International Journal of Sports and Health (IJSH)
Instructions to Authors
Manuscripts submitted to IJSH must not be currently considered by other journals. All results presented within the manuscript must be original and have not been published elsewhere. In the case of published materials being re-analysed in the studies, original source must be cited or acknowledged and a license must be obtained from the owner whenever deem necessary. The following instructions must be reviewed before submitting a manuscript to the journal.
Type of Articles
Please review the suitability of the content of your manuscript based on the journal aims and scope. Then, determine the article type for your manuscript. All manuscript must be formatted according to the guidelines listed here prior to submission. Non-complying manuscript will be returned to authors for correction before it is assigned to or considered by an editor, thus delaying the peer-reviewing process.
IJSH considers the following type of articles for submission:
- Mini-Review – concise review of current or updated knowledge or advancements in the related fields.
- Systematic Review – a summary of literature related to the sports and health field that involves reproducible methods to systematically search, critically appraise, and synthesize a specific topic based on strategies that reduce biases and errors.
- Original Research / Technical – short and concise original research including technical report or single or more experiments leading to convincing observations to prove a hypothesis. This type of article must have a clear objective of the study, a concise discussion, and a clear conclusion. Studies reporting negative findings also fall within this category.
- Case Study – short and concise description of a unique, unusual or novel occurrence of a case or presentation.
- Research Data – short and concise description of a research dataset or resources that highlights the origin and relevance of the dataset or resources to facilitate research reproducibility.
- Hypothetical Study – hypothetical paper involves a critical interpretation of current literature leading to a profound but untested hypothesis.
- Views – articles featuring a review, commentary or an opinion on a currently published paper or book.
- News – articles featuring a report on local or international sports and health-related outreach or scientific programmes, obituaries of a prominent scientist as well as individual success stories.
Submission
All manuscript must be submitted via the Open Journal System for IJSH which is accessible HERE. New users must register for an account before submitting their manuscripts. Registration page is accessible via this LINK.
Editorial and Peer Reviewing Policies
Please visit the Editorial Policy page for more information.
Editorial Decision
Please visit the Editorial Policy page for more information.
Copyright/License
Please visit the Editorial Policy page for more information.
Studies involving Human and Animal Subjects
All manuscript reporting observations made on human subjects must adhere to World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki which is accessible HERE. Similarly, all studies made on animal subjects must be approved by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) in accordance to guideline or information provided at American Association for Laboratory Animal Science which is accessible HERE. National or institutional granting bodies, ethical approval and approval number must be provided in the manuscript. The journal reserves the right to request for and review all relevant documents needed to clarify such clearance or compliance.
Disclosure of Conflicts of Interests
Editors, authors and reviewers must adhere to the recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals stated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which is accessible at http://icmje.acponline.org/. The recommendation can be downloaded HERE. The corresponding author (or submitting author), managing editor or reviewers must declare any potential conflicts of interests related to the work reported in the submitted manuscript. The declaration statement must be provided towards the end of the manuscript and the corresponding or submitting author is responsible to read, declare and sign the ICMJE conflicts of interests form downloadable HERE.
Disclosure of Conflicts of Interests
Editors, authors and reviewers must adhere to the recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals stated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which is accessible at http://icmje.acponline.org/. The recommendation can be downloaded HERE. The corresponding author (or submitting author), managing editor or reviewers must declare any potential conflicts of interests related to the work reported in the submitted manuscript. The declaration statement must be provided towards the end of the manuscript and the corresponding or submitting author is responsible to read, declare and sign the ICMJE conflicts of interests form downloadable HERE.
Public Repositories And Reference IDs for Research Dataset
All novel or new research datasets related to DNA/RNA/protein sequences must be submitted to the relevant repositories hosted by National Centre for Biotechnology Information at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Gene expression datasets (RNAseq, microarray and etc.) should be deposited in the relevant public domain such as Gene Expression Omnibus at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/ or equivalent repositories. In the case where no public repositories are relevant or available, these datasets must be submitted as a supplementary information to IJSH. All reference IDs for gene or DNA/RNA/protein sequences, gene expression datasets, vector sequences and etc. must be provided within the main text of the manuscript. In any circumstances, authors must make every effort to use official symbols or IDs for any of the well reported resources cited within the manuscript.
Cover Letter to Editor & Peer Reviewers
All submission (except for editorial section) must be accompanied with a cover letter to editor. While highlighting the novelty and the importance findings of the manuscript, authors are required to submit 3 to 5 potential reviewers (including their full name, positions, affiliations and email addresses) to be considered by the managing editor. The suggested peer reviewers must not be affiliated or involved with any parts of the study presented within the manuscript. Peer reviewers from the same country is permitted.
Language & Proofreading
All manuscripts must be written in either UK or American english but not the mixture of both. Authors are responsible to ensure that the quality of the written english is acceptable, clear, concise and free from grammatical errors. Although the assigned or managing editor is responsible to proofread the galley prior to publication, the corresponding author (submitting author) assume full responsibility on the content (see Terms of Service), language and final presentation of the galley and must approve the final galley prior to publication.
Formatting & Templates
Please use the following template files, which summarise the formatting for all the article types, to prepare your manuscript. Do not alter any formatting within the template and do not alter any sentences highlighted in yellow.
For Mini-review
Mini review articles consist of the following mandatory sections: “Abstract”, “Introduction” and “Conclusions”. Other sections can be named accordingly based on the topic of discussion. There is no limit to number of subtopics or sections within a mini review article.
For Research/Technical Notes/Data Notes/Case Notes
Research notes articles consist of the following sections: “Abstract”, “Introduction”, “Materials & Methods”, “Results”, “Discussion” and “Conclusions”.
For Hypothetical Notes
A hypothetical paper consists of the following sections: “Abstract”, “Background” and “Hypothesis”.
For News and Views
A News and Views article does not contain any specific sections other than the mandatory “Abstract” section.
Requirements for all articles
The following sections must be appended to the end of any article types:
- Authors’ names and affiliation(s): the first and the last name of each author must be provided. All related affiliations must be superscripted after the last name and defined after the author list.
- Keywords: author must provide three to five pertinent keywords specific to the article; yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.
- Supplementary Materials: including additional figures, tables, dataset, videos or additional data in any format to be provided and archived in the journal website.
- Acknowledgements: including grants that you have received in support of your research work including the costs to contribute towards the publication in open access.
- Author Contributions: articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided.
- Conflicts of Interest: please refer to the explanation of “Disclosure of Conflicts of Interests” section above or state “The authors declare no conflict of interest”.
- References: please refer to the “References” section below.
References
Please use American Psychological Association 7th Edition reference style for in text citation and bibliography formatting. You may refer to the APA 7th Edition quick reference guide here: https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-guide.pdf. The APA 7th Edition style is available in most reference programmes such as:
- EndNote
- Zotero
- RefWorks
- Mendeley
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. All manuscript will be screened for text similarity by using Grammarly Plagiarism Checker. Manuscript with a significant amount of similarity with published materials would be declined by the editor from further stages of editorial evaluation. In the case where plagiarised content are missed by the system, and the manuscript has been published by the journal, the published materials shall be retracted by an official statements either from the journal or the author(s).