Providing assistance and guidance for authors at the 2024 CVMA Convention and beyond

Dr./D^r John Kastelic

Dr./D^r Tim Ogilvie

The Canadian Veterinary Journal is the “voice of veterinary medicine in Canada” (1); as Co-Editors, we have a primary responsibility to oversee journal content. For peer-reviewed articles, we often rely on the Associate and Assistant Editors to coordinate the review process and we deeply appreciate the expert advice and recommendations of numerous reviewers. However, we view our roles as being much broader and we constantly strive to encourage, assist, and support authors to publish their findings in our journal.

We have used our editorial space to encourage authors to submit work to this journal and we reiterate that we are strongly committed to providing assistance in authorship. We consistently edit and revise articles after acceptance (or, for non-reviewed material, before typesetting). Furthermore, we frequently make suggestions for papers that have been revised and are being returned for re-review, plus the rebuttal letter with authors’ responses to reviewers’ questions and comments. We also welcome opportunities for queries and to receive drafts of articles before submission; we may suggest changes to refine and improve them, thereby streamlining reviews, increasing probability of acceptance, and decreasing later changes.

We are fully aware that there is a veritable “treasure chest” of information in the form of case reports or case series; data in medical, herd, flock, and kennel records; clinical experiences; practice tips; and other ideas, approaches, and opinions that would be of considerable interest to many of our readers. However, many persons with access to this information have limited or no experience in writing or publishing. Therefore, we continue to offer our support at all stages of planning, preparing, and publishing articles.

In addition to providing advice and hands-on editing, we have ambitious, long-term plans to share writing resources to provide background guidance and direction. For example, we envision providing guidance to help choose the most appropriate format for sharing information, and for all aspects of preparing and revising submissions. Conducting literature reviews; finding, extracting, paraphrasing, and managing key facts from the literature; and developing a detailed outline are critical. We will highlight important areas where potential readers will often skim-read to determine the worthiness of an article, including the title and the beginning and end of both the abstract and the discussion. In addition, we will provide ideas and insights into making the title direct and informative, and share ways to make the abstract like a miniature version of the paper, with background, objectives, key activities, findings, and implications. Materials and methods must provide sufficient detail to enable replication, and results should be a “mirror image,” reporting outcomes. Statistical analysis is often needed, and tables and figures must be informative. The discussion is often challenging to write; it must mention current findings, describe the literature, and then discuss and interpret current findings in the context of what is known. Finally, we will provide insights to make the text shorter, more direct, easier to read, and more compelling, improving relevance and impact.

At this year’s CVMA Convention in Calgary, we are planning a short writing workshop to share key principles of writing and publishing. We hope many of you will attend the convention and we look forward to meeting some of you there, either in our session or during the convention. Feel free to introduce yourself and share your needs and ideas with us. Going forward, we envision creating a web-based resource to communicate key information and principles regarding conducting research and writing case reports, scientific papers, and various other articles. We are confident that this will help authors, encourage more and better submissions, and further enhance the legacy and impact of our journal and profession. Working together, the possibilities are almost endless. Let’s see what we can accomplish!