Submissions

Author Guidelines

SCOPE

World Rabbit Science only publishes articles related to rabbit science, although articles on other lagomorphs that may contribute to rabbit science may also be considered.

Before submission, manuscripts must have been prepared in accordance with the following journal's guidelines for authors.

Results of work contained in manuscripts submitted to World Rabbit Science must not have been published previously in an international refereed scientific journal. Previous partial presentation at a scientific meeting (e.g. abstract or short communication in a congress), the use data in field day reports or similar documents, including local technical press, or part of MSc or PhD theses, does not preclude the publication of such data in World Rabbit Science. Views expressed in papers published in WRS represent the opinion of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the World Rabbit Science Association or the Editorial Board.

World Rabbit Science journal does not have either article submission charges or article processing charges (APCs), being its online access also free for readers.

BEFORE SUBMISSION

Ethics and best practices

World Rabbit Science, in its commitment to ensuring ethical and rigour of its content, follows the Declaration ethic and best practice of PoliPapers (service of the Universitat Politècnica de València to promote open editing of scientific electronic journals).

Studies in animals

All papers submitted for publication in World Rabbit Science must have been carried out in accordance with the recommendations contained in the EU Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, or the National Research Council's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.

Those works that include procedures that require the intervention of an approved ethics committee must be sent referring to the committee and the code of approval of the procedures for this study. Procedures that require authorization are those invasive or non-invasive actions that may cause the animal a level of pain, suffering, anguish, or lasting damage equivalent to or greater than that caused by the introduction of a needle by good veterinary practices. Even in those experiments where this type of procedure is not used, it is recommended that they go through the pertinent ethics committees that confirm this fact.

Inclusive aspects

World Rabbit Science recommends the use of inclusive language. It encourages respect for differences and promotes equal opportunities. The content of the submitted works must not include anything that could imply differences based on age, culture, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation or disability and limitation of any kind. For this reason, World Rabbit Science recommends the use of neutral terms, avoiding descriptors that refer to personal attributes and the use of terms that may be offensive or exclusionary.

On the other hand, to promote the visibility of women in science, the authors of the article will be identified on its first page by both their first name and last name.

Authorship

The first version of the submitted work must include the definitive list of the authors of the work. In any case, the list of authors can only be modified before the article has been accepted. For that modification, the corresponding author must send an email to the Editor in chief explaining i) the change produced in the list of authors, ii) the reason for such change and iii) the written acceptance of all authors of the work (including the authors included and/or excluded).

To improve transparency in scientific production, authors must identify the individual contribution of each author in the work, using the CRediT terminology: conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, resources, data curation, writing – original draft, writing – review & editing, visualization, supervision, project administration and funding acquisition.

Type of Articles

Original research papers: Papers that present results of an original study. The results of these studies should not have been presented in any other scientific journal. However previous partial presentation at a scientific meeting (e.g. abstract or short communication in a congress) or part of MSc or PhD theses, does not preclude the publication of such data in our journal.

Short communications: Brief but complete description of limited research, with the same structure as a regular paper, but that it should not occupy more than four or five printed pages (not more than 10 manuscript pages). The results of this short communication cannot be included in a later paper.

Review articles: The journal only publishes reviews ordered from the Editorial Board (Associate Editors or Editor in Chief). These revisions are demanded in “hot topics” and to authors with a large career in this specific topic. Reviews should include the term "Review" in the title.

Technical notes: A technical note is a vehicle to report a field study or a new method, technique or procedure of interest to readers.

Letters to the Editor: Letters judged suitable for publication by the Section Editor, will be included at the end of the issue. The purpose of this section is to encourage scientific debate and discussion among those interested in rabbit production and biology. When these letters refer to published articles, they must provide supporting evidence based on published data for the points made, or must develop logical scientific hypotheses. Letters based on conjectures or unsubstantiated claims will not be published.

Book reviews: The publication of reviews of recent books of interest in the field of rabbit science will be considered. Revisions must have been solicited by the publisher of the book and communicated to the Editor-in-chief of World Rabbit Science before submission. The submission must include the review and the request letter from the book publisher.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Language: Papers must be written in English, following current usage. Spelling should follow that of the Oxford Dictionary. It is the responsibility of the authors that the language meets the minimum requirements before the manuscript is sent for evaluation. It is strongly recommended not to send manuscripts to be evaluated before they have been reviewed by a native speaker. The only word admitted for young rabbits is 'kit' (plural = 'kits'). Words such as 'pups' or 'bunnies' should be avoided.

Manuscripts should be written with wide margins and be double spaced. Pages should be numbered. Lines should be numbered continuously to help the refereeing procedure.

Font: Use Arial font with a type size of 12 points.

Units: The International System of Units should be used. Temperatures should be given in degrees Celsius.

Abbreviations: Any abbreviation must be defined the first time it appears on any of the following items: abstract, main text, table, or figure. This allows the correct understanding of any element of the work when it is approached independently. The use of widely used or recognized abbreviations in each field of knowledge is recommended. In the case of the treatments under study, it is recommended that they be identified with abbreviations that facilitate recognition of the treatment.

Trade Names: Chemical substances should be referred to by the generic name only. Trade names should not be used. Drugs should be referred to by their generic names. If proprietary drugs have been used in the study, refer to these by their generic name, mentioning the proprietary name, and the name and location of the manufacturer, in parentheses.

First Page: Should bear the Running Head, the title of the paper, the complete names of the authors (complete first name and the surname), the complete postal address of the authors and, if possible, the ORCID number of each author. The corresponding author must be indicated, providing phone, fax and email and the contribution of authors: See the Authorship section above. A running head consisting of not more than 50 letters and spaces must also be given after the mention "Running Head". Finally, authors should indicate how the work should be cited, using the World Rabbit Science citation system. See this example of how to prepare the first page.

Headings: Major headings (Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Authors Contribution, Declaration of Interest, Acknowledgements, and References) are centred and appear in bold type capitalized. First subheadings appear at the left margin on a separate line in bold type and are followed by punctuation. Second subheadings appear at the left margin in italics, on a separate line or at the beginning of the first line of a paragraph. The use of third subheadings is not recommended.

Illustrations: All the illustrations (figures and tables) should be presented each on a separate sheet and referred to in the text by their number. Tables should be numbered with Arabic numerals and be accompanied by adequate titles and, if necessary, table footnotes. Figures should also be numbered with Arabic numerals and the title given on the same sheet. Figure and Table legends should be explicit so that the illustrations are comprehensible without reference to the text.

For optimal results, the figures should be sent in the following formats depending on the type of figure:

• Line art, graphs, charts and schemas: submit in vector formats, such as EPS, PDF or AI, or their editable original file (Word, XLS) is recommended if subsequent homogenization is needed.
• Photographic and bitmap images: submit in an image format such as TIFF, BMP, JPG (should be saved at maximum quality), or PSD.

For figure lettering, use a clear, sans-serif typeface (Arial). Use the same typeface in the same font size for all figures in your paper. Avoid excessive boxing, unnecessary colour, decorative effects (such as three-dimensional histograms) and intermediate lines in graphs. The thinnest lines in the final figure should be no smaller than 0,25 points wide.

All figures should be submitted at their intended publication size so that no reduction or enlargement is necessary. The resolution must be approximately 300 dpi at the publication size. We encourage the authors to test your figures by sizing them to their intended dimensions and printing them.

Citations: Citations should be made in lower case. Apart from reviews, the number of citations should be minimised; select only the most pertinent ones. When two or more citations are included in a grouping within a sentence, the citations must be arranged in chronological order, and if needed, alphabetically within the year. For two authors "and" (e.g. Smith and Wilson, 2022) has to be employed; but for three and more authors cited "et al.", has to be used (e.g. Robertson et al., 2005). If, two papers abbreviate identically in the text, place a different letter (a, b, c... in order of appearance) after the date for each paper, both in the text and in the references list (e.g. Taylor et al., 2017a).

Paper Section

Abstract: The abstract should be written in a single paragraph, and it will have a maximum of 400 words. It should be clear and informative. The abstract should be understandable without reference to the paper. We recommend containing the following information: purpose of the study, experimental treatments evaluated, results obtained (containing the main quantitative data), main conclusion and possible implications. No references should be given in the abstract.

Keywords: List up to a maximum of six keywords after the abstract. Avoid the use of abbreviations and too many general or plural terms. For indexing purposes, keywords are recommended to be different from those included in the manuscript title.

Introduction: The introduction briefly justifies the research and specifies the hypotheses to be tested. Extensive discussion of the relevant literature should be included in the discussion of the results, not in the introduction. To minimise the length and avoid redundancy, no more than three references should be cited to support a specific concept. It is recommended to end this section with the objectives of the study.

Materials and Methods: Provide enough detail to permit the reader to reproduce the experiment. If some methods refer to other published papers, the description could be summarized if they should be accessible by the normal reader. Modifications to cited methods should also be described. Some harmonised methods, recommendations, and guidelines for rabbit science experiments (nutrition, meat, reproduction...) have been previously published in World Rabbit Science, they all have free access, and the Editorial Office encourage their use.

Data of research articles must have been statistically analysed using approved statistical methods. In the case of data with repeated measures, these should be analysed using appropriate mixed models for each variable. Treatment means must be accompanied by standard errors. If Bayesian analyses are performed, posterior means or modes must be accompanied by credibility intervals or high posterior density intervals.

Results: The results section, which may be combined with discussion but discouraged, should be presented in graphics or tabular form when feasible. The text should explain or elaborate on the presented data, but numbers should not be normally repeated within the text. Figures should not repeat the information given in tables. This section should be clear, concise and statistically supported.

The mean and standard error (or standard deviation) must be expressed with the same degree of accuracy. The same applies to credibility intervals in Bayesian analyses. It is recommended not to provide more than 4 significant figures. Some examples are listed below:

2452 ± 43; 0.732 ± 0.021; 7.500 ± 0.015; 9750 ± 240; 9.75 ± 0.24

In a normal situation, the standard error, or the credibility intervals in the Bayesian case, are expressed by two significant digits, e.g., 35 or 0.35 or 0.035. Examples for a rabbit live weight:

1756 ± 25 g or 1.756 ± 0.025 kg.

Discussion: The discussion section, which may be combined with a final paragraph of conclusions, should interpret the results integrating literature results with the research findings to provide the reader with a basis on which to accept or reject the hypotheses tested.

Conclusions: The conclusions section, which could appear separate or as a final paragraph of the discussion section, must present the main conclusions obtained from your results supported statistically. Although the inclusion of the possible future implications of the work or recommendations on how to act based on these results is accepted, interpretations that are not sufficiently supported by the results obtained should be avoided. Unfortunately, on many occasions, some readers go directly to the conclusions section without having read the results and discussion, so it is advisable to avoid abbreviations in this section and focus the conclusions only on the results obtained in the work.

Acknowledgements: When appropriate, the name of the individuals who provided help during the research, funding sources (both founding organisations and research grants, including the name of the funding organization and identification number), and other thanks must be included in the acknowledgements section.

References list: The references should be given in full with the name and forename initial(s) of the author(s), year, the full title of the article, and journal of publication with the indication of the volume, first and last page of the article. In the list of references, the order should be alphabetical with papers by the same authors arranged in the order 1) single author, 2) two authors alphabetically according to the name of the second author, and 3) three or more authors in appearance order with a,b,c etc. for papers published in the same year. References should be abbreviated in accordance with the rules of the List of Title Word Abbreviations. Names of authors are in lower case, name of the journal and number of the journal in italics. Transcriptions from non-Latin alphabets must be written between square brackets. Use of DOI is highly encouraged.

Some examples are given below:

Theilgaard P., Sánchez J.P., Pascual J.J., Berg P., Friggens N.C., Baselga M.  2007. Late reproductive senescence in a rabbit line hyper selected for reproductive longevity, and its association with body reserves. Genet. Sel. Evol., 39: 207-223. https://doi.org/10.1051/gse:2006043 

González-Mariscal G. 2007. Mother rabbits and their offspring: timing is everything.    Dev. Psychobiol., 49: 71-76. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.20196

European Union 2003. Protection of animals used for experimental purposes. Directive 86/609/EEC of 24th November 1986. Amended 16th September 2003.

Archer M. 2011. Ordering the vegetarian meal? There’s more animal blood on your hands. The Conversation, http://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-mealtheres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659. Accessed November 2019.

AOAC 2000. Official methods of analysis, 17th ed. Association of Official Analytical Chemists, Gaithersburg, MD, USA.

SAS 2002. SAS/SAT User’s Guide (Release 9.1). SAS Inst. Inc. Cary NC, USA.

Savietto D., Martínez-Paredes E., Ródenas L., Baselga M., Cervera C., Blas E., Pascual J.J. 2012. Rearing-diet strategy and productive longevity of crossbreed rabbit does. In Proc.: 10^th World Rabbit Congress, 3-6 September 2012, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, 541-545.

De Blas C., Wiseman J. 2010. Nutrition of the rabbit (2nd ed.). CABI Publishing, Wallingford, UK, pp. 235. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781845936693.0083

Xiccato G., Trocino A. 2010. Energy and protein metabolism and requirements. In: De Blas J.C. and Wiseman J. (ed). Nutrition of the Rabbit, (2nd ed.). CABI Publishing, Wallingford, UK, 83-118. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781845936693.0083

Yu B., Chio P.W.S., Young C.L., Huang H.H. 1987. [A study of rabbit T-type canula and ileal digestibility]. J. Chin. Soc. Anim. Sci., 16, 73-81.