Author Guidelines

Scope and Focus of the Journal

The Diyala Journal for Veterinary Sciences (DJVS) publishes high-quality scientific research in veterinary medicine and related disciplines. The journal welcomes submissions covering a broad range of fields, including anatomy, histology, physiology, pathology, microbiology, parasitology, poultry diseases, surgery, obstetrics, veterinary internal medicine, veterinary public health, zoonotic diseases, and other relevant areas of veterinary and animal health sciences.

Instructions for Authors

Authors submitting manuscripts to DJVS are expected to adhere to high standards of academic integrity, scientific accuracy, and publication ethics. The following guidelines describe the ethical responsibilities, reporting requirements, and formatting instructions that must be followed by all contributors.

1. Ethical Guidelines for Authors

Originality and Plagiarism

Submitted manuscripts must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration by any other journal at the time of submission.

Authors must properly cite and acknowledge all sources, ideas, data, methods, images, figures, and text used in the manuscript.

Plagiarism in any form, including the unauthorized use of text, ideas, data, results, images, or figures without proper attribution, is strictly prohibited.

Authors are encouraged to check their manuscripts using reliable similarity-detection software before submission.

Data Integrity and Reporting

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of all data presented in their manuscripts.

Data fabrication, falsification, manipulation, inappropriate image adjustment, or selective reporting is considered unethical and may result in rejection, correction, expression of concern, or retraction, depending on the stage and severity of the case.

Statistical methods and analyses must be clearly described, and all results must be reported accurately in the text, tables, figures, and figure legends.

Authorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the study, acquisition of data, analysis or interpretation of results, drafting of the manuscript, or critical revision of its intellectual content.

All listed authors must approve the final version of the manuscript before submission and agree to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.

Any change in authorship after submission, including addition, removal, or rearrangement of authors, requires a clear explanation and written approval from all authors.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

Authors must disclose any financial, personal, institutional, or professional relationships that could influence, or be perceived to influence, the submitted work.

Potential conflicts of interest may include funding sources, employment, consultancies, personal relationships, institutional affiliations, patents, or other competing interests.

A conflict of interest statement must be included in the manuscript.

Data Sharing and Availability

Authors should be prepared to provide the data supporting their findings upon reasonable request, where ethically and legally appropriate.

Data should be made available in a clear and accessible format, while respecting confidentiality, animal owner privacy, institutional regulations, and applicable data protection requirements.

Where data cannot be shared, authors should provide a clear explanation in the manuscript.

Ethical Research Practices

Research involving animals, human participants, biological samples, or client-owned animals must be conducted in accordance with recognized institutional, national, and international ethical standards.

Manuscripts involving animals must include a statement confirming approval by an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review body, where applicable.

For studies involving client-owned animals, authors should confirm that appropriate owner consent was obtained when required.

For studies involving human participants, personal data, questionnaires, interviews, or clinical information, authors must confirm that ethical approval and informed consent were obtained where applicable.

An ethical approval statement must be included in the manuscript. If ethical approval was not required, authors should clearly state the reason.

Professional Conduct and Communication

Authors are expected to communicate with the editorial office, reviewers, and editors in a professional, respectful, and timely manner.

Responses to reviewers must be clear, polite, and supported by appropriate revisions or scientific justification.

Authors should comply with revision deadlines or contact the editorial office in advance if additional time is required.

Funding and Financial Support

All sources of financial support must be disclosed in the manuscript.

Authors should clearly state the role of the funder, if any, in study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation of results, manuscript preparation, and the decision to submit the work for publication.

If the study received no funding, this should also be stated.

Citation Ethics

Authors must cite relevant and reliable literature that directly supports the scientific content of the manuscript.

Citation of articles published in DJVS or any other journal should be based solely on scientific relevance. Authors must not include unnecessary, irrelevant, or inappropriate citations.

2. Manuscript Preparation and Formatting

General Layout

Manuscripts must be prepared in Microsoft Word format (.docx) using the official DJVS Paper Template 2025.

Use A4 page size and follow the margin requirements specified in the official journal template.

Pages must be numbered consecutively at the center of the bottom of each page.

Manuscript Structure

The manuscript should be organized in the following order:

Title

The title should be concise, informative, and written in title case.

Font: Times New Roman, 18 pt, bold, centered.

Author Names and Affiliations

Provide the full names of all authors, their institutional affiliations, ORCID IDs if available, and the email address of the corresponding author.

Font: Times New Roman, 12 pt.

Abstract

The abstract should be structured into the following sections: Background, Aims, Results, and Conclusions.

The abstract should be between 150 and 250 words.

Font: Times New Roman, 10 pt.

Keywords

Provide 3 to 5 keywords separated by commas.

Font: Times New Roman, 10 pt.

Main Text Sections

The main text should generally include the following sections:

Introduction
Materials and Methods
Ethical Approval, if applicable
Results
Discussion
Conclusions
Recommendations, if applicable
Acknowledgments, if applicable
Conflict of Interest
Funding Sources
Authors’ Contributions

Font: Times New Roman, 12 pt.

Figures and Tables

Figures should be labelled as follows: Figure (1): Title.

Tables should be labelled as follows: Table (1): Title.

Figures and tables should be placed near their first citation in the text whenever possible.

Captions and table text should use Times New Roman, 10 pt.

Histopathological figures should be clear, properly labelled, and accompanied by an appropriate description, including staining method and magnification where applicable.

Image adjustments must not misrepresent the original data. Any adjustment to brightness, contrast, or color balance should be applied to the entire image and should not obscure or alter scientific information.

References

References must follow the citation and reference style required by the official DJVS template.

References should be cited in the text in numerical order of appearance and listed numerically at the end of the manuscript.

Authors should provide the DOI for each reference whenever available.

References must be accurate, complete, relevant, and limited to sources that directly support the manuscript.

Formatting Notes

Use Times New Roman, 12 pt, throughout the manuscript unless otherwise specified in the official template.

Footnotes should be avoided. Essential information should be included in the main text.

Headings, subheadings, abbreviations, figure captions, table titles, units, and reference formatting must be consistent throughout the manuscript.

All abbreviations should be defined at first mention.

3. Open Access Policy

DJVS is an open-access journal. All published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

4. Important Note

Authors must use the official DJVS Paper Template 2025 when preparing their manuscripts.

Submissions that do not comply with the journal’s formatting and ethical requirements may be returned to the authors for correction before the peer-review process begins.