Jump To: Scope | Authorship | Affiliations | Policy on Prior Publication | Article Types | Manuscript Style| Detailed Sections Instructions  | Accessibility Requirements | Required Statements | Artificial Intelligence Use | Supplementary Materials  | General Formatting | References

Submission

Submission is online via the Journal of Dairy Research ScholarOne submission site. 

Scope

The Journal of Dairy Research is an international journal that publishes original scientific research on all aspects of the biology, wellbeing and technology of lactating animals and the foods they produce. All aspects of milk production by livestock will be considered, including feedstuffs, nutrition, management, physiology, health and wellbeing of animals that produce milk, the quality and characteristics of milk, its processing and products.

Article Types

Please find below formatting guidance related to the various article types acceptable in the Journal of Dairy Research.

1. Research Report

The research report is the most common type of article, describing an experiment, trial, survey, in silico analysis, meta-analysis or systematic review – any form of structured investigation. All research reports (including systematic reviews and meta-analyses) will have the same general format: Abstract; introduction; materials and methods; results; discussion; conclusions. All essential material required to interpret the validity of the study must be included in the main text. If a study is based on a questionnaire or survey. The full set of questions should be included in a supplementary material section, in the original language and translated into English. Supplementary material may include any other material that would be of interest to a reader, or information that might help a reader to replicate the study. More information on each of the sections, including supplementary materials, is provided later in this document.

2. Short Communications

A relatively simple investigation or preliminary study might be submitted as a short communication. Short communications must include an abstract, relevant declarations, and a reference list, but none of the other section headings are to be used. They are constrained to 2,500 words or less, excluding references. Short communications can include up to five figures or tables. Following feedback from editors and reviewers, some articles that are originally submitted as research reports might be recommended for publication as short communications. Although they are subjected to the same rigour of peer review as full research reports; their brevity should enable more rapid or efficient review.

3. Editorials 

Most issues of the Journal lead with an editorial. This is either written by one of the editors of the Journal or someone invited by an editor. Editorials will usually cover a subject of topical interest or will highlight some of the research in either the issue in which published, or a new online collection of previously published articles.

4. Reviews and Invited Reviews

Although it has become very easy to use generative AI tools to compose credible-appearing narrative reviews, we continue to consider publishing review articles. However, the threshold for acceptance is now very high and few will be accepted. Researchers are encouraged instead to conduct and fully document systematic reviews or meta-analyses, which should be submitted as full research reports. Narrative reviews that do not demonstrate the use of strong methods to avoid bias in selection of sources will not be considered.

5. Research Reflections

The research reflection provides an opportunity for scientists (of any discipline) to comment on research in an area of interest to the readership, without being overly constrained by the standard formats of research reports. Research reflections can be used to ask questions about existing paradigms of investigation, to propose hypotheses that the scientist might not have the resources to investigate, to criticise commonly used approaches to investigation or representation. This category of article doesn’t have a strictly imposed set of headings. It is important for authors to correctly differentiate between a narrative review and a research reflection. Research reflections must be fully supported by evidence and referenced. Potential authors are encouraged to discuss their ideas for research reflections with the Editor in Chief prior to drafting and submission.

6. Case Reports

Reports of the investigation and remediation of problems in dairy production or new product development will be considered if the work is conducted and described to the standards expected of original scientific contributions and if the work contributes valuable new knowledge. Case reports must include an abstract, relevant declarations, and a reference list, but none of the other section headings are to be used. They are constrained to 2,500 words or less, excluding references. Case reports can include up to five figures or tables.

7. Book Reviews, Letters to the Editor, Obituaries

These article types are relatively uncommon but encouraged. The Journal does not set specific guidelines for the format of these articles. In each case, authors should contact the Editor in Chief prior to submission.

8. Conference/Symposium Reviews/Proceedings/Abstracts

The Journal is open to consideration of collaboratively publishing conference proceedings and abstracts from relevant meetings. 

Essential content for research reports and short communications

All research reports and short communications are expected to include essential elements, although the specific requirements will vary according to the nature of the study. Please

Validity 

All studies should include basic information that allows comprehensive evaluation of the internal and external validity of the study. To achieve this, coherent aims or objectives must be set, and how those objectives were met should be clearly described. To help ensure that their work meets this expectation, authors should use easily obtained reporting guidelines for the type of work that they have undertaken. The following list is recommended. 

• For systematic reviews, the PRISMA guidelines should be followed (Page et al 2021). 
• For studies involving animals, the ARRIVE guidelines should be followed (du Sert et al 2020). It is expected that papers will be fully compliant with the ‘Recommended set’ as well as the ‘Arrive Essential 10’.
• For studies involving human respondents (questionnaires, interviews, surveys), the CROSS guidelines(Sharma et al 2021).

The list is not exhaustive, and other alternatives could be used.

For studies that do not use animal tissues other than food materials harvested as for commercial purposes, similar approaches are expected to ensure robust, repeatable results. More detail is provided in the subsequent sections on materials and methods and on reporting results.

Legality

All studies must have been legal in the country in which they were conducted. 

Animal welfare and ethics: All studies involving animals must include a statement of the animal ethical regulatory framework under which the work was conducted. This refers to 1) purely observational studies that do not include any interventions, 2) studies where the intervention is considered to fall within normal husbandry, 3) studies in which the intervention is major and expected to be harmful. It is recognised that the legal frameworks for research animal ethics vary around the world, but it is the responsibility of the authors to demonstrate that they have followed their local regulations. Compliance with local regulations is necessary but not sufficient; work that is considered by the editors and reviewers to be ethically unjustifiable will not be published.

Human welfare and ethics: As with animal studies, those reporting on investigations involving human subjects, including surveys and interviews, must provide a statement of the ethical permissions and regulatory framework under which it was conducted. In all cases where personal data is used (including studies on the financial or technical performance, or health of animals on farms), a clear statement is required on how confidential information was managed by the investigators. 

Use of non-approved products: Studies that use treatments (pharmacological, feed additives, food additives) that are not officially authorised in the country in which the study was conducted should include a statement about any official permissions granted to do the work and measures taken to prevent contamination of any food passing into the human food-chain.

Publishing Ethics

The Journal follows the Cambridge University Press policies on publishing ethics. These are set out in detail on the publishing ethics policy page. 

These standards are encoded via declarations in the online submission process.

Manuscript Style

The primary objective always is to achieve the most precise and unambiguous representation of the concepts, plans, results and interpretation of the study, using the simplest and least ambiguous language possible.

All papers should be written in UK-English, with the Oxford English Dictionary as the reference for spellings. Concise writing in the active voice is encouraged where possible. For example, “We used the ‘aov’ function in Base R (R Core Team, 2024) for one-way analysis of variance” is preferred over “The ‘aov’ function in Base R (R Core Team, 2024) was utilised to conduct analysis of variance.” The irony that this entire set of instructions is written in the passive voice is not missed. Jargon should be avoided wherever possible. Many failures of grammar and syntax arise from long sentences, attempts to use complex clause structures, misplaced modifiers and stacking of nouns. Short, simple sentences and using the simplest, most precise words always improves clarity. There is no need to use different words in successive sentences because of anxiety about repetition. “Synonyms” usually have distinct shades of meaning. Most readers of articles published in the Journal have a first language that is not English. For example, if the verb “use” is searched in an online thesaurus, it generates the following alleged synonyms: make use of; put to use; operate; employ; work; manipulate; handle; ply; wield; utilise; apply; exercise; exert; resort to; have recourse to; avail oneself of; take advantage of; profit by; capitalise on; make the most of; exploit. It is common for authors to cycle through such a list of alleged synonyms out of fear of repetition, but repetition of a word is not usually a problem. Repetition of sentences and concepts is undesirable. 

Translation engines and large language models (LLM) work best with simple, common words, and the use of uncommon words can result in surprising translations. Using LLM to refine expression is generally acceptable and increasingly common, but care is needed to ensure that uncommon words are translated correctly.

Dense content that is unappealing as prose is often better presented in tables or lists in appendices (if essential) or supplementary materials (if non-essential).

More detail is provided on specific conventions in subsequent sections. 

Overall Format and Layout

Format Neutral Submission

JDR has format-neutral submission in place for original submissions only. This means that authors do not need to format their article to Journal style at this stage; and figures and tables can be kept in their original locations in the text. The article must be line-numbered and in an easily readable layout, to assist in review. Revisions after the first submission must be formatted to the full formatting requirements of the Journal.  

Format of Headings and Subheadings

The introduction section does not have a heading. No headings are numbered. Text is in sentence case – only the first word has a leading upper-case letter, except for proper nouns and acronyms. The Journal accepts four levels of headings: 

Heading 1: Bold and in sentence case – used, for example, for “Materials and methods” 

Heading 2: Bold and italic and in sentence case – used, for example, for “Statistical analysis” under the Heading level 1 of “Materials and methods”

Heading 3: Italic and in sentence case – used, for example, for “Time-series data” under “Statistical analysis”

Heading 4: Italic and in sentence case and run into paragraph – used, for example, for “Generalised additive model: text” under “Time-series data”.

Sections

Research reports (including systematic reviews and meta-analyses): Research reports are expected to include abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusions, declarations, references. Graphical abstracts and highlights are optional but encouraged.

Short communications: these are expected to include an abstract, body text and references. Graphical abstracts and highlights are optional but encouraged.

Literature reviews and research reflections: structure not specified but must address all other aspects of this guidance. In all cases, including narrative reviews, the methodology must be described.

Figures

Depending on the resolution of the figures required and the file size, small files can be inserted in the text near to the relevant text, with the figure caption immediately beneath the figure, or they may be appended at the end of the paper, together with their captions. Large files may be better uploaded separately in the system, but their captions must be included in the main document as well – there is no definitive preference so long as figures can be unambiguously linked with their captions, the figures are called out in the text with ‘Figure’ in full (for example, ‘no yields exceeded 43 L (Figure 1)’) and high resolution is preserved. More information on requirements for figures is provided later in this guidance.

Detailed information related to preparing figures and artwork can be found using Cambridge University Press' journal artwork guide. 

Tables

For the reviewers’ ease, it is preferred to include the tables in the text near where they are referenced, however it is also fine to include them in the main file after the references. Tables must all be called out in the text and have a fully descriptive title in sentence case. Tables must be editable. More information on requirements for tables is provided later in this guidance.

Equations

All equations should be included at the relevant position in the text. If more than one equation appears in the text, they should all be numbered in parentheses at the end of the lines on which they appear. Equations must be editable – the equation editor in MS Word is recommended. 

Required Statements 

The required statements section comes after the discussion and conclusion and before the references. It includes declarations, generally under the following titles: acknowledgements, author contributions, declaration of interest, ethics and approvals and funding statement. 

References

Detailed instructions on the reference list are provided in this guidance. The Journal follows the Cambridge A system.

Appendices

If used, these should appear after the references and should be self-contained. Only essential material should be included in appendices. Non-essential material should be presented as a separate supplementary information file.

Detailed Instructions for Each Section

The following sections are addressed in the order in which each section normally appears in the text.

Title

The title should be descriptive and enable a reasonable guess by a potential reader as to what the study is about. It should neither be so specific that it appears to have only very limited or local relevance, nor over-claim on the generalisability of the findings. The title should not include a statement of the main results or conclusion of the study. Abbreviations should be avoided where possible. If a subtitle is used, it should run into the main title from which it is separated by a colon. For example, “Current landscape of antimicrobial resistance genes in Staphylococcus aureus from milk: a thousand genome-based analysis”. No short or “running” title is required. 

Author List (Byline) 

List all authors by their full first name and surname, with middle initials where applicable. Do not include job titles, honorifics, academic degrees, or professional accreditations. 

Author Affiliations 

Provide each author's affiliation, including department or school (if applicable), institution, city, state/province, and country. At least one corresponding author must be identified, and their email address will be published within the article. Author names, affiliations, and corresponding author details are confirmed upon submission in ScholarOne. Following acceptance, the corresponding author will be asked to review and verify these details via the author information form before publication.

Corresponding Author

Where only a single author – Email; for multiple authors, state “Corresponding author: Author’s name; Email.” Multiple corresponding authors can be listed: “Corresponding authors: Author1’s name; Email1; Author2’s name; Email2”

Contributions

Authors may indicate equal contributions. The CRediT taxonomy should be used. The declaration of full author contributions appears among the declarations in the notes section after the main body text and before the reference section.

Interpretive Summary

Short interpretive summaries are expected in an accompanying cover letter: up to 150 words in relatively simple text to summarise the purpose and findings of the study and suggest how the findings might be applied or their major contribution to knowledge in the field. Authors should avoid hyperbole and overclaiming on precedence or importance.

Graphical Abstracts

Graphical abstracts are encouraged because they can be used to promote the work via social media. Graphical abstracts should be easy to read and contain minimal text.

Abstract

The importance of a good abstract cannot be overstated: in many cases, they are all that is read from a paper. The abstract should be no more than 300 words long and include a clear and concise summary of the background, motivation to do the study, aims and objectives, methods, results, and discussion/conclusions. The materials and methods should be written in sufficient detail to assure the reader that the study design and processes are likely to logically and effectively address the research questions. The conclusions must be aligned with the stated aims and justifiable logically. The weighting in the abstract should be heavier on the materials, methods and results than on background, motivation and interpretation. The inclusion of key results is recommended. The abstract should not contain any figures, tables, or references. 

Keywords

Authors are requested to provide five keywords. Keywords must be in alphabetical order, separated by semicolons, with no end full-stop, and in lowercase except for proper nouns. Use common search terms: it is possible to use AI to search on the web for the most common search terms in the subject area of a manuscript. Keywords that are not already used in the title are usually preferable to those which appear in the title.

Introduction

Most introductions are too long and un-focused. For standard research reports, the Journal will apply a limit of 500 words. The introduction should contain only sufficient relevant background to provide context for the investigation; identify the gap or gaps in current knowledge, and the motivation to undertake the study; state the aims; explain and justify the strategy to be used. Figures and tables that help to explain the relevant background may be included if needed. Claims of superiority in scale and claims of precedence should be avoided. Clear statements of aims and objectives are essential.

The aims need not be expressed in terms of hypotheses to be tested. It is quite acceptable to state that the aim is to describe a pattern or to quantify a variable under a given set of conditions.

Materials and Methods

The general principle of the following sections is that although perfection is difficult to attain in research studies, it should always be possible to accurately and honestly describe what was done, openly acknowledging the limitations on the work, so that the reader of the article can make an informed judgement on the legitimacy or applicability of the work. 

The materials and methods should be sufficiently described to allow replication of the study. All essential information should be included in the main text of the manuscript. Additional information can be included in the Supplementary Materials section (described later). If Supplementary Materials are used, they must be clearly called out in the text (for example ‘Supplementary Materials, Table S1’). The materials and methods should generally start with an overview of the study design, including clear statements of the timing and order of sequential processes, replication, definition and justification of the experimental units of the study.

Experimental design

It is essential to clearly present the experimental design of the study and to clearly state the replication strategy and define (and justify) the experimental unit of the study. Authors should consider using flow diagrams or tabulated lists of procedures in place of lengthy, confusing descriptions of the experimental design. In all cases, short, simple sentences, with simple, unambiguous words are preferred. 

Sampling

Sampling strategies should be clearly and honestly stated. Where ‘random sampling’ is claimed, the method of randomisation should be clearly stated: coin flip, random number generator. If a formal randomisation strategy was not used, it should not be claimed. Although many claimed ‘random’ samples are convenience samples, and therefore potentially subject to sampling bias, they can be acceptable, so long as potential limitations are acknowledged. 

Experimental procedures

The description of experimental procedures should be sufficiently detailed to enable replication of the study (assuming equivalent resources were available). The level of detail in the descriptions should be greater for those procedures that are not commonly used or were developed specifically for the study than for those that are widely used. For widely used procedures it is acceptable to provide a citation and full reference details, either from the literature or from an accepted, published standard, if these are readily available. In such cases, a brief summary should be provided – what type of assay, overview of method. For assays that were not performed by the authors, or for some reason were not replicated, clear statements are required about the precision and repeatability of the assays. Where possible coefficients of variation should be presented. As for descriptions of experimental design, aspects of the methodology might be better represented using flow diagrams or tables than extensive, repetitive text.

Description of statistical analysis

Many approaches to statistical analysis could be acceptable, however, a complete description of methods is essential in the section on statistical analysis. This section of the Instructions for Authors is intended only to give guidance on the presentation of the methods, not on the correct methods of analysis. It is important that the means by which all presented results were obtained are described in the materials and methods. For example, it is not acceptable to present regression coefficients in the results without stating in the materials and methods exactly how the regression was performed.

Data: What type of data were obtained and how were they collected? How were they recorded? Were data processed before submission for analysis? Was any quality assurance applied to data collection and handling? Are the data archived anywhere and publicly available? The class of data is important for selection of appropriate statistical analysis: numeric continuous, numeric discrete, ordinal categorical and nominal categorical data cannot all be analysed interchangeably. Please see Cambridge University Press' guidance on sharing data for more information.

Assumptions: Any assumptions made about the data and the distributions it is drawn from should be clearly stated, along with any tests of these assumptions that were performed (the results of these tests should be reported in the results section).

Statistical software and packages: The statistical software should be described in full. Free or open-source software should be fully referenced as specified by the developers (for example, ‘… R version 4.5.2 (R Core Team, 2025)…’). Commercially provided software should be named, with the version, developer details and release date (for example, ‘… Genstat release 24.2 (VSN International, Hemel Hempstead, UK)…’). For statistical or computational software that is typically used with a distinct software package to provide a user interface (for example, R is usually used with R studio; Python with an integrated development environment), it is not essential to state the details of the user interface. 

Code and functions: Where the specific functions used are important for the analysis, state the package and function, together with the recommended citation, which might include an online manual for commercial software. Use single quotes for packages and functions (for example, ‘We used the package ‘ipw’ (van der Wal and Geskus, 2011) to calculate weightings’). If extensive or complex coding was required to augment existing analysis pathways, it is recommended to include the code in the supplementary materials or in an appendix section only if it is essential to the interpretation of the article.

Statistical models: All statistical models should be clearly specified. Whether a model should be specified in clear English text or using a formal equation structure will depend on its complexity, the most important criterion being avoidance of ambiguity. Variable names must be used consistently throughout the manuscript. If the aim is to test a hypothesis, the hypothesis must be stated formally. If the aim is to develop a predictive model, the independent and dependent variables must be clearly specified. Where multiple hypothesis tests are applied, appropriate adjustments are required to the threshold P-value that is considered to be significant, and the approach should be stated in materials and methods. 

Results

Results should be presented in a structured, ideally hierarchical order. Although not appropriate in all cases, it is useful to follow the following order: 1) summary of the data (quality and volume of the dataset that was obtained), 2) description of the overall data before consideration of any groups or treatments (central tendency, dispersion, distributions, tests of assumptions), 3) inferential estimation (point estimations and confidence intervals for groups or treatments), 4) hypothesis tests or predictive models (details will be determined by the aims of the study.) The selection of the best indicators for all of these aspects of the study will depend on the context and is part of the normal dialogue between researchers and the reviewers and editorial team. This guidance only addresses general considerations regarding presentation of results.

The historically most common recommendation has been not to present the same information in text, figures and tables, but in many cases it is acceptable for emphasis, and if full data are presented it will help to ensure that the paper is included in future meta-analyses or systematic reviews. 

Precision and significant digits

Many authors report results with misleadingly high levels of precision. When a measurement is made, the result should be reported with an honest level of precision. In the case of a set of bodyweight readings of calves with scales that were calibrated to ± 0.5 kg, the data might look like (79, 95, 101, 110, 88, 113). In this set of observations, three significant digits can be accessed (101,110,113 all have three significant digits). The mean of this dataset would be calculated as 97.666666666667. However, this is implausible as a measurement. The mean should be rounded to three significant digits – the number of significant digits from the original observations – as 97.7 kg ± SE or SD. This rounding process should not take place until after the final stage of a calculation, but all results presented as ‘results’ in a manuscript should be presented with the correct number of significant digits. Discrete numeric values (for example the number of calves in the example above – 6) are considered exact, so they have a theoretically infinite number of significant digits. When multiplying or dividing among variables, the lowest number of significant digits from the variables used in the calculation should be used. The rules for counting significant digits are as follows: 1) all non-zero digits are always significant, 2) zeros between non-zeros are significant, 3) zeros to the left of the first non-zero are never significant, 4) zeros at the end of a number (to the right of a non-zero) are significant only if a decimal point is explicitly present. Some examples: Rule 1 – 345, 3.45, 34.5, 3.45 × 10-3, and 3.45 × 1012 all have three significant digits; Rule 2 – 204, 20.4 and 2.04 × 10-3 all have three significant digits; Rule 3 – 0.253, 0.0253, 0.000253 all have three significant digits; Rule 4 – 67.0, 6.70, 0.670 and 6.70 × 10-3 all have three significant digits, but 670, 67,000 and 67,000,000 only have two significant digits. The examples above show that scientific notation can be very helpful to present the results with correct precision.

Statistical significance

Authors should always present sufficient information to allow the readers to make their own assessment of the validity of any claims regarding treatment or group effects. There are strong arguments that P-values are over-rated in general. Presentation of the estimated P-values is preferred over stating whether they are greater or less than a given threshold. This is particularly important when P-values are near (above or below) the generally accepted thresholds for statistical significance (that is, P < 0.05 or P < 0.1). Scientific notation is useful where P-values are very small, keeping the number of significant digits to two. For example, the following forms are preferred: ‘P = 0.11’, ‘P = 0.030’, ‘P = 5.6 × 10-12’.

Central tendency and dispersion 

No constraints are placed on the how the results are presented, so long as any parameters used are clearly defined and derived correctly according to the context of the study, and so long as results are presented such that the variability in the data is clear. Confidence intervals, means with standard errors or standard deviations are acceptable (if the data permit), and graphical presentation of distributions is strongly encouraged. Figures that show individual datapoints are preferred over those that only present means and standard errors.

Tables

Tables must be editable text with minimal formatting and should generally be formatted with the expectation that they will be printed across the page. The table heading should be above the first row of the table and should provide enough information to understand what the table is about. Abbreviations used and explained elsewhere in the paper do not need to be explained in full in the heading. All variable names and abbreviations should be consistent with those in the text. Units of measurement should be provided for variables. Explanatory footnotes should be numbered and listed at the bottom of the table, with a new line for each note. If superscript letters are used in table cells to indicate differences from other cells, the explanation should be explicit (for example, ‘a–cMean values in the same row with different superscripts differ (P < 0.01) for the effect of inoculation with each of the isolates’). Additional tables given in the supplementary materials should follow the same conventions and should be numbered Supplementary Table S1, S2 … Sn. Ensure that the manuscript includes proper reference to each supplementary table.

Figures

Figures should be useful, understandable and not redundant. All figures must be called out in the text with ‘Figure’ in full (for example, ‘no yields exceeded 43 L (Figure 1)’). The figure caption, together with labels, legend and any text in the figure should be clearly understandable with minimal reference to the text. Figures will generally be printed column- or page-width, and authors are requested to prepare the figures to the expected final size, and with high resolution. Figures can be provided as separate image files or copied into the text. All text in figures must be readily legible (without magnification!) at the 100% printed size of the page/figure. Unless essential for the presentation of an integrated figure, borders around plots and figures are not necessary, can complicate the compilation of the final document, and should be omitted. Plot/chart areas should only be shaded to convey a specific meaning, not for aesthetic reasons. Contrasting line and symbol types and shades should be used to clearly differentiate among series. Heat-maps can be problematic if not printed in colour, so monochrome scales should be considered. Additional figures presented in the supplementary materials should follow the same conventions and should be numbered Supplementary Figure S1, S2 ... Sn Ensure that the manuscript includes proper reference to each supplementary figure. As previously stated, figures should show the variability in the dataset – distributions, density plots, individual datapoints or ‘jitter’ are preferred over error-bars. 

Discussion (and Conclusion)

Discussions should be brief and to the point. 

In some instances it is acceptable to combine results and discussion.

Most discussions are too long and repetitive. The length of the discussion should relate to the complexity of the study, no more than 1,500 words in most cases.

A good discussion will provide 1) a concise critique of the results of the study in the context of the literature (this does not mean comparing each result with results obtained from every vaguely similar study), 2) a synthetic interpretation of the overall meaning of the results (the extent to which the investigation answered the original research question, if there was an answer, how reliable is it?), 3) assessment of external and internal validity of the results of the study (to what extent can the findings be generalized?), 4) identification and analysis of limitations to the investigation and proposals for improvement for the future, 5) thoughtful and well explained proposals for future work, 6) overall conclusions or recommendations that follow logically from the aims and objectives of the study.

Discussions and conclusions should be written with a high degree of scientific humility. Avoid inflated claims as to the value of the work described. Claims of precedence should be limited to exceptional cases.

Required Statements Section 

The required statements section comes after the discussion and conclusion and before the references. It includes declarations, generally under the following titles: 

• Acknowledgement (optional)
• Author contributions (mandatory)
• Declaration of Interest (mandatory)
• Data availability statement (mandatory) 
• Ethics and approvals (mandatory) 
• Funding statement (mandatory) 
• List of abbreviations (optional) 

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials. Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section. See our authorship policy for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria. Please see our use of artificial intelligence section for details on how to acknowledge AI-use. 

Author contributions

Authors are to include a statement that specifies the contribution of every author to the research and preparation of the manuscript.

 Example statement:

“All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”

Please refer to the author contributions policy for more information.

Data availability statement 

In accordance with this journal’s research transparency policies, we require manuscripts to include a data availability statement. These are short, human-readable statements explaining where readers can find the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article. This should include any data available from third parties, which should be explained in the data availability statement with full citations according to this journal’s reference style.

We recognise it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised. In these cases, data availability statements could explain why materials cannot be shared publicly and describe any conditions for access.

For guidance and examples of how to write a data availability statement, please see our public guidance on data availability statements.

Declarations of interests

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section. For more details please find our competing interest policy below. 

Ethics and consents

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval. This should include the approving agency, type of approval and approval number if appropriate. Please see our editorial policies for more information.

Funding statement

Please describe any sources of funding that have supported the work. The statement should include details of any grants received (please give the name of the funding agency and grant number if appropriate)

List of Abbreviations

Authors are encouraged to provide a list of common abbreviations used in their article. 

Format and Style

Numbers and units

In general, follow the guidance of the Office for National Statistics guide to writing numbers (https://service-manual.ons.gov.uk/content/numbers/writing-numbers) 

Write all numbers 10 and over as Arabic numerals, up to 999,999 unless they are presented with recognised units of measurement. For example: Always use Arabic numerals with units; otherwise use words for 1-10 and figures for more than 10, (e.g. 3 weeks, three cows, 34 heifers) but avoid mixed lists.

Where a range crosses the 10 boundary, use numerals: 9 to 12 respondents, not nine to 12 respondents.

Rankings: Write out rankings first to ninth, then use numerals. Do not use superscript for ‘st’, ‘nd’, ‘rd’ and ‘th’. for example: ‘we collected the first 10 ml’, ‘every 10th instance’.

Fractions: Write out and hyphenate fractions as words. Do not use numerals and slash symbols. Avoid using too many fractions as it can be difficult to compare several together. Examples: two-thirds, three-quarters. Also avoid using large denominators, such as three-sixteenths. Always simplify the fraction, or consider using a percentage if the fraction could cause confusion. Write out decimal fractions as numerals. Use the same number format for a sequence of fractions and decimals.

 Millions and billions: Write out and use lower case. Do not use “0.xx million” for numbers less than 1 million, unless part of a sequence of numbers: 2.5 million, 0.8 million, 7.2 million 

Formatting numbers: Use commas to separate thousands in numbers of four digits or more, and never use spaces (except when writing years – these should have no punctuation). Always use a point (period or full-stop) to signify a decimal point, not a comma: for example, ‘the simulation was run100,000 times’; ‘only 2,548 cow records were retained’; ‘In 1995 it was noted that’; ‘the mean yield was 1.25 ± 0.1 g’.

Juxtaposition: Avoid writing sets of numbers together in the same sentence. For example, use ‘In 1961 just over 2,500 births were recorded’ not ‘In 1961 2,543 births were recorded’.

Starting sentences with numbers: If a sentence starts with a numeric value, the number and the units should be spelled out in full. Alternatively, rearrange the sentence. For example, ‘Sixteen milligrams were added’; ‘The number of people who drive a car is 52.4 million’ not ‘52.4 million people drive a car’. 

Abbreviation for ‘number’: Do not use abbreviations of ‘number’”, such as ‘no’ or ‘nos’. They can be read incorrectly.

Ranges: Do not use a hyphen to indicate a range of numbers, separate with ‘to’: For example, ‘From 15 to 20 cows were housed in each shed’.

Leading zeros: Use a ‘0’ where there is no digit before the decimal point in a number: for example, ‘0.6%’ not ‘.6%’.

Separation of a numeral and its units: Separate numerals and alphabetic unit abbreviations with a single space, but do no separate numerals and non-alphabetic units (except for degrees Celsius). For example, ‘6 mg’; ‘35.2 L/d’; ‘16%’; ‘38.9 °C’.

Rates: For simple rates in which only two units are involved (for example, weight and time), use a slash ‘/’ symbol but when more than two units are involved, use scientific notation. For example, ‘The average daily gain of this group was 1.95 ± 0.4 kg/d’; ‘The skin absorbed 0.32 J·mm-2 ·s-1.’

Units: Wherever possible, Système International (SI) units and derived units should be used, with the SI rules for combining with numerals and prefixes. 

Dates and Time

Abbreviations: The second (s) is an SI unit, so it can be combined with any SI prefix. For example, ‘… two milliseconds elapsed…’; ‘…the exposure time was 25 ms.’ Day, hour and minute are not strictly SI units and cannot be used with SI prefixes, however, they should be abbreviated when written with numeric values as ‘d’, ‘h’, ‘min’ respectively. Week, month and year may be abbreviated as ‘wk’, ‘mo’ and ‘y’ respectively, when written with numeric values. In text, spell out the units of time in full unless they appear with numeric values. For example: ‘…the cattle were observed for three hours after administration.’; ‘…after incubation for 12 h the tubes were…’; ‘… several days later…’; ‘… no parasites were observed within 77 d of treatment.’

Spacing when combining units: When only one unit is reported, insert a space between the numeral and the unit. When multiple units are reported, no spaces should be included. For example, ‘24 h’; ‘5h15s’.

Fractions of time units: Use decimal notation. For example, ‘6.25 s’; ‘6.5 h’ – note that 6.5 h = 6h30s, not 6h50s.

Clock time representation: The 24-h system is preferred. Time is a 4-digit number without punctuation or expressed units. For example, six o’clock in the morning would be represented as ‘0600’. Where the context would not make it clear that this was a time, it could be expressed as ‘0600 hours’ with no abbreviation of ‘hours’. The approach can be extended to include seconds in the format HH:MM:SS. For example 30 s after midnight would be ‘00:00:30’. It is acceptable to use 12-h system, in which case, the preferred format is HH:MM AM/PM. For example, ‘the observation period commenced at 05:45 AM and concluded at 01:30 PM.’ Some confusion exists regarding midnight and midday in this system. Midnight is 12:00 AM and midday is 12:00 PM.

Dates: Days and months should be capitalised and spelled out in full in text but can be abbreviated to the first three letters for tables, references, and figures. The 3-letter abbreviation of month avoids ambiguity and is preferred in the Journal. For example, 06MAR2025 is clear to US and European readers, whereas 06/03/2025 would mean 03JUN2025 to a US reader and 06MAR2025 to a European reader. Alternatively the convention of year-month-day (YYYY-MM-DD) can be used – 2025-03-06 equates to 06MAR2025. For example, ‘milk samples were collected on each Wednesday at the afternoon milking.’; ‘Figure 1. Average peak daily milk yields (L/d) for Jan, Feb and Mar’; ‘the first group was treated on Monday 08JUN2026’ 

Abbreviations

Chemical symbols (for example ‘B’, ‘Ca’) of all chemical elements, common combinations of chemical elements, SI units of measure used with a value (for example ‘15 mg’, ‘13 h’, ‘10 d’), and common amino acid abbreviations (for example ‘ARG’, ‘R’) do not require definition unless the context would mean it was ambiguous if not defined.

All abbreviations should be spelled out in full at time of first use and included in an alphabetically ordered, semi-colon separated list in the notes section of the paper, under the heading “Abbreviations”. Upper case 

Abbreviations should be avoided wherever possible in the article title.

Plurals of abbreviations do not require ‘s’ after the abbreviation.

Sentences may start with an abbreviation, although this should be avoided where possible.

Examples

‘The dry matter intake (DMI) was estimated…”  and in ‘Abbreviations’ ‘…; DMI = dry matter intake; …’ Note that the words ‘dry matter intake’ do not lead with capital letters because none of the words individually is a proper noun and together the words do not constitute a compound (phrasal or multi-word) name.

‘According to statements from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…’ – with ‘…; IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change;…’ under the heading ‘Abbreviations’ in the notes section of the paper. Note that each of the words in the spelled out in full version leads with a capital letter because together the words constitute a compound (phrasal or multi-word) name.

‘Thirteen SNP were shown to be highly significantly associated…’ – not ‘Thirteen SNPs…’

References

The Journal of Dairy Research uses the Cambridge A system of citation and referencing.

Citations in Text

The author-date system is used. Order citations alphabetically within strings by author, and chronologically when citing works by the same author. Use semicolons to separate works by different authors and commas to separate works by the same author. Distinguish between works published by the same author in the same year by adding a lower-case letter to the publication year (a, b, c, etc.) in the order in which the references appear in the text. For works published in the same year with the same lead author, but different groups of co-authors, provide either the complete list of authors, or enough co-authors to identify the groups but do not add letters, since these are not identically authored references. Long corporate author names (for example, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, FAO) can be shortened, but give both the short form and the complete name in the references list.

Examples: ‘… fewer significant SNP than in one recent study (Zhang, 2026)’; ‘…mobile genetic elements (Quainoo et al., 2017; Partridge et al., 2018).’; ‘…considerably easier (Jonathan et al., 2021)’; ‘… was not effective (Brown, 2019; Gao et al., 2008)’.

Reference List 

Full information is provided in the ‘Cambridge A’ documentation (https://multimediafluids.uam.elogim.com/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/610be5e3a1acae0932de3cca/Cambridge-Reference-Styles.pdf) 

Arrange references alphabetically by author surname, with all the authors listed. List author names, in bold, in “last name first name” format, with the first names given in initials. However, see example of “published or broadcast interview” for an exception to this rule, in a case where the language does not use surnames.

List two or more works by the same author or authors chronologically.

To distinguish two or more works by the same author or authors in the same year, use a, b, c, etc. following the date, and list references in the order in which they are mentioned in the text. For titles of journal articles and book chapters, use sentence style capitalization (minimum capitalization). Do not enclose the titles in quotation marks. For book and journal titles, use headline style capitalization (maximum capitalization) and italics. Always list journal titles in full rather than in abbreviated form. Do not elide page numbers when giving page ranges (thus, it should be 213-229 rather than 213-29).  For journal articles, doi information should be included where available. Both the URL format (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017....) and the abbreviated format (doi:10.1017…) are acceptable. 

In providing publisher information for books, please include as much information as necessary to locate the city of publication. In the above example, ‘New York’ requires no further geographic clarification, but ‘Middletown’ does, hence the addition of the US state in which it is located. Country names may also be added for clarity, but often the name of the publisher alone will provide sufficient clarifying detail, as in the case of university presses.

Where books, journals, regulations, websites are in languages other than English, use the original language first (in Latin alphabetical transliteration) followed by the English translation in square brackets.

When citing websites, it is important to try to identify an author. In many cases it is sufficient to state the author as the owner of the website. In other cases it might be more appropriate to list the author as ‘Anonymous’. Some effort may be required to identify the date of publication (last update date) and the author. If no date can be found, use ‘nd’. The date when websites were accessed should be included in parentheses after the other information.

Examples of journal article format

Zhang Z, Wang J, Wang H, Zhang L, Shang W, Li Z, Song L, Li T, Cheng M, Zhang C, Zhao Q, Shen S and Cui M (2023) Molecular surveillance of MRSA in raw milk provides insight into MRSA cross species evolution. Microbiology Spectrum 11(4), e00311–23. https://doi.org/10.1128/spectrum. 00311-23

Yerby S, Taylor D, Warren H and Jonsson N (2025) Systematic review: efficacy of exogenous enzymes for dairy calves. Journal of Dairy Research 92, 478–494. doi:10.1017/S0022029925101350

Abdala AA and Molineri AI (2023) Descarte y mortandad de vacas en rodeos lecheros bajo diferentes sistemas de producción en la Pampa Húmeda, Argentina. [Culling and mortality of dairy cows under different production systems in the humid pampa, Argentina]. Revista Argentina de Producción Animal 43, 67–70

Examples for books

Veerkamp R and van Pelt M (2019) Advances in dairy cattle breeding to improve longevity. In van der Werf J and Pryce J (eds) Advances in Breeding of Dairy Cattle. London: Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing , pp. 337–354.  https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429275609

Goulding DA, Fox PF and O’Mahony JA (2020) Milk proteins: An overview. In P. F. Fox, O. McCarthy and A. L. Kelly (Eds.), Milk Proteins: From Expression To Food (pp. 21–98). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-815251-5. 00002-5

US Government Printing Office (1967) Style Manual. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

World Health Organization (WHO) (2011) World Report on Disability. Geneva: WHO. 

Fennema OR, Damodaran S and Parkin KL (2017) Fennema’s Food Chemistry, 5th edn. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Examples of websites

Afimilk (2024) Considering Cow Monitoring? Experience the AfiCollar Difference. Available at https://lp.afimilk.com/nz-brand/  (accessed 20 August 2024).

Australian Dairy Products Federation Inc. and Stop Food Waste Australia (2023) Dairy Sector Food Waste Action Plan. Available at https://endfoodwaste.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Dairy-Food-WasteAction-Plan-Report.pdf  (accessed 27 June 2025).

Examples of conference proceedings

(Unpublished) Momcilovic D (2019) Armies of the undead: the slow and awkward march of the Balkan zombie. Paper presented at the ACLA Annual Meeting, 7-10 March, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

(Published as supplement in a journal) Reifels L, Dückers M and Blashki G (2019) Examining the national profile of chronic disaster health risks in Australia. Abstract of oral presentation at WADEM Congress on Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2019. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 34(s1), s5. doi:10.1017/S1049023X19000293.

(Published as book) Guha DK and Rao VK (1976) Young Cenozoic Ostracoda from west coast of India. In Proceedings of the VI Indian Colloquium on Micropaleontology and Stratigraphy. Varanasi: Banaras Hindu University, 91–98.

References 

Fred HL and Scheid MS (2016) Thirty-three years of dizzy medical writing and editing: a meta-analysis and the hall of shame. Texas Heart Institute Journal 43, 376-380. doi: 10.14503/THIJ-16-5870.

Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, Shamseer L, Tetzlaff JM, Akl EA, Brennan SE, Chou R, Glanville J, Grimshaw JM, Hróbjartsson, A, Lalu MM, Li T, Loder EW, Mayo-Wilson E, McDonald S, McGuinness LA, Stewart LA, Thomas J, Tricco AC, Welch VA, Whiting P, Moher D (2021) The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. Systematic Reviews 10, 89 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-021-01626-4

Passfield (1929) Foreword Journal of Dairy Research 1,1-2. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022029900000017

Pottier P, Lagisz M, Burke S, Drobniak SM, Downing PA, Macartney EL, Martinig AR, Mizuno A, Morrison K, Pollo P, Ricolfi L, Tam J, Williams C, Yang Y and Nakagawa S (2024) Title, abstract and keywords: a practical guide to maximize the visibility and impact of academic papers, Proceedings of Royal Society B Biological Sciences 291, 20241222. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.1222

du Sert PN, Hurst V, Ahluwalia A, Alam S, Avey MT, Alam S, Avey MT, Baker M, Browne WJ, Clark A, Cuthill IC, Dirnagl U, Emerson M, Garner P, Holgate ST, Howells DW, Karp NA, Lazic SE, Lidster K, MacCallum CJ, Macleod M, Pearl EJ, Petersen OH, Rawle F, Reynolds P, Rooney K, Sena ES, Silberberg SD, Steckler T, Würbel H (2020) The ARRIVE guidelines 2.0: Updated guidelines for reporting animal research. PLOS Biology 18, e3000410. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000410

Sharma A, Minh Duc NT, Luu Lam Thang T, Nam NH, Ng SJ, Abbas KS, Huy NT, Marušić A, Paul CL, Kwok J, Karbwang J, de Waure C, Drummond FJ, Kizawa Y, Taal E, Vermeulen J, Lee GHM, Gyedu A, To KG, Verra ML, Jacqz-Aigrain ÉM, Leclercq WKG, Salminen ST, Sherbourne CD, Mintzes B, Lozano S, Tran US, Matsui M, Karamouzian M (2021) A consensus-based checklist for reporting of survey studies (CROSS), Journal of General Internal Medicine, 36, 3179-3187. doi: 10.1007/s11606-021-06737-1.