SPORTSCIENCE · sportsci.org

News & Comment / Editorial

SPORTSCIENCE SETS THE PACE FOR PUBLISHING SPORT RESEARCH

Will G Hopkins PhD

Department of Physiology and School of Physical Education,University of Otago, Dunedin 9001, New Zealand.

Sportscience 3(1), sportsci.org/jour/9901/wghedit.html, 1999 (773 words)

Reviewed by Frank I Katch, Department of Exercise Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003

 

Sportscience, a new quarterly journal, offers many innovative features: new structures for articles, comprehensible data and statistics, sections devoted to popular content through formal research papers, and downloadable article templates, reprints, and bibliographic files. Reprint · Help

 

KEYWORDS: journal, peer-review, sport science, Web

 

Welcome to the first issue of Sportscience, a new peer-reviewedquarterly journal specializing in human physical performance. Somearticles in this journal will be similar to those published at thissite over the last two years, but there will now be a more formalblind review process for all articles, and a more formal format forpresentation. We intend to review and reformat most of our earlierarticles into Volumes 1 and 2 of this journal.

Our immediate challenge over the next few years will be tomaintain a high standard of scholarship acceptable to the Institutefor Scientific Information. Until ISI's Current Contents and otherdatabases list our journal articles, authors will not submit theirbest work here. It's a Catch-22, of course. So we’re going to doour best to solicit quality articles. Which brings me to theprovocative title of this editorial.

I believe this issue sets the pace in our discipline for rational,creative approaches to scientific publishing. Inparticular...

  • Our four sections--News & Comment, Perspectives, Reviews, Original Research--combine the best features of a formal paper journal like Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise with the less formal approach of Physician and Sportsmedicine.
  • Downloadable article templates will make writing, reviewing, and editing papers easier. Other journals will follow this practice.
  • The templates contain incisive advice and new structured subsections unavailable in other instructions to authors.
  • The quality of data reporting will be second to none. What's more, statistics will be understandable.
  • Reprints are downloadable--free. To print them you will need Microsoft Word 97/98, or you can download a free reader or free updater. More information.
  • To make it easy to track and cite articles, Sportscience provides a downloadable bibliographic file for easy import into Endnote or other reference managers.

New At ThisSite

Most new material at this site will now funnel through thecontents/homepage of the journal, so there is no further need for thefull page we called New At This Site. Instead, the editor will usethis editorial page to highlight articles or call attention tofeatures not listed in the Contents. Noteworthy articles and featuresfor this issue include:

  • Richard Kreider's review on protein and amino-acid supplementation. This review illustrates one advantage of Web publishing over conventional journals: the article was updated the day before we published.
  • A link to a new site (eGroups.com) for our mailing list, Sportscience Forum. The eGroups server updates our archive within minutes of posting. The interface is friendly, powerful, and reliable, although the search engine does not yet recognize "and" in a keywords list.
  • A new Medline search form, courtesy of BioMedNet.com. The BioMedNet search engine has several superb features, including recall of your previous searches. On your first visit you have to register. If you check the appropriate box, future log-ons are automatic and our search form works immediately.
  • Advice on optimizing your browser, in particular for font size and screen resolution. Why you should use Netscape, why Mac users should set the font size to 13 pt, and why PC users should set screen resolution to 1024 x 768.

Team Members

There have been more than cosmetic changes at the site since ourlast upload. Mary Ann Wallace has left the team to pursue otherendeavors after nearly two years of dedicated and unselfish work asmanaging editor. We're late with this issue because of her absence.We've also lost Jason Nugent, our talented chief webmaster since theearly days. We wish Mary Ann and Jason the very best for thefuture.

We have three new members. BillSands and DarleneKluka join as members of the editorial advisory board, andMatt Kerner joins as acontributing editor and webmaster (check out his SportScience Alive pages).

We're now appointing section editors to manage the higher volumeof material. There are several vacancies. We also need more people onthe team who can write and edit, and we need a few more webmasters.


©1999
Webmastered by Will Hopkins
Published March 1999