INPAGE MENU
Overview
ISSN
0030-2465 (PRINT)
2219-0635 (ONLINE)
Focus and scope
The Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research (OJVR) publishes articles that report on original research in veterinary science. While it considers submissions from any geographic region, its focus is on Africa and the infectious or parasitic diseases and disease vectors that affect livestock and wildlife on the continent. Articles that report on research which contributes to the control or eradication of these diseases, for instance by improving or developing vaccines and diagnostic tests, are especially welcome. Provided they have some bearing on animal health, original research papers in specialised fields such as anatomy and ultrastructure, biochemistry, bioinformatics, epidemiology, entomology and acarology, physiology, pharmacology, immunology, molecular biology, toxicology and other relevant disciplines will also be considered. Veterinary case reports, clinical studies, companion animal medicine, preliminary findings and reports of predominantly local relevance do not fall within the scope of this journal. Three categories of papers are published: comprehensive research papers fall under the category 'Original Research', while shorter and more concise papers are considered as 'Research Communications’. Contributions to the third category, namely ‘Reviews’, are as a rule requested by the editorial board, but suggestions and motivations for review subjects may also be submitted directly to the editor-in-chief.
Historic data
It is generally accepted that Sir Arnold Theiler founded veterinary science in South Africa. Arriving from Switzerland in Cape Town on 6 March 1891, he travelled to the Transvaal (then known as the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, or ZAR, and now known as Gauteng). Through his appointment to produce a human smallpox vaccine (it was highly effective), Theiler came to the attention of senior ZAR officials when they needed to fill a permanent government position. With rinderpest threatening Southern Africa, President Paul Kruger appointed Theiler as the ZAR ‘Gouvernements-Veearts’ (State Veterinarian) in May 1896, specifically to combat the devastating pandemic. Theiler was knighted by King George V in 1914. Read Sir Arnold Theiler’s full story.
In 1908, Theiler occupied the newly erected laboratory on the farm De Onderstepoort, now known as the ARC-Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute (ARC-OVI) and which still owns and funds The Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research (OPJ or OJVR).
To view the journal’s archives from 1903-2003, please visit the University of Pretoria Repository. The archives from 2003 onwards are available on the journal archives page.
Theiler directed the first reports (one or two issues a year) on the veterinary research conducted at the earlier Daspoort Laboratory and later at Onderstepoort. The reports are:
- 1903-1910: Reports of the Government Veterinary Bacteriologist of the Transvaal
- 1911–1918: First to Eighth Reports of the Director of Veterinary Research
- 1923–1928: Ninth to Fourteenth Reports of the Director of Veterinary Education and Research
- 1929: Fifteenth Report of the Director of Veterinary Services
- 1930–1932: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Reports of the Director of Veterinary Services and Animal Industry
The Eleventh and Twelfth Reports of the Director of Veterinary Education and Research were combined into a single issue but were published in two physical parts; Part I in September 1926 and Part II in January 1927.
The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Reports of the Director of Veterinary Education and Research were also combined and published in two parts (I and II) in October 1928.
A supplement to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Reports of the Director of Veterinary Education and Research, Part II, October 1928 consisted of coloured plates to accompany the article on:
The Sexual Cycle of Female Domesticated Mammals. The Ovarian Changes and the Periodicity of Oestrum in Cattle, Sheep, Goats, Pigs and Horses. (Observations on Animals in Central Europe and ‘South Africa’ by Max Kupfer, p 1211).
The Reports were later subdivided into disciplines such as Virology, Parasitology, Pathology, Bacteriology and Toxicology.
In 1933, the journal, renamed The Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research and Animal Industry, published its first issue under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture. Between 1933-1950, 24 volumes were published. In 1951 the journal was again renamed The Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research.
Volume 25 was accompanied by two issues – May 1951 and September 1952 –called supplement No 1 and 2.
From 1962, there were two issues per volume and from 1970 the number of issues increased to four per volume.
Cumulative indexes were issued for 1903-1932, 1933-1968 and 1969-1973. Annual indexes were released from 1974 until the termination of printed issues.
By the early 1990s, the OPJ/OJVR was primarily an in-house journal published by the Department of Agriculture. Contributions were also accepted from the Faculty of Veterinary Science of the University of Pretoria although in 1973 it had become entirely independent from the Onderstepoort Institute, from which it had originated in 1920. When the Institute was transferred to the parastatal Agricultural Research Council in 1992, the editorial board decided to change its policy and to convert the journal to an international publication with a specific aim to promote veterinary research in Africa.
In 2010, OJVR joined AOSIS Publishing, formally known as OpenJournals, and transitioned to an online open access journal. It moved away from publishing print issues throughout the year to publishing articles online when ready for publication and then printing one volume in an end-of-year compilation.
A new editorial board was appointed, independent of the (ARC-OVI), broadening the global footprint and academic independence of the journal. The journal was repositioned from an institutional journal to one with scholarly autonomy; focusing on diseases and research that emanate from or are relevant to the African continent.
The following supplements published as conference proceedings supported the repositioning:
- 2009: Vol 76, No 1: Proceedings of the Pan-African Veterinary Conference held as part of the Onderstepoort Centenary Celebration in 2008.
- 2012: Vol 79, No 2: Supplement 3:Proceedings of the Conference of the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance ‘One Health’ held at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Johannesburg, July 2011.
- 2014: Vol 81, No 2: Supplement 4:Proceedings of the 2nd One Health Conference in Africa. Jointly organised by the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance and the Tanzania National Institute for Medical Research, held at the Snow Crest Hotel in Arusha, Tanzania, April 2013.
Publication frequency
The journal publishes one issue each year. Articles are published online when ready for publication and then printed in an end-of-year compilation. Additional issues may be published for special events (e.g. conferences) and when special themes are addressed.
Open access
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access. Learn more about the journal copyright, licensing and publishing rights.
Review process
The journal has a double-blinded peer review process. Manuscripts are initially examined by editorial staff and are sent by the Editor-in-Chief to two expert independent reviewers, either directly or by a Section Editor. Read our full peer review process.
Membership
AOSIS is a member and/or subscribes to the standards and code of practices of several leading industry organisations. This includes the Directory of Open Access Journals, Ithenticate, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, CrossRef, Portico and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Learn more here.
DHET Accreditation
The journal is DHET accredited because it is listed on the following approved indexing services:
- Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core Collection, Science Citation Index Expanded, SCIE (previously known as ISI)
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - DHET Approved Index from 2021
- SciELO SA
- SCOPUS
Indexing Services
All articles published in the journal are included in:
- African Index Medicus
- CABI
- Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core Collection, Science Citation Index Expanded, SCIE (previously known as ISI)
- Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Other Coverage, Science Citation Index, BIOSIS Previews, Zoological Record
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- EBSCO Host
- Embase
- GALE, CENGAGE Learning
- Google Scholar
- Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, Level 1
- PubMed / MEDLINE
- PubMed Central
- ProQuest
- SciELO SA
- SCOPUS
We are working closely with relevant indexing services to ensure that articles published in the journal will be available in their databases when appropriate.
Archiving
The full text of the journal articles is deposited in the following archives to guarantee long-term preservation:
- Portico
- AOSIS Library
- SA ePublications, Sabinet
- South African Government Libraries
AOSIS is also a participant in the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) initiative. LOCKSS will enable any library to maintain their own archive of content from AOSIS and other publishers, with minimal technical effort and using cheaply available hardware. The URL to the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest for the journal is, https://ojvr.org/index.php/ojvr/gateway/lockss. Please inform us if you are using our manifest as we would like to add your name to the list above.
Journal Impact
A journal's Impact Factor was originally designed in 1963 as a tool for libraries to compare journals, and identify the most popular ones to subscribe to. It was never intended to measure the quality of journals, and definitely not the quality of individual articles.
The Impact Factor is a journal-level measurement reflecting the yearly average number of citations of recent articles published in that journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher Impact Factors are often deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. Therefore, the more often articles in the journal are cited, the higher its Impact Factor.
The Impact Factor is highly discipline-dependent due to the speed with which articles get cited in each field and the related citation practices. The percentage of total citations occurring in the first two years after publication varies highly amongst disciplines. Accordingly, one cannot compare journals across disciplines based on their relative Impact Factors.
We provide several citation-based measurements for each of our journals, if available. We caution our authors, readers and researchers that they should assess the quality of the content of individual articles, and not judge the quality of articles by the reputation of the journal in which they are published.
|
Citation-based measurement |
2022 |
|
Journal Impact Factor, based on Web of Science (formerly ISI) |
2.7 |
|
4.2 |
|
|
Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), based on SCOPUS, Elsevier |
0.90 |
|
0.48 |
|
|
18.00 |