History

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Diseases of Aquatic Organisms (DAO) is international and interdisciplinary. The journal was founded by Professor Otto Kinne in 1984.

Top journal

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A leading journal in its field, DAO is indexed by ISI under the following subject area categories: Fisheries, Marine & Freshwater Biology, and Veterinary Science. According to the Journal Citation Reports 2024 release, DAO features an impact factor (IF) of 1.1 from 5897 total cites (5-year IF = 1.5), Immediacy Index = 0.3, Eigenfactor = 0.00168, JCI = 0.59. DAO is also included in the PubMed database, and all articles can be accessed via direct links from PubMed entries.

Editors, Review Editors and a large number of Anonymous Referees - all internationally acknowledged experts - assure constructive, fair and prompt peer reviews, and a critical selection of high-quality papers.

Aim

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DAO serves as a worldwide forum for scientific communications on all aspects of diseases in aquatic organisms. Diseases affect all facets of life - at the cell, tissue, organ, individual, population and ecosystem level. Studies of disease phenomena in the wide array of aquatic life forms contribute significantly to the analysis, comprehension, prevention and treatment of diseases in general, i.e., also those of organisms now inhabiting terrestrial environments.

DAO strives for

• complete coverage of research on diseases in aquatic organisms
• the highest possible quality of scientific contributions
• quick publication
• a high technical standard of presentation

Scope

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DAO publishes Research Articles, Reviews, and Notes, as well as Comments/Reply Comments (for details see DAO 48:161), Theme Sections and Opinion Pieces. For details consult the Guidelines for Authors. Papers may cover all forms of life - animals, plants and microorganisms - in marine, limnetic and brackish habitats. DAO's scope includes any research focusing on diseases in aquatic organisms, specifically:

• Diseases caused by coexisting organisms, e.g. viruses, bacteria, fungi, protistans, metazoans; characterization of pathogens
• Diseases caused by abiotic factors (critical intensities of environmental properties, including pollution)
• Diseases due to internal circumstances (innate, idiopathic, genetic)
• Diseases due to proliferative disorders (neoplasms)
• Disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention
• Molecular aspects of diseases
• Nutritional disorders
• Stress and physical injuries
• Epidemiology/epizootiology
• Parasitology
• Toxicology
• Diseases of aquatic organisms affecting human health and well-being (with the focus on the aquatic organism)
• Diseases as indicators of humanity's detrimental impact on nature
• Genomics, proteomics and metabolomics of disease
• Immunology and disease prevention
• Animal welfare
• Zoonosis

IMPORTANT: Case reports (published e.g. as Research Article or Note) are only suitable for publication in DAO if they include new information on the pathogen involved (e.g. a new strain), the host response (e.g. clinical signs or pathogenicity) or other significant ancillary information.

Readership

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Physicians, veterinarians, environmental biologists, fishery biologists and ecologists, aquaculturalists, pathologists, parasitologists, microbiologists, botanists, zoologists. DAO is an indispensable source of information for all concerned with health of humans, animals, plants and microorganisms; environmental protection; resource management; ecosystem health; conservation of organisms and habitats; aquafood production.

Publication fees

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The only publication fee charged by the journal is the Article Processing Charge (APC) for Open Access publication. There are no other article submission or publication fees such as page charges or colour charges.

Open Access articles attract far more attention than non-Open Access articles—in some cases more than 10-fold. Open Access articles are immediately available to a much broader audience, including the general public. This potentially results in a wider and greater impact and faster citation growth.

Authors may select Open Access publication for their article at the time of manuscript acceptance. Article Processing Charges (APCs) for publication apply. Open Access articles are published under the Creative Commons by Attribution (CC-BY) Licence. Copyright remains with the original copyright owners, and copying and re-use is almost unrestricted.

If Open Access is not selected, articles will be published with Subscriber Access (no publication fee), under which access is limited to the journal subscribers and copying and reuse of the article are restricted by normal copyright law. Fuller information on Open Access and policies on author self-archiving (‘Green’ Open Access) of Subscriber Access articles is found on the main Open Access page.

For Open Access, the APC is based on article type and date of article submission, so the final APC price is already fixed for APC funding applications necessary prior to article submission.

The Article Processing Charges (APCs) are:

Articles submitted on or after 1 November 2022

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• €2500 for Research or Review articles
• €1250 for Notes
• € 650 for Opinion Pieces or Comments

Tax information

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For purchases in the European Union, the VAT number of the paying institution must be provided, otherwise VAT will be added at the standard rate for the country of the purchaser. For Germany, VAT at 7% will always be added.

Fee discounts

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Feature Articles are published with Open Access at no cost to the authors.

Authors of studies originating from countries where limited funds are available for APCs can request to have the APC reduced. Applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and will require the provision to Inter-Research of specific funding and other resourcing information related to the study. In general a study must have been funded to at least 50% by a country eligible for the Research4Life program or classified by the World Bank as low or lower-middle income. A complete waiver of the APC is not available for journals where there is the option of publishing with Subscriber Access at no charge. Please apply to Feewaiver before submitting your manuscript.

Creative Commons Labelling

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Only articles clearly marked with "CC BY" in the top right corner of the front page are published with the Creative Commons by Attribution Licence. The CC-BY option was not available for Inter-Research journals before 1 April 2013. Articles marked "Open Access" or "Free Access" but not marked "CC BY" are made freely accessible at the time of publication but are subject to standard copyright law regarding reproduction and distribution.