Specification of laboratory animal use in scientific articles: current low detail in the journals' instructions for authors and some proposals

Abstract

The scientific article communicates results of research to other investigators; therefore, it must contain a complete description of the experiment to help other researchers when designing their future investigations. However, poorly detailed data on laboratory animal use is given in published articles. Despite the well-known and important contribution of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to standardize scientific writing and submission of manuscripts to biomedical journals, no specific instructions on the reporting of animal use are given in the ICMJE Uniform Requirements and, therefore, most journals do not detail this to the authors. Individual efforts from groups like the Working Committee for the Biological Characterizations of Laboratory Animals, the Boyd Group, or the Committee on Publication Ethics are commendable. These contributions should be incorporated into the ICMJE Uniform Requirements and, later, into the Instructions for Authors of peer-reviewed journals. This would be the only efficient way to instruct authors on how to report laboratory animal use in their submitted manuscripts. The present article relates some proposals for helping authors when reporting animal use in scientific articles. These proposals are not only based on previous guidelines for animal specifications, but also on Instructions for Authors from journals specialized in Laboratory Animal Science. These proposals are classified into major and minor issues, and they are located in the corresponding parts of the article, as defined by the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD) method.