Small Ruminant Research

Small Ruminant Research is focused on articles regarding small ruminants and is the official journal of the International Goat Association.

Small Ruminant Research aims to publish original, basic and applied research articles. It publishes articles on goats, sheep, deer, and New and Old World camelids.

The journal publishes topics including:

• Nutrition
• Physiology,
• Genetics,
• Microbiology,
• Anatomy if associated with new research on function or production,
• Ethology,
• Product technology and consumer health effects,
• Socio-economics,
• Management, sustainability and environment,
• Veterinary Medicine,
• Husbandry Engineering.

The primary focus of the journal is on domesticated small ruminants and camelids, but contributions on non-domesticated small ruminants and camelids may be considered if these have a clear direct or indirect relevance to farmed small ruminants and camelids.

Further notes on editorial priority:

Papers on polymorphism studies will be considered only if they contain significant new information and have direct relevance to those species described in the aims and scope of this journal. Submissions on studies involving single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) only, without linking them strongly and experimentally to production traits, are not encouraged.

Manuscripts with quantitative RT-PCR without multiple normalizer gene products will be declined at preliminary review. Geneticists can submit Short Technical Notes of approximately 500 words, which will include the name of the gene, the location of the mutation (the sequence has to be deposited), the description of the population (breed, location, significant characters), possibly the allele frequency, even in small population, and some additional relevant information, with no need to demonstrate significant association with phenotypic traits or discussion. Accumulation of such information may lead to design comprehensive association studies in sheep and goats.

Morphometric studies are not in our scope unless they are explicitly related with a production trait of small ruminants.

Papers on the use of feeds in nutrition are publishable only if these feeds have more than local importance, which should be detailed in the introduction. In many studies of nutrition, the effect on animal performance of substituting a feed with another is investigated and the hypothesis is that no effect is anticipated. We recommend a power analysis to determine sample size before planning the study. If authors want to report that they have discovered no difference they should add confidence limits to the difference between the sample means: if the sample size is indeed too small, these limits will usually be too broad to be informative. If the authors' aim is to show no effect, then the usual rule for bioequivalence is that the 90%CI for the ratio between the two means needs to lie between 0.8 and 1.25. Authors need to clearly state the experimental unit and degrees of freedom for the error term.

With nutrition papers involving feeding animals in paddocks or pens with more than one animal, it is the number of paddocks or pens which determines the experimental units, not the number of animals in total, unless it is demonstrated that each animal takes independent foraging decisions.

Manuscripts that deal with the effects of plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) or plant extracts using in-vitro methods only are not published, unless if associated to a large-scale, long-term in vivo study. In studies with PSMs or plant extracts, advanced chemical analysis of the extracts should be documented. In vitro studies of the nutritional value of feeds are not in our scope unless they provide a background for in vivo studies in the same manuscript. Studies of the quality of semen, oocytes, embryos, following exposure to various materials (plant extracts, anti-oxidants, fatty acids and diluents) will be considered only if they are associated with in vivo experimental evidence in the same submission.

In the field of health, case reports presenting work in individual animals will not be considered. Only case reports presenting population medicine approaches will be considered for further evaluation on the condition that they have wide implications, well beyond their local interest, and good statistical evidence. Studies examining the prevalence of disease are not in our scope, unless their implications are of interest to the international readership of Small Ruminant Research. Submissions must describe in detail how the presented information will enhance the management of small ruminants nationally or internationally.

For products, we will consider studies on carcasses but not on the further processing of meat products for human food. Studies on the textile processing of fibres are also excluded. We will evaluate studies with milk as a whole entity, in the frame of a well-defined production system, and not as a generic commodity. Studies on the manufacture of "milk products" as mixtures of milk components or fractionated milk with non-milk ingredients will not be considered for publication. Papers on production systems will be considered only if their results can be connected to concepts and knowledge published elsewhere and/or extend them to scale up in genericity. Therefore, descriptive papers on production systems and local projects without connection to global development issues will generally not be considered. Special attention is given to the quality of methodological approaches and bibliographical references.