Author Guidelines

 

Submission Process

Authors interested in having their work published in Communications in Kinesiology are encouraged to first upload their work as a preprint to SportRxiv. Furthermore, Microsoft Word and LaTex templates for submissions can be found on the SportRxiv..

Manuscripts that are uploaded to SportRxiv as a preprint should be linked to in the cover letter; soon we should have the ability to directly submit an article from SportRxiv to Communications in Kinesiology. Authors who do not have their manuscript uploaded to SportRxiv should use this website to make a submission. All submissions should ensure that the following components are included at the time of submission.

For the time being please submit:

1. Cover Letter 
2. Title page
3. Anonymized Manuscript

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Cover Letter

The cover letter should be addressed to the editors and briefly include:

• A brief scientific case for consideration. Authors should explain how the submission fits within the Aims and Scope of Communications In Kinesiology. Authors are encouraged to refer to the likely replication value of the research. Replication studies and novel studies are equally welcome.
• A statement indicating the preferred section for review: 
• Physiology & Nutrition
• Exercise & Sport Psychology
• Sports Medicine & Rehabilitation
• Biomechanics
• Sensorimotor Control
• Coaching and Sport Pedagogy
• Training and Performance Analysis
• Physical Activity, Health, and Disease
• Meta-Science
• A statement confirming that ethics approvals.
• A statement indicating whether the study hypotheses, methods, and/or analyses were preregistered (and link to any existing preregistrations).
•  A statement confirming that the authors agree to share their raw, de-identified data, any digital study materials, and analysis code, as appropriate (see open methods section). 
• If these materials cannot be shared the authors should justify why this is necessary. 
•  A statement declaring any conflicts of interests or explicitly stating that there are no conflicts of interest. 
•  A statement confirming the names and affiliations of all authors involved with the project and their respective contribution (see Acknoledgements section below).
• A list of at least 3 suggested reviewers.

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Manuscript Submissions

Title Page

The title page should include the following:

1. Title of the manuscript

• The full title must be 250 characters or fewer. It should be specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the subject field. Avoid abbreviations if possible

2. Full author names with affliations and (optional) ORCID ID

• All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. 

• Each author must have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. T

• Those who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgments.

3. When a large group or center has conducted the work, the author list should include the individuals whose contributions meet the criteria defined above, as well as the group name.

4. One author should be designated (with an asterisk) as the corresponding author, and his or her email address should be included on the manuscript cover page. This information will be published with the article, if accepted

5. Each author should list an associated department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country. 

• If the article has been submitted on behalf of a consortium, all author names and affiliations should be listed.

Organization of the Anonymized Manuscript

We do not have arbitrary restrictions on manuscript length. We do ask you to employ a clear and concise writing style. Please note that a request to be more concise is legitimate feedback during the review process, despite no arbitrary restrictions being in place. If you believe your manuscript would benefit from professional editing, we encourage you to utilize a copyediting service—or ask a colleague whose native language is English for assistance. Copyediting services can be found on the Internet using search terms as “scientific editing service” or “manuscript editing service.”

The anonymized manuscript should begin with the title, followed by an abstract, and end with the References, Contributions, Acknowledgements, Funding Information, and Data, Methods, and Supplementary Accessibility Statement.

Please note that figures should be included in the main text of the submission. It is up to the submitting author to ensure these figures are visible and reable for the reviewers. We suggest limiting the number of figures and/or tables to 5 and the number of references to 50.

Abstract

The abstract should provide a clear description of the main objective(s) of the submission, explain how the study was done (as applicable), and summarize the article’s most important conclusions and their significance. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, and should not include sub-headings.

Contributions

Authors should report the contributions of each author based on the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT). 

Please indicate author contributions as clearly as possible, according to the following criteria:

• Substantial contributions to conception and design
• Acquisition of data
• Analysis and interpretation of data
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
• Final approval of the version to be published

Example:

Contributed to conception and design: KDM, Y-LC
Contributed to acquisition of data: KDM
Contributed to analysis and interpretation of data: KDM, Y-LC
Drafted and/or revised the article: KDM, Y-LC
Approved the submitted version for publication: KDM, Y-LC

Acknowledgements

People who contributed to the work but do not fit our author criteria should be listed in the acknowledgments, along with their contributions. You must ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to being so named.

Funding sources should not be included in the acknowledgments, but in the section below.

Funding Information

Please provide a list of the sources of funding, as well as the relevant grant numbers, where possible. List the authors associated with specific funding sources. You will also enter this information in a form during the submission process, but it must be repeated here.

Data and Supplementary Material Accessibility Statement

This should list the database(s) and, if appropriate, the respective accession numbers and DOIs for all data or supplementary material for the manuscript that has been made publicly available on a trusted digital repository. If no data, code, or supplementary material are available for this manuscript then the reason for this should be explained here.

Other Sections

We have no explicit requirements for section organization between these beginning and ending sections, but we remind you that the Methods and Results sections must adhere to our Transparency policy (below). 

 

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Supplemental Material

At this time we do not accept the submission of supplementary material with the article submission. Examples of supplemental material include data, code, appendices, very large tables, audios, videos, three-dimensional visualizations, interactive graphics, or any other material that is not suitable for the manuscript itself. Instead, we highly encourage authors any additional material to a trusted digital repository that can produce a citeable "Digital Object Identifier" (DOI). We encourage authors to utilize resources such as OSF, Dryad, or Figshare.  Author maintained websites are not suitable resources for supplementary material, but many university libraries have established institutional repositories that provide long-term and stable accessibility to scholarly data. We require that authors include a “Data and Supplementary Material Accessibility Statement” within their manuscript (see above). This should list the database(s) and, if appropriate, the respective accession numbers and DOIs for all data from the manuscript that has been made publicly available. If you feel the need for supplementary material to be hosted with your manuscript submission please contact our editorial office.

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General Policies

Open Data, Open Analytic Methods (Code), and Research Materials Transparency

Data, and also methods used in the analysis, and materials used to conduct the research must be clearly and precisely documented, and be maximally available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure.

Authors using original data must make the data available at a trusted digital repository. (Note: If all data required to reproduce the reported analyses appears in the article text, tables, and figures then it does not also need to be posted to a repository.)

Trusted repositories adhere to policies that make data discoverable, accessible, usable, and preserved for the long term. Trusted repositories also assign unique and persistent identifiers. Author maintained websites are not compliant with this requirement, but many university libraries have established institutional repositories that provide long-term and stable accessibility to scholarly data. We encourage authors to check with their home institutions if an appropriate subject-based public archive is not available. Where no data-specific repository exists, authors should deposit their datasets in a general repository such as OSF, Dryad, or Figshare.

Dissemination of data, methods, and materials can be delayed until article publication, as long as reviewers have adequate access. Under very exceptional circumstances, editors may grant an embargo of the public release of data for up to one year after publication.

Authors will be requested to provide a data accessibility statement in the cover letter with their submissions, and listing where each dataset is or will be archived and including accession numbers or DOIs in the manuscript itself. Along with data, authors should:

1. include all variables, treatment conditions, and observations described in the manuscript.
2. provide a full account of the procedures used to collect, preprocess, clean, or generate the data.
3. provide program code, scripts, codebooks, and other documentation sufficient to precisely reproduce all published results.
4. provide research materials and description of procedures necessary to conduct an independent replication of the research.

Authors reusing data available from public repositories must provide program code, scripts for statistical packages, and other documentation sufficient to allow an informed researcher to precisely reproduce all published results.

In certain cases some or all data or materials cannot be shared for legal or ethical reasons. In such cases, authors must inform the editors at the time of submission. This will be taken into account during the review process. Authors are encouraged to anticipate data and material sharing at the beginning of their projects to provide for these circumstances. It is understood that in some cases access will be provided under restrictions to protect confidential or proprietary information. Editors may grant exceptions to data and material access requirements provided authors:

1. explain the restrictions on the dataset or materials and how they preclude public access.
2. provide a public description of the steps others should follow to request access to the data or materials.
3. provide software and other documentation that will precisely reproduce all published results.
4. provide access to all data and materials for which the constraints do not apply.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their articles continue to meet these conditions. Failure to do so may lead to an editorial expression of concern or retraction of the article. 

Preregistration of Studies and/or Analysis Plans

Communications in Kinesiology encourages, but does not require, preregistration of studies.

Preregistration of studies involves registering the study design, variables, and treatment conditions prior to conducting research. Including an analysis plan involves specification of sequence of analyses or the statistical model that will be reported. Authors should state in the Acknowledgements section whether the conducted research was preregistered with an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry (e.g., http://clinicaltrials.gov/, http://openscienceframework.org/, http://egap.org/design-registration/, http://ridie.3ieimpact.org/, http://aspredicted.org/) and that the preregistration adheres to the disclosure requirements of the institutional registry.

If the conducted research was preregistered, authors must provide links to the time-stamped pre-registration(s) at the institutional registry.

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Submission

At this time, the manuscript review process is only single blind; therefore institutional information can be included within the manuscript text. Upon receipt, a section editor will review the manuscript for technical details and correct formatting and reporting, as described below, and to ensure that the manuscript fits within the Aims and Scope of Communications in Kinesiology. Then, the section editor will either reject the manuscript, invite a revision, or send to at least two peer reviewers.

Reviewers will be instructed to evaluate the appropriateness of the results, discussion, and conclusion based on the introduction and methods. Reviewers will be instructed not to judge the manuscript on the basis of statistical significance, novelty, anticipated impact, or surprise of the results. Acceptance decisions will not be made based on the study outcomes or statistical significance. Reviewers will also be asked to confirm whether they are already aware of the study's results from other sources (e.g., conference proceedings, preprints).

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Change of Name Policy

If an author has published in a STORK journal and wishes to change their name, please contact Dr. Aaron Caldwell, the Publications Chair with your request (publishing@storkinesiology.org). Please identify your preferred name and your previously published STORK articles. Your previous publications will be updated and reuploaded with your preferred name.