Information For Authors

The Sport Journal adheres to the following authorship criteria:
Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to:

1. Conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
3. Final approval of the version to be published.

Conditions a, b, and c must all be met. Individuals who do not meet the above criteria may be listed in the acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

The Sport Journal is an electronic, open-access peer-reviewed scientific journal addressing current issues in sport, published with the goal of advancing sport knowledge through research.

Manuscripts for The Sport Journal should be submitted online by clicking the above link. The submitting author, who is generally the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process and communication with other authors will not be made by the editor or editorial board. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list and that they have all read and approved the final submitted version of the manuscript.

Manuscripts must not be submitted to another journal while they are under review by The Sport Journal, nor should they have been previously published. Manuscripts are read by reviewers, and the review process generally takes approximately 24 weeks. Manuscripts will be evaluated in terms of topical relevance, theoretical and methodological adequacy, and clarity of explanation and analysis. Authors should be prepared to provide the data and/or research instrument(s) on which the manuscript is based for examination if requested by the editor. Comments from reviewers concerning manuscripts, along with the editorial decision, are made available to authors.

• All submissions must be accompanied by a $150 submission fee.
• All articles submitted to The Sport Journal will be peer-reviewed by up to three reviewers.
• Periodic call for papers on specific topics or unusual events that have a significant impact on the field of sport will take precedence in the review process. (exa. COVID-19 CFP)

Questions about the journal or manuscript submission should be directed to the Executive Editor of the journal, Assistant Professor Vandy Pacetti-Donelson, at vpacettidonelson@ussa.edu.

The Sport Journal aims to publish innovative empirical, theoretical, and review articles focused on sports management, sports coaching, sports studies, sports medicine, and sports fitness and health, Authors are encouraged to submit articles reflecting current issues in sport and exercise that are societal in nature and include both qualitative and quantitative research.

Types of Publications

The Sport Journal has no restrictions on the length of manuscripts, if the text is concise and comprehensive. Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Manuscripts submitted to Sports should neither been published before nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are as follows:

• Research articles:Original research manuscripts.
• Review articles:Reviews of published literature on specific topics focusing on what has been published, studied, argued, and accepted into practice. Specific attention should be given to controversial findings and topics.
• Methodology articles:Methodology articles should present a new experimental or computational method, test, or procedure. The method described either may be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article must describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available. The method needs to have been well tested and ideally, but not necessarily, used in a way that proves its value.
• Letters to the Editor:Brief comments on recently published articles including both supportive and critical thoughts, typically followed by a rebuttal or clarification letter from the original author.
• Commentaries:Comments regarding any area related to sport. Typically, commentaries are brief reviews of literature on “hot topics” and/or a series of recently published articles that are related. Commentaries can also include Case Reports.

The Sport Journal publishes research and scholarly review articles that focus on the following themes:

Style Guide

When preparing manuscripts for submission in the Sport Journal, authors should follow the guidelines in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition; www.apa.org). Manuscripts will be summarily rejected if they do not follow the APA guidelines.

Manuscripts must be in English. If this is not the first language of the author, contributions should be checked for grammar and syntax, prior to submission, by a person fluent in academic English. It is not the responsibility of the editorial team to redraft articles into an acceptable form and manuscripts, which do not meet the required standard, will be returned. American conventions in spelling and punctuation should be used throughout.

Manuscripts submitted will be judged primarily on their substantive content, but writing style, structure, and length are very important considerations. Poor presentation is sufficient reason for the rejection of a manuscript. When first received, manuscripts will be evaluated by the editor in terms of their contribution-to-length ratio. Thus, manuscripts should be written as simply and concisely as possible. Generally, papers should be no longer than 20 double-spaced pages (using one-inch margins and Times New Roman 12-point font), inclusive of references, tables, figures, and appendices. However, we recognize that in rare circumstances, papers intended to make very extensive contributions may require additional space. Prior to submitting a manuscript, authors should consider the contribution-to-length ratio and ask themselves: “Is the paper long enough to cover the subject while concise enough to maintain the reader’s interest?”

Preparing your manuscript

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and what information should be within each section. An example of a complete submission can be found here. Feel free to use this article as a template when preparing your manuscript.

Title page

The title page should:

• present a title that includes, if appropriate, the study design,
• running head,
• the full names and institutional affiliations of all authors, and the corresponding author should be identified with a complete mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address.
• The major category should be identified on the title page:
  • Sports Management
  • Sports Coaching
  • Sports Studies
  • Sports Medicine
  • Sports Fitness and Health

Blind Title Page

Should only include the title of the article and running head.

Abstract

The Abstract should not exceed 350 words. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. The abstract must include the following separate sections:

• Purpose,
• Methods,
• Results,
• Conclusions, and
• Applications in Sport.

Be brief and concise and include only the important findings and outcomes and how they relate to sport.

Keywords

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article chosen from terms not used in the title.

Introduction

The introduction should be a brief review of the topics being presented and how they relate to your study purpose and hypothesis. The focus of this section is to give a brief background of your topic and explain why your paper/research is necessary. This section is typically one to three pages double-spaced and highly referenced. The end of this section should include a statement of what the article will include and/or a purpose and hypotheses.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations can be provided.

Methods 

Should clearly include the complete study design referencing when necessary and include the setting, type of participants and/or type and location of the database, what methods were used, what type of statistics were used. This section should also include a statement regarding the subjects’ consent to participate when appropriate.

Results

This should include the findings of the study including, if appropriate, results of statistical analysis, which must be included either in the text or as tables and figures.

Discussion

For research articles, this section should discuss the implications of the findings in context of existing research and highlight limitations of the study. For study protocols and methodology manuscripts, this section should include a discussion of any practical or operational issues involved in performing the study and any issues not covered in other sections.

Conclusions

This section should summarize your findings and the overall importance and significance of your research results.

Applications in Sport

This section should be written to the audience for whom the paper is intended. Such as a coach, trainer, athlete, parent, etc. This is the most important section because it unites the research findings with the practitioners. Put yourself in the shoes of your readers and clearly explain how your findings can and/or will impact the professional within the field of sport.

Acknowledgments

Use this section for acknowledging individuals that assisted with your research who are not authors. Also, declare any funding sources for the research.

In this section, any financial and/or non-financial conflicts of interest should be disclosed. This includes any monetary reimbursement, salary, and/or stocks or shares in a company who may financially gain from the publication of this manuscript. This also includes patents related to the topics in the published article.

Footnotes should not be used.

References

The referencing style used for The Sport Journal is modified from the American Psychological Association (Current Edition from APA.org). References are identical to those published in the current APA Publication Manual with the addition of a reference number left of each reference. The order of references should be alphabetical as determined using the APA.org criteria (first author’s last name, etc.). Citations should include the reference number in parentheses (1). Three or more consecutive citations should include the first and last citation with a hyphen (1-4). Non-consecutive citations should be separated with a comma (1, 3), and both methods should be used when using consecutive and non-consecutive references (1-4, 6).

When using an author’s name, please use et al. if more than two authors are reported in the reference and use the appropriate reference number after the name. For example, authors Smith and Jones could be used in the sentence “In 2009, Smith and Jones (8) discovered…”. If there are more than two authors in the Smith article the sentence would read “In 2009, Smith et al. (8) discovered…”.

Copyright law requires that authors correctly reference the work of others and that of themselves if they are using their own previously published work. “Ideoplagiarism” (Plagiarizing yourself without referencing) is an unethical practice and is unacceptable. In addition, if authors are submitting a manuscript using the same dataset from a previously published study, this should be revealed in the manuscript (e.g., ‘this is part of a larger study’), as well as outlined to the editor in the cover letter.

All submitted manuscripts are subject to screening by plagiarism detection software that includes reference and citation screening.

Figures and Tables

All tables should be included in this section and should be in the form of an MS Word document (doc). MS Excel files are not acceptable. All tables should be numbered based on the order you expect them to appear in the manuscript and formatted in APA style.

Figure Requirements

Figures should be submitted as a jpg or ppt. All figures should be numbered based on the order you expect them to appear in the manuscript.

Final figures should be approximately the following sizes:

• Width of 8.5 cm (3.35 in) for single column;
• Width of 17.6 cm (6.93 in) for double column;
• Maximum height of 23.0 cm (9.1 in) for figure and legend;
• Final image resolution should be at least 300 dpi (dots per inch).

Non-research manuscripts (book and other reviews, methodologies, letter to the editors, and commentaries) do not require all the sections listed above. All sections should be in all capital letters and bold. Subheadings should be identified on their own line using italics. If multiple subheadings are used, the first subheading should be in lowercase bold and the next subheading under that subheading should be in italics.

Accepted manuscripts become the property of The Sport Journal, the copyright holder; they may not be published elsewhere without written permission from the copyright holder.

Reprint Permission

The Sport Journal often receives requests to reprint articles. The editorial board is pleased to extend the reach of the journal’s content. Those seeking permission to reprint must fill out and submit the Permission to Reprint Form, which allows the Journal to manage necessary copyright policies. With publication permission, proper attribution to The Sport Journal is required.

Disclaimer

The articles published in The Sport Journal are not intended to replace the advice of a physician and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of the United States Sports Academy or the journal’s editors or editorial board members.