JSEP Submission Guidelines

North American Society for the Phsychology of Sport and Physical Activity

Editorial Ethics Policy

Submission Guidelines, Revised for 2009

Article Type. Review articles and single-study experimental/methodological reports should not exceed 28 pages (including references, tables, figures, etc.). Multistudy reports are encouraged, and may exceed the 28-page guideline, but they must be parsimoniously presented. Brief reports are limited to 12 pages all inclusive. Research reports should be condensed as much as possible. Submissions will be judged on their topical relevance, methodological adequacy, clarity of reporting, and potential scientific impact. For studies involving human subjects, the Methods section must include a statement regarding informed consent and institutional approval of the protocol. Authors are expected to have their raw data and descriptive statistics available throughout the review process and may be asked to provide elaboration.

Style. In preparing manuscripts for publication in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology (JSEP), authors must closely follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed., 2001). Manuscripts should be written in first person using the active voice. Writing should be concise and direct. Avoid unnecessary jargon and abbreviations, but use an acronym or abbreviation if the spelled-out version of a term is cumbersome. The full wording should precede the first use of an abbreviation. Avoid abbreviations in the title. Formats of numbers and measurement units and all other style matters, including capitalization and punctuation, must follow the APA Publication Manual, 5th edition.

Submission. Authors should submit their manuscripts electronically as a Microsoft Word document via the JSEP Manuscript Central site, an online submission system. Manuscript Central will manage the electronic transfer of JSEP manuscripts throughout the article review process, providing step-by-step instructions:

http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hk_jsep

Problems can be resolved by choosing “Get Help Now” in the upper right corner of the screen. At least two reviewers are solicited for each manuscript. Manuscripts are evaluated via masked review. There are no page charges to authors. Manuscripts should not be submitted to another journal at the same time. Authors of manuscripts that are accepted for publication must transfer copyright to Human Kinetics Inc.

Cover Letter. At Manuscript Central, authors must upload a separate cover letter that lists (1) the title of the manuscript; (2) the date of submission; and (3) the full names of all the authors, their institutional or corporate affiliations, and their e-mail addresses. In addition to this essential information, the cover letter should emulate the sample provided on pp. 411–412 of the APA Publication Manual (5th ed., 2001) by including clear statements pertaining to potential fragmented publication, authorship, and other ethical considerations.

Manuscript. The manuscript must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document. The manuscript should contain no clues as to author identity, such as acknowledgments, institutional information, and mention of a specific city. Thus, information that might identify the author(s) should be omitted or highlighted in black. The first page of the manuscript should include only the title of the manuscript and date of submission. All articles must include an abstract of 100−150 words and three to six keywords chosen from terms not used in the title. The correct order of the elements within a standard JSEP research article is as follows:

title, date of submission
abstract
keywords
introduction
methods
results
discussion
end notes
acknowledgments
reference list
figure captions
tables

Figures and Tables. Each figure should have a caption that is brief and self-explanatory. Captions are listed on a page by themselves. Figures should be professional in appearance and have clean, crisp lines. They should not be in color and should be legible at no larger than approximately 11.5 cm (4.5 in.) × 16.5 cm (6.5 in.), the size of the print area on a journal page. Hand drawing and hand lettering are not acceptable. Screens (i.e., dot patterns or shades of gray) do not reproduce well during the printing process and should not be used to create shading in figures. Stripe patterns or solids (black or white) are better choices than shading. Photographic images may be submitted if they are saved in JPEG or TIFF format at a resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi) and sized to fit within the page dimensions, 11.5 cm (4.5 in.) × 16.5 cm (6.5 in.).

When tabular material is necessary, it should not duplicate the text. Tables must be formatted using Microsoft Word’s table-building functions. Tables should be single-spaced on separate pages and include their brief titles. Explanatory notes are to be presented in footnotes, below the table. The size and complexity of a table should be determined with consideration for its legibility when fitted to the size of the printed page: approximately 11.5 cm (4.5 in.) × 16.5 cm (6.5 in.).

Final Revisions. Prior to acceptance, the author names and dates of citations in the text must match those in the reference list.