Instructions for Authors
Thank you for choosing to submit your paper to The Journal of Sport and Exercise Science™. These instructions will ensure that we have everything required to progress your paper through the process of peer review, production and publication.
In the first instance, authors may submit their paper in any scholarly format or layout. Manuscripts must be submitted as a single Word file. Figures and tables should be placed within the text and should be of sufficient resolution to enable easy review.
- There are no strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts must contain the essential elements needed to evaluate a manuscript: Title page with author affiliation(s), abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, figures, tables, funder information, and references. Further details may be required if the paper is accepted for publication.
- References can be in any style or format, but a consistent citation format is required. Author name(s), journal or book title, article or chapter title, year of publication, volume and issue (where appropriate), page numbers and continuous line numbers are essential. All bibliographic entries must contain a corresponding in-text citation. The addition of DOI (Digital Object Identifier) numbers is recommended but not essential.
- Spelling can be US or UK English so long as usage is consistent.
If the paper is accepted for publication, authors will be asked to format their papers according to our manuscript template, following the APA 6th edition reference style.
Conflicts of Interest
Authors must identify potential conflicts of interest associated with financial, institutional, and/or personal relationships that might inappropriately influence their actions or statements. Financial relationships that may cause a conflict of interest include employment, consultancy, honoraria or other forms of payment. Personal conflicts of interest can be associated with personal relationships, academic or sport competition, or intellectual passion. Authors must disclose potential conflicts of interest to participants involved in the study to be reported and state this explicitly in the Methods section of the manuscript. Disclosure of conflict of interest applies to all submissions to JSES, including original articles, reviews, invited commentaries, and Letters to the Editor.
In instances where the study has been funded by a third party with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcomes, a statement that explicitly acknowledges the potential conflict of interest should be included in the Acknowledgments section at the end of the manuscript (e.g., “The results of the reported study do not constitute endorsement of the product by the authors or by the Journal of Sport and Exercise Science”). The name of any funding agency or company, manufacturer, or third-party institution or organization that provided funding, equipment, or technical support should be stated.
Human and Animal Ethics
Plagiarism
Duplicate Publication and Salami Slicing
Duplicate publication, in which identical data is published as more than a single primary publication, is not acceptable in JSES (exceptions are prior publication as an abstract, thesis or preprint). Furthermore, findings from a single study should not be salami sliced in order to publish several different papers if the hypotheses, methods or sample population are the same.
Informed Consent
In JSES, participants have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. For all research involving human participants, freely-given, informed consent to participation in the study must be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.
Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers, biometric characteristics and other information) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scholarly purposes and the participant (or parent/guardian if the participant is a minor or incapable or legal representative) provided written informed consent for publication.
Clinical Trials
All clinical trials should be registered in a suitable publicly available repository (e.g., www.clinicaltrials.gov)
Data Sharing Policy
A submission to JSES implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality.
JSES strongly encourages authors to make available to readers, if requested, all datasets upon which the conclusions of the paper rely. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible.
Peer Review
Manuscripts that do not fall within the scope and mission statement of the journal or fail to comply with the submission guidelines will not enter the formal review process. The corresponding author is required to nominate at least 3 potential reviewers of the manuscript who have suitable expertise in the area addressed by the manuscript. The journal is under no obligation to use any of the nominated reviewers.
JSES operates a single-blind peer review process, in which reviewers remain anonymous. Our reviewers are volunteers who provide their expertise without remuneration, so we try to avoid pressuring them for very rapid responses. Consequently, the review process can vary between approximately 4 to 12 weeks.
