Journal Policies

Publication Ethics

Meat and Muscle Biology is committed to meet the highest ethical standards throughout its review and publication process. MMB follows rigorous review guidelines and the review and editorial processes adhere to the Core Practices developed by the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE). MMB uses a plagiarism check software for the initial screening process to ensure the integrity of research. MMB is not published for profit and its editorial decisions are not influenced by outside interests.

Animal Care and Use and Use of Human Subjects in Research

If live animals are used in the research, then submission of the manuscript signifies that the research has followed established standards for humane care and use of animals. The standard which was followed and a statement of the approval or waiver by the appropriate authorities or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) with approval or waiver number and date of approval or waiver must be submitted with the manuscript. Research that requires veterinary procedures or invasion of body organs or tissues of any kind must describe the methods and procedures to minimize pain and discomfort to the animal before, during, and after the invasive procedures. Research involving humans as subjects should clearly describe the reason for and extent to which human participation was necessary for the research. As required by law or the institution policies, the agency or institutional review board (IRB) approvals for human subject use should be described with the approval number and date of approval. If institutional review boards or committees do not exist, then authors must make sure that the research has followed the 2013 revised Declaration of Helsinki. Documentation of the IACUC and/or IRB status must be made available upon request. The statements of compliance should preferably be at the beginning of the Methods and Materials section rather than in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The integrity and credibility of published articles is partially based on the transparency of relationships surrounding all aspects of the research and its publication. Authors, reviewers, editors, and agents of AMSA are required to disclose possible conflict of interest situations, actual or perceived, that may affect or appear to affect the objectivity, impartiality, and overall integrity of the peer review process and publication of research. Conflicts of interest may be from employment; financial benefit; personal, social, or professional relationships; or other situations. Disclosure of potential or real conflicts of interest are required, but do not necessarily exclude a paper from consideration for publication. Failure to disclose actual or perceived conflicts of interest in the manuscript when submitted may result in rejection of the manuscript or retraction of a published paper from the journal.

Author conflicts of interest
Conflict of interest situations that authors should report are those concerning financial interests in the outcome of the research. It is not possible to anticipate or describe every potential conflict of interest, authors should communicate to the Editor-in-Chief at the time of manuscript submission of known or perceived conflicts of interest, including those with any potential reviewer or editor.

  1. a financial interest in the outcome of the research or a relationship that might affect judgment of the data or results by the author, close family member of the author, or professional associate (as defined by National Institutes of Health).
  2. service as an employee, officer, director, owner, member, or trustee of an organization with a financial interest in the outcome of the research or as a consultant, advisor, expert witness, or advocate on behalf of an entity with a financial interest in the outcome.
  3. support of the research, including grants, contracts, subcontracts, fellowships, consulting agreements, gifts, services, or other nonfinancial benefits with a company or organization having a financial interest in the outcome.
  4. employment, rights to patent applications, patents, sales, licensing, or royalty agreements or memoranda of understanding; service on advisory boards, speaker or review panels; or ownership of stock or shares in a company or organization that might gain or lose financially based upon the outcome.
Reviewer and editor conflicts of interest

Peer manuscript reviewers and editors are expected to provide independent and impartial reviews and decisions on manuscripts and so are bound by the same conflicts of interest ethical concerns as for authors. Additionally, reviewers and editors will have a conflict of interest if they have financial or personal interests directly with the author(s) that might affect or might be perceived to affect the impartiality of manuscript review and decisions. Potential conflicts include, but are not limited to,

  1. collaborations, research grants, contracts, subcontracts, or consulting directly with any of the authors or other investigators or key personnel on the research in the manuscript.
  2. serving as an advisor or advisee to author(s) on the current manuscript.
  3. employment (current, pending, or prospective) at the author(s) institution or company that could be affected by the peer review process or manuscript decision.

Reviewers are obligated to indicate if they have a vested interest in the publication of a manuscript that would compromise their ability to serve as an impartial reviewer. Reviewers who feel unable to give an independent and unbiased review when invited or during the course of their review should contact MMB so they can be removed from the review assignment. Potential reviewers or editors with actual or perceived conflicts of interest will not be involved in the manuscript decision process. Editors who are authors or coauthors on manuscripts will be excluded from the decision processes, but will have the usual author or coauthor access to manuscript information.

Expectations of Authors and Manuscripts

Authors are expected to adhere to scientific methods in conducting, evaluating, and reporting research in manuscripts submitted to MMB. Each manuscript must contain a clear description of the conduct or protocol for the experiment, including the experimental conditions, experimental design, experimental units, number of observations, and the method and statistical model by which the data were statistically analyzed.

Eligibility of Authors

Membership in the American Meat Science Association is not required for publishing in MMB. Members, however, do receive a discount on publication charges. Authors who wish to join AMSA to receive this discount should do so before the paper is accepted for publication. Membership information is available at http://meatscience.org/membership/join-amsa.

Publication charges are $1,000 for a research paper of 12 typeset pages or less, which is payable at the time a manuscript has been accepted for publication. AMSA members will receive the discounted rate of $850 on publication charges when papers have been accepted and membership has been verified. Publication charges for the Short Communications are $300 and $450 for AMSA members and non-members, respectively. No papers will be listed in the MMB table of contents or will be available on the MMB website until the publication charge has been received. Invited review papers will not incur page charges while unsolicited review papers will have the same page charges as for research papers, but may be up to 20 typeset pages without additional charges. Research pages longer than 12 typeset pages or unsolicited review papers longer than 20 typeset pages will have additional publication charges at the rate of $200 per page regardless of author membership in AMSA.

Copyright Agreement

Authors must agree to the Copyright Notice for each manuscript when it is submitted through the Iowa State University Digital Press website. Meat and Muscle Biology provides immediate open access to its articles. Author(s) retain copyright in their work and articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which allows readers to copy, share, and adapt the article so long as the original article in Meat and Muscle Biology is cited. Material produced by authors on official duty as U.S. government employees is considered to be in the public domain, which will be indicated on the published paper.

Authors of MMB manuscripts who are including materials, often tables or figures, from other copyrighted sources must obtain permission to use these materials from the copyright holder and submit the evidence that this permission has been obtained from the copyright holder when the manuscript is submitted to MMB. Acknowledgement of the use of this material and credit for the source of the material must be included in the manuscript.

Copyright in articles published between 2017–2019 is held by the American Meat Science Association. These articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

No Prior Publication or Simultaneous Submission

Papers submitted to MMB should be original reports of research unless it is a review or issue paper invited or accepted for submission. It is expected that the work has not been previously published in a scientific journal and is not being considered for publication in another scientific journal. Authors must disclose at the time of submission if portions of the paper have been submitted or published elsewhere and to submit copies of the relevant prior publications when the manuscript is submitted. The determination of whether a technical paper such as a Cattlemen’s Day Report or Swine Day publication is a prior scientific publication will be decided for each case, but in general, prior publication is considered if substantial portions of the manuscript sections have been published in the technical media.

Review or issue papers can be submitted if invited by the MMB Editor-in-Chief on a specific topic or as unsolicited review papers on pertinent topics. The Editor-in-Chief will determine the appropriateness and importance of unsolicited manuscripts for peer review. Review papers should provide a synthesis of existing knowledge and give new insights or concepts not previously presented in the literature. They are not exhaustive reviews of the literature, but provide enough literature review to give the reader a sound basis for understanding and interpreting the topic. Review papers are on important subjects needing a scholarly perspective, give balanced coverage of the entire spectrum of the topic, and adds a perspective to the subject not previously available to scientists. Invited issue papers serve the purpose to stimulate discussion and examination of current views on a topic and might be controversial, but should not be confrontational. Authors should contact the MMB Editor-in-Chief before writing and submitting unsolicited issue papers.