Submission
Guidelines
JFCS is an open-access journal for serious knowledge about feline care systems. The work may begin in a grooming room, rescue, shelter, clinic, home, training program, registry, or research setting. Our job is to make its evidence, limits, and practical value visible.
Practice knowledge belongs in the record.
You do not need a university appointment, prior publication, or academic writing style to approach JFCS. You do need a question worth examining, respect for cats and people, transparent sources, and a willingness to distinguish what was observed from what can be concluded.
We welcome contributors from grooming, rescue, shelter, foster, veterinary practice, behavior, welfare, caregiving, education, service design, records management, and research. A practice observation is not automatically scientific evidence. It can still be the beginning of a useful field note, case reflection, registry report, method, hypothesis, or collaborative study.
Submit a complete manuscript when you have one. Or begin with a plain-language question or a one-to-two-page proposal. We will not reject an initial inquiry because it lacks academic formatting.
Our standard is proportional rigor. The stronger the claim, the clearer the methods, safeguards, records, and independent review must be. Approachability is not lowered standards. It is making standards teachable, reachable, and visible.
Choose the form that tells the truth about the work.
Article labels are not prestige tiers. They tell readers what kind of material supports the article, what review it received, and what claims it is equipped to make.
Research Article
Original research using explicit methods, appropriate oversight, and analysis that supports the stated question. Comparative, causal, or generalizable empirical claims normally require external peer review.
Registry Report
Descriptive or analytic work from structured care, shelter, rescue, grooming, veterinary, or operational records. Describe provenance, definitions, missingness, repeated individuals, privacy protections, and selection limits.
Methods and Measurement
A measure, protocol, taxonomy, codebook, observation system, mechanical analysis, or validation plan. State whether it is proposed, piloted, internally tested, or independently validated.
Practice-System Report
A transparent account of a workflow, program, training model, service redesign, or care system. Explain the prior system, the change, the setting, and the outcomes measured or not measured.
Conceptual Analysis
A theory, construct, ethical analysis, or systems framework. Separate what the evidence supports from the proposed interpretation, and explain how important claims could later be tested.
Review, Commentary, Field Note
Structured and narrative reviews, scholarly arguments, short observational notes, and case reflections. A case is a case: explain why it matters and what cannot be generalized from it.
Begin before the manuscript is perfect.
A well-framed question is a legitimate beginning. Developmental support can clarify the route; it never guarantees acceptance.
Use the contributor dashboard when it is available to save your progress. Until then, the contact route is the right place for questions, proposals, permissions, or access needs.
Question
Tell us the pattern, problem, method, or argument you are seeing, why it matters, and what records or materials exist.
Proposal
Share a short summary of the question, setting, population, materials, possible article type, permissions, and known limits.
Manuscript
Submit a complete draft with the required declarations, files, and materials relevant to its article class.
Transparent fees. A reachable path into publication.
There is no charge to ask a question, submit a proposal, or submit a manuscript. Editorial decisions are never based on payment, use of support services, institutional status, or writing polish at first contact.
Due only after acceptance
The founding JFCS publication fee is set at half the the posted fee of $1,950. It is requested only after editorial acceptance and before production.
- No submission charge and no fee for editorial screening or review.
- Open-access articles remain free for readers.
- Any fee waiver or reduction request is handled separately from editorial review.
- JFCS will not introduce an undisclosed charge after editorial work has begun.
Contributor Development Session
For practitioners and emerging authors who want structured help before submitting, this optional session provides an accessible professional entry point.
- A 60-minute project-mapping consultation.
- An article-class recommendation, claims map, and practical next-step plan.
- Guidance on records, sources, permissions, collaborators, and declarations to prepare.
- Any extended writing, methods, data, or design support is scoped and quoted in advance.
The assistance boundary matters. Paid support does not buy authorship, peer review, editorial influence, or acceptance. People providing writing or technical support are credited appropriately, and any conflict is disclosed. The handling editor and reviewers do not use a contributor’s purchase of assistance as a decision factor.
Make the evidence legible.
Use clear headings and ordinary language. The content requirements below help an editor, reviewer, and future reader understand what the article contains and what it cannot establish.
Recommended manuscript package
- Title page: article title, each author and affiliation, corresponding author, acknowledgments, funding, conflicts, contributor roles, and any identifying information removed from the review file.
- Manuscript: title, abstract, four to eight keywords, main text, references, tables, figure legends, and any article-specific end statements.
- Plain-language summary: encouraged for all article types. In 150 to 250 words, explain what was studied or argued, what was found or proposed, and what readers should not assume.
- Supplementary material: data dictionary, protocol, code, figures, reporting checklist, permissions, or supporting files when relevant.
Length and structure
JFCS uses recommended ranges rather than automatic word-count rejection. Research Articles and Registry Reports will usually be 3,000 to 5,500 words; Methods and Measurement and Practice-System Reports 2,500 to 5,000; Reviews 4,000 to 7,000; and Commentaries or Field Notes 1,000 to 2,500. A concise article is welcome when it contains what the reader needs. Longer work is welcome when its methods, records, or argument require it.
Anonymized review files: when JFCS sends a manuscript for blinded external review, provide a separate title page and remove author, organization, funder, and study-setting identifiers from the review manuscript where this can be done without making the work unintelligible. The editor will tell you when that version is needed.
Review type is part of the article record.
JFCS does not flatten every contribution into a single claim of peer review. Each published article identifies its review pathway and evidence status in plain view.
Developmental editorial review
An editor helps clarify article type, claim boundaries, permissions, evidence, and readiness. This support is available to contributors who are new to scholarly publishing and does not guarantee acceptance.
External peer review
Research Articles and other manuscripts making substantial empirical or comparative claims ordinarily receive at least two independent reviews. Additional methods, data, ethics, or welfare expertise may be added where needed.
Editorial and practice review
Commentary, Field Notes, Case Reflections, and some Practice-System Reports may receive structured editorial and practice review. The reviewer mix must fit the kind of knowledge under examination.
Decision authority: editors decide to invite development, review, revise, accept, redirect, or decline based on scope, clarity, integrity, welfare, methods, and contribution. No editor may decide their own work or work involving a material personal, financial, supervisory, or organizational conflict.
Requirements that protect the record, the contributor, and the cat.
These are the standards authors agree to by submitting. They apply proportionately to every article class and become more detailed when the work includes identifiable cases, protected records, handling claims, experimental procedures, or other heightened risks.
Originality, attribution, and prior public work
Identify preprints, reports, theses, presentations, website articles, and related manuscripts. Do not submit the same article to another journal at the same time. Attribute quoted, adapted, reused, and derivative text, data, images, diagrams, and ideas.
Authorship and contribution
Authorship reflects meaningful contribution and responsibility, not credentials or institutional rank. All authors approve the final version and disclose relevant interests. Each article includes a contributor statement using CRediT roles where useful. AI systems cannot be authors.
Ethics, welfare, consent, and professional scope
Explain applicable oversight, organizational permission, guardian consent, privacy safeguards, and welfare protections. JFCS will not require recreation of a plausibly hazardous exposure simply to create a comparison. Non-veterinary observations must not be framed as veterinary diagnosis or treatment.
Conflicts, funding, and editorial independence
Disclose employment, ownership, consulting, training programs, product development, intellectual property, advocacy, close professional relationships, study-setting relationships, and funding. A disclosed conflict can be managed; an undisclosed one compromises the record.
Data, code, and reproducible structure
Empirical articles need a data availability statement. When private records cannot be released, share safe structure where possible: aggregate results, definitions, codebooks, inclusion rules, missingness, formulas, analysis logic, synthetic examples, and governed access routes.
Images, permissions, and transformations
Authors must have the right to publish every image and substantial adapted element. Captions must state whether material is documentation, illustration, reconstruction, simulation, or generated imagery. Public source material still requires attribution and a clear permission or legal basis.
AI and computational assistance
Disclose meaningful use affecting drafting, translation, analysis, coding, figures, or substantive revision. Authors remain responsible for every source, number, claim, image, permission, and conclusion. Never upload confidential records or unpublished manuscripts to an external AI service without authorization and suitable protections.
Corrections, versioning, and complaints
Published articles retain dated correction notes and visible version history. Major corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern remain linked to the record. Concerns about a submission, welfare, conflict, or editorial process may be raised through the journal contact route.
Durable, citable, and honest about status.
Accepted articles are prepared for publication with a visible article class, review statement, evidence status, disclosures, data statement, version history, and a permanent landing page.
Authors retain copyright and grant JFCS the right of first publication. The founding publication license is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), unless an approved exception is stated on the article. The journal publishes continuously within annual volumes.
JFCS will assign permanent article identifiers at publication. Article DOIs will be registered once the journal’s DOI metadata and long-term preservation workflows are fully operating; a DOI will be added only to a durable version of record, not to a rough draft expected to change.
Keep moving with the right next page.
These routes are part of the journal’s contributor path. They are intentionally linked here so the public guidance, account tools, and help channels remain connected as the site develops.