from our website at:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/age_oof.pdf (Online Open Form - please note this form is for use with OnlineOpen material ONLY)
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/age_elf.pdf (Exclusive licence form)

Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

The copyright statement for OnlineOpen authors will read:
© [yyyy] The Author(s)
Journal compilation © [yyyy] Stichting International Foundation for Animal Genetics

Author Services
Online production tracking is now available for your article through Wiley-Blackwell's 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 this page for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

Author material archive policy
Please note that unless specifically requested, Blackwell Publishing will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material submitted two months after publication. Please inform the editorial office or production editor as soon as possible if submitted material should be returned.

Types of Manuscripts
Full research manuscripts should consist of the following sections - title page, Summary, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, tables, legends to figures and figures. Full research manuscripts should normally not exceed 5000 words in length, including all text, references, figures, legends, etc., i.e. approximately five journal pages in total.

Short communications should consist of the following sections - title page, Summary, Keywords, main text, Acknowledgements, References, tables, legends to figures and figures. Short communications must not exceed 1500 words in total and two figures and/or tables.

Mini-reviews are now being sought on issues of interest to Animal Genetics readers. These reviews should include title page, Summary, Keywords, main text, Acknowledgments, References, tables, legends to figures and figures, and would usually not exceed 5000 words in total.

Brief notes report information such as polymorphisms with map assignments, negative associations between a polymorphism and a trait, and genetic diversity data. Brief Note manuscripts should not exceed 500 words in total as they must accommodate a single column, i.e. half a journal page. Subheadings are adapted to the specific information. References are abbreviated and numbered sequentially in the text. As of August 1, 2005, the map assignment of a single gene or marker by radiation hybrid and/or in situ hybridization will not be considered.

Please click here if you wish to view an example of a full paper, short communication or brief note.

Arrangement of the manuscript
A single file should be prepared containing the title page, summary, text, acknowledgements, references and tables, double spaced at 12 point size. Additional files should be created for each figure. DOS or Windows operating system and Word Perfect or Word for Windows word-processing packages should be used to prepare the text file.
• Leave the right-hand margin unjustified
• Turn the hyphenation option off, and do not number the lines of text
• Use tabs, not spaces, to separate data in tables

Title Page
The title page should include a short but informative title of the paper, the initials and surnames of each author followed by his or her department, institution, city, post code and country. The fax, telephone number and email address of the corresponding author should also be included. Any changes of address should be given in footnotes. The author to whom reprint requests should be addressed must be indicated (preferably the corresponding author). Acknowledgements of funding and institutions paper reference number should not appear on the title page.

Summary
Full papers, short communications and mini-reviews should include a summary of not more than 250 words. The abstract should summarize the main findings of the paper and be comprehensible before the rest of the paper is read. Abbreviations and references should not be used in the summary

Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements should follow the main text but precede the list of references. Personal acknowledgements should precede those of institutions and agencies.

References
References in the text should follow the Harvard system in style, i.e. name followed by date, Brown & Smith (1966); if there are three or more authors, Brown et al. (1966). References at the end of the text should be listed in alphabetical order of (first) authors, giving both the full title of the paper and full name of the journal, and should appear as follows:

Giger U., Reilly M.P., Asakura T., Baldwin C.J. & Harvey J.W. (1986) Autosomal recessive phosphofructokinase deficiency in English springer spaniel dogs. Animal Genetics 17, 15-23.

McKeam T.J. (1980) Method for growing hybridomas in rats or mice. In: Monoclonal Antibodies (ed. by R.H. Kennet, T.J. McKearn & K.B. Bechtol), pp. 403-4. Plenum Press, New York.

Personal communications (K. MacPherson, personal communication) must be authorized in writing by those involved, and unpublished data should be cited in the text as (unpublished data). References to manuscripts submitted, but not yet accepted, should be cited in the text as (M. Bruce & A. Laing, in preparation) and should not be included in the list of references.

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

For brief notes, citations in the text should be by number, and an abbreviated format should be used for references at the end of the text, i.e. a maximum of two authors should be listed, the title of the article should be omitted and abbreviated journal titles should be used, e.g. 1 Giger et al. (1986) Anim Genet 17, 15-23.

Figures
Lettering on graphs and other illustrations should be horizontal whenever possible. 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). Publication of many papers has often been delayed due to unmet resolution graphics requirement. Please read our instructions for electronic artwork formats and resolutions (digital illustration standards) before you create electronic figure files.

In the full-text online edition of the journal, figure legends may be truncated in abbreviated links to the full-screen version. Therefore, the first 100 characters of any legend should inform the reader of key aspects of the figure.

It is the policy of Animal Genetics for authors to pay the full cost for the reproduction of their colour artwork. Therefore, please note that if there is colour artwork in your manuscript when it is accepted for publication, Wiley-Blackwell requires you to complete and return a colour work agreement form before your paper can be published. This form can be downloaded as a PDF* here. If you are unable to download the form, please contact the Production Editor and they will be able to email or FAX a form to you. Once completed, please return the form to the Production Editor by conventional mail, email or fax. Contact details of the Production Editor can be found below:

Production Editor
Animal Genetics
Journal Content Management
Wiley-Blackwell
Wiley Services Singapore Pte Ltd
600 North Bridge Road
# 05-01 Parkview Square
Singapore 188778
Email: age@wiley.com
Fax: +65 6511 8288 / +65 6295 6202

Any article received by Blackwell Publishing with colour work will not be published until the form has been returned.

In the event that an author is not able to cover the costs of reproducing colour figures in colour in the printed version of the journal, Animal Genetics offers authors the opportunity to reproduce colour figures in colour for free in the online version of the article (but they will still appear in black and white in the print version). If an author wishes to take advantage of this free colour-on-the-web service, they should liaise with the Editorial Office to ensure that the appropriate documentation is completed for the Publisher.

* To read PDF files, you must have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not have this program, it is available as a free download from the following web address:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Nomenclature
All gene names and symbols should be italicized throughout the text, table and figures. Locus symbols used in Animal Genetics publications must be confirmed on the web site http://www.genenames.org . The NCBI's Entrez Gene database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gene) can be used to check for non-human gene names.

Access to Data
Data that is integral to the paper must be made available in such a way as to enable readers to replicate, verify and build upon the conclusions published in the paper. Any restriction on the availability of this data must be disclosed at the time of submission.

Data may be included as part of the main article where practical. We recommend that data for which public repositories are widely used, and are accessible to all, should be deposited in such a repository prior to publication. The appropriate linking details and identifier(s) should then be included in the publication and where possible the repository, to facilitate linking between the journal article and the data. If such a repository does not exist, data should be included as supporting information to the published paper or authors should agree to make their data available upon reasonable request.

Supplementary material
Supplementary material can be published as web materials on the Animal Genetics web site at the Editor's discretion. In order to provide long term access to such supplementary information the Editor will generally prefer to see the material mounted on the Animal Genetics web site rather than on authors' sites. Supplementary materials may include details of allele frequencies underlying genetic diversity studies, primer sequences for multiple genetic markers or relevant multimedia files. The supplementary material will be accessible by hot links from the online version of Animal Genetics. Authors are responsible for the preparation of supplementary material, which should be supplied in a format that will be most accessible by readers (e.g. PDF or Word for text and TIFF/EPS for figures). For more information please see our guidelines at http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/suppmat.asp

Accession Numbers
New nucleotide data must be submitted and deposited in the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases and an accession number obtained before the paper can be accepted for publication. Submission to any one of the three collaborating databanks is sufficient to ensure data entry in all. The accession number must be included in the manuscript. If requested, the database will withhold release of data until publication. The most convenient method for submitting sequence data is by World Wide Web.

Contact Information for Nucleotide Sequence:
DDBJ: Center for Information Biology and DNA Data Bank of Japan
National Institute of Genetics, 111 Yata, Mishima, Shizuoka 411-8540, JAPAN; telephone: +81 559 81 6853; fax: +81 559 81 6849; e-mail: ddbj@ddbj.nig.ac.jp web URL: www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp

EMBL: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Submission, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD U.K.; telephone: +44 1223 494400; fax: +44 1223 494472; e-mail: datasubs@ebi.ac.uk web URL: www.ebi.ac.uk

GenBank: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, Bldg. 38A, Rm 8N-803 Bethesda, MD 20894, U.S.A.; telephone: +1 301 496 2475; fax: +1 301 480 9241; e-mail: info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov web URL: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

For special types of submission (e.g. genomes, bulk submission, etc) additional submission protocols are available from the above sites.

Protein sequences, which have been determined by direct sequencing of the protein, must be submitted to SWISS-PROT at the EMBL outstation - The European Bioinformatics Institute and the accession number included on the manuscript submittal form and in the manuscript . Please note that accession numbers are not provided, in advance, for protein sequences that are the result of nucleic acid sequences. These translations will automatically be forwarded to us from the EMBL nucleotide database and are assigned SWISS-PROT accession numbers on incorporation into TrEMBL.

Results from characterization experiments should also be submitted to SWISS-PROT at the EBI. This can include such information as function, subcellular location, subunit etc.

Contact Information for Protein Sequence:
SWISS-PROT submissions, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD, U.K.; telephone: +44 1223 494400; fax: +44 1223 494472; e-mail: datasubs@ebi.ac.uk (for sequence submissions); update@ebi.ac.uk (for characterization information); web URL: www.ebi.ac.uk

Sequence Data
Figures illustrating sequence data will not generally be published, unless key features of the sequence need to be highlighted. Manuscripts containing sequence data will generally only be published if other data are included (e.g. evidence of polymorphism, expression studies or chromosome assignments).

Policy
It is understood that by publishing a paper in Animal Genetics the authors agree to make available to other scientists engaged in academic (non-profit) research any of the nucleic acids, antibodies, cells, etc., that are not available from commercial suppliers and are required to substantiate the scientific conclusions of the paper. The International Society for Animal Genetics encourages the free exchange of research materials and data and fosters the standardization of nomenclature for genetic variants through such exchanges.

Ethical Standards
The journal will not accept for publication papers that describe experiments showing lack of concern for present ethical and welfare standards. The Editor's decision in this regard is final.

Offprints
Authors of reviews, full and short articles (not Brief Notes) will be provided with electronic offprints of their paper in PDF format free of charge, and this PDF may be distributed subject to the Publisher's terms and conditions. Paper offprints of the printed published article may be purchased if ordered via the method stipulated on the instructions that will accompany the proofs. Printed offprints are posted to the correspondence address given for the paper unless a different address is specified when ordered. Note that it is not uncommon for printed offprints to take up to eight weeks to arrive after publication of the journal. 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. 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.

Proofs
The corresponding author will receive an email alert containing a link to a web site that contains the proof. 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 the PDF file. This software can be downloaded (free of charge) from 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
Animal Genetics 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. More information about DOIs can be found at: http://www.doi.org/faq.html.