About the Journal

Editorial Policies

Journal: Sports Scientific Research (Uzbek: "Sportda ilmiy tadqiqotlar"; Russian: "Научные исследования в спорте")
ISSN XXXX-XXXX (Online) · Open Access · Double-blind peer review · Published in Uzbekistan

1. About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Sports Scientific Research is a peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly journal dedicated to advancing knowledge across the full breadth of the sport and human-movement sciences. The journal provides an international platform for original research, systematic reviews, and evidence-based practice reports produced by researchers, clinicians, coaches, and physical-education specialists in Uzbekistan, Central Asia, and worldwide.

The journal's mission is to strengthen the scientific foundation of sport, physical education, and health promotion by publishing rigorous, reproducible, and ethically conducted research, and to make that research freely available to the global community without financial or access barriers.

Aims

  • To publish high-quality original research that advances theory and practice in the sport and exercise sciences.
  • To bridge laboratory science and applied coaching, clinical, and educational practice.
  • To support the development of the national and regional sport-science research community and to integrate it into the international scholarly record.
  • To uphold international standards of research integrity, transparency, and reproducibility.

Subject Coverage

The journal welcomes submissions in, but not limited to, the following areas:

  • Sports science and human performance — training theory, testing and monitoring, talent identification and development.
  • Physical education and pedagogy — curriculum, motor learning, school and lifelong physical activity.
  • Sports medicine — injury prevention and management, sports cardiology, sports traumatology, return-to-play.
  • Exercise physiology — bioenergetics, cardiorespiratory and neuromuscular adaptation, environmental and altitude physiology.
  • Sports biomechanics — movement analysis, kinetics and kinematics, sports equipment and technique.
  • Coaching theory and methodology — periodisation, load management, technical-tactical preparation.
  • Sports psychology — motivation, mental skills, well-being, and the psychology of performance.
  • Adaptive and Paralympic sport — classification, performance, and inclusion.
  • Physical rehabilitation and kinesiotherapy — therapeutic exercise, physiotherapy, and recovery.

Publication Frequency, Publisher and Language Policy

  • Frequency: Published quarterly (four issues per year); accepted articles are also released online as Advance Articles ahead of issue compilation (continuous publication).
  • ISSN: ISSN XXXX-XXXX (Online).
  • Publisher: [Publisher / founding institution name to be inserted], Uzbekistan.
  • Languages: The journal accepts and publishes manuscripts in English, Russian, and Uzbek. Every article, regardless of the language of the full text, must include a title, abstract, and keywords in all three languages. English-language metadata is mandatory for international indexing.
  • Access and licensing: Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. No article processing charges are currently levied.
  • Indexing objectives: The journal is developed in accordance with the standards of Scopus (Content Selection & Advisory Board), Web of Science, DOAJ, and Crossref, and is guided by ICMJE and COPE recommendations.

2. Editorial Policies Overview

All editorial decisions are made solely on the basis of the scholarly merit, validity, originality, and relevance of the work, and its fit with the journal's scope. Decisions are never influenced by the authors' nationality, ethnicity, gender, religious or political beliefs, institutional affiliation, seniority, or commercial considerations. The Editor-in-Chief holds full authority and responsibility for the content of the journal and the timing of publication.

Section Policies

  • Original Articles — full reports of original empirical research (experimental, observational, or applied). Subject to double-blind peer review. Structured abstract (up to 300 words) required.
  • Review Articles — systematic reviews and meta-analyses (reporting per PRISMA) and critically appraised narrative reviews. Peer reviewed.
  • Brief Reports / Short Communications — concise reports of preliminary or focused findings. Peer reviewed.
  • Case Studies — clinical, rehabilitation, or applied performance case reports with clear practical lessons; informed consent for publication required. Peer reviewed.
  • Methodological and Measurement Papers — validation and reliability studies of tests, instruments, and protocols. Peer reviewed.
  • Editorials and Commentaries — invited or solicited; editorially reviewed.
  • Letters to the Editor — scholarly correspondence on published articles; editorially reviewed, with a right of reply for the original authors.

Publication Frequency

Four issues are published per year (quarterly). To minimise delay between acceptance and dissemination, peer-reviewed and accepted manuscripts receive a Crossref Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and are published online as citable Advance Articles before being assigned to a numbered issue.

3. Peer Review Process

The journal operates a rigorous double-blind peer review process: the identities of authors and reviewers are mutually concealed throughout the review. Authors must therefore submit a fully anonymised manuscript file (with author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, funding details, and self-identifying references removed or masked) alongside a separate title page.

Step-by-Step Procedure

  • 1. Submission and initial checks. The editorial office verifies scope, completeness, formatting, ethics documentation, and anonymisation, and screens the manuscript for similarity/plagiarism.
  • 2. Editorial screening (desk review). The Editor-in-Chief or a Handling Editor assesses originality, methodological soundness, and fit. Manuscripts falling outside scope or below the threshold for review may be rejected without external review (desk rejection).
  • 3. Assignment of reviewers. At least two independent expert reviewers are invited. Reviewers are selected for subject expertise and absence of conflicts of interest; they must not be from the same institution as any author.
  • 4. Peer review. Reviewers evaluate significance, originality, study design, statistical and methodological rigour, ethics, clarity, and appropriateness of conclusions, and submit confidential recommendations with constructive comments.
  • 5. First decision. The Handling Editor synthesises the reviews and communicates a decision to the corresponding author.
  • 6. Revision. Authors submit a revised manuscript with a point-by-point response letter. Revisions may be returned to the original reviewers.
  • 7. Final decision. Made by the Editor-in-Chief or a delegated Section Editor.
  • 8. Production. Accepted manuscripts are copy-edited, typeset, assigned a DOI, and published.

Indicative Timelines

  • Initial editorial screening: within 7–10 days of submission.
  • First peer-review decision: typically within 6–8 weeks.
  • Author revision period: normally 3–4 weeks (extensions granted on request).
  • From acceptance to online publication: within 3–4 weeks.

These are target times; complex manuscripts or reviewer availability may extend them. Authors are kept informed of status.

Decision Types

  • Accept — suitable for publication as submitted or with minor editorial changes.
  • Minor Revision — acceptable in principle; small clarifications or corrections required.
  • Major Revision — substantial issues must be addressed; the revised manuscript will be re-reviewed.
  • Reject and Resubmit — not acceptable in current form, but a substantially reworked study may be submitted as a new manuscript.
  • Reject — not suitable for the journal.

Reviewer conduct: Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential, must not use unpublished information for personal advantage, must declare any conflicts and decline where appropriate, and must provide objective, evidence-based, and respectful assessments. The journal recognises the essential contribution of reviewers and may issue reviewer acknowledgements.

4. Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The journal is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and adheres to the COPE Core Practices, the DOAJ Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, and the recommendations of the ICMJE. All parties involved in the act of publishing accept these ethical duties.

Duties of Editors

  • Decide which submissions are published on the basis of validity and importance, free from discrimination or commercial influence.
  • Maintain the confidentiality of all submitted material and the integrity of the double-blind process.
  • Recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have a competing interest and ensure fair, independent handling of such papers.
  • Take responsive action when ethical concerns are raised, following COPE flowcharts, and be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

Duties of Reviewers

  • Assist editorial decisions and help authors improve their work through timely, objective, and constructive review.
  • Keep all material confidential and destroy or return manuscripts after review.
  • Identify relevant unpublished work not cited, and alert editors to any substantial similarity, plagiarism, or ethical concern.
  • Decline review where a conflict of interest exists.

Duties of Authors

  • Present accurate accounts of the work performed and an objective discussion of its significance; fabrication and falsification are serious misconduct.
  • Ensure the work is entirely original, properly cite the work of others, and obtain permission for reproduced material.
  • Not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently, and not publish redundant or duplicate work.
  • Ensure that all who made significant contributions are listed as authors, that all listed authors approve the final version and take public responsibility for the content, and that no qualifying contributor is omitted (see Authorship below).
  • Disclose all sources of funding and any conflicts of interest.
  • Promptly notify the editor of any significant error discovered after publication and cooperate in issuing a correction or retraction.

Duties of the Publisher

  • Safeguard editorial independence and ensure that commercial or political interests never influence editorial decisions.
  • Provide the infrastructure, digital preservation, and support needed to maintain the integrity and permanent availability of the scholarly record.

Authorship

Authorship is based on the ICMJE criteria: substantial contribution to conception/design or acquisition/analysis/interpretation of data; drafting or critical revision; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Contributors who do not meet all criteria should be named in the Acknowledgements. Changes to authorship after submission require written agreement of all authors. The journal discourages "guest," "gift," and "ghost" authorship.

Conflicts of Interest

All authors must disclose financial and non-financial relationships that could be perceived to influence the work. Where none exist, a statement to that effect is required. Reviewers and editors are subject to the same obligation.

Data and Reproducibility

Authors are expected to retain raw data, to make it available upon reasonable request, and, where possible, to deposit data in recognised repositories. A Data Availability Statement is required in every research article (see Section 13).

Misconduct, Corrections, Retractions and Appeals

Allegations of misconduct — including plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, image manipulation, duplicate or redundant publication, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and unethical research conduct — are investigated following COPE guidance, regardless of when they come to light. Authors are given the opportunity to respond. Depending on findings, outcomes may include correction, expression of concern, or retraction. Corrections address honest errors; retractions address unreliable or unethical work and are issued with an explanatory, linked retraction notice, with the original article retained and clearly marked. Appeals against editorial decisions are addressed in Section 11.

5. Open Access Policy

Sports Scientific Research is a fully open-access journal. All articles are freely available online immediately upon publication, without subscription, registration, or payment, in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access.

  • All content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
  • Self-archiving: Authors may deposit and share any version of their article — submitted, accepted, and the final published (version of record) — in institutional or subject repositories, on personal or institutional websites, and in scholarly networks, with no embargo, provided the published version is cited and linked to via its DOI.
  • The journal follows the DOAJ Principles of Transparency and Best Practice and pursues DOAJ inclusion.
  • Readers are granted the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, and text- and data-mine the full texts.
  • Authors retain full copyright in their work and grant the journal a licence to publish the article as the version of record.
  • Articles are distributed under the CC BY 4.0 licence. Under this licence, users are free to share (copy and redistribute in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, including commercially, provided they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made.
  • No transfer of copyright to the publisher is required.
  • Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any third-party copyrighted material (figures, tables, extended quotations) and for ensuring appropriate attribution.
  • Each published article should carry the copyright line: "© [Year] The Author(s). Published by [Publisher]. This is an open-access article under the CC BY 4.0 licence."

7. Plagiarism and Similarity Check Policy

The journal enforces a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Every submitted manuscript is screened using recognised similarity-detection software (e.g., iThenticate/Crossref Similarity Check or an equivalent tool) before and, where appropriate, during peer review.

Interpretation of Similarity

  • The similarity report is interpreted by editors in context; a numerical score alone does not determine an outcome. As a working guideline: an overall similarity above 20%, or more than 5% from any single source (excluding correctly quoted and referenced material, the reference list, and standard methodological phrasing), triggers editorial scrutiny.
  • Any verbatim copying of text, results, or ideas without attribution — regardless of percentage — is treated as plagiarism.
  • Self-plagiarism (text recycling) and "salami slicing" of a single study into multiple papers are not permitted.

Sanctions

  • Before publication: manuscripts with unacceptable similarity are returned for revision or rejected; serious cases are reported to the authors' institutions.
  • After publication: confirmed plagiarism leads to a correction or retraction following COPE procedures.
  • Authors found responsible for plagiarism or other misconduct may be barred from submitting to the journal for a defined period, and co-authors and institutions may be notified.

8. Archiving Policy

The journal is committed to the permanent preservation and long-term availability of its content. Digital preservation is ensured through the following means:

  • PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN): the journal deposits its content in the PKP PN, a distributed dark archive that preserves OJS journals.
  • LOCKSS and CLOCKSS: the journal's OJS installation supports the LOCKSS and CLOCKSS distributed archiving systems, permitting participating libraries to create permanent archives for preservation and restoration.
  • Persistent identifiers: every article is assigned a Crossref DOI, ensuring stable, permanent linking and discoverability.
  • Local and institutional archiving: the publisher maintains secure back-ups, and authors are encouraged to self-archive (see Section 5).

Should the journal cease publication, deposited content will remain preserved and accessible through these archiving networks.

9. Author Fees / Article Processing Charges

Publication in Sports Scientific Research is currently free of charge. The journal does not levy article processing charges (APCs), submission fees, page charges, colour charges, or any other fees to authors at any stage. Readers likewise pay nothing to access content. The journal is supported by its founding/publishing institution. Should any charging policy be introduced in the future, it will be announced transparently and in advance, and will never affect the outcome of peer review, which is and remains independent of any financial consideration.

10. Privacy Statement

The names, email addresses, affiliations, and other personal data entered into this journal's website and editorial system will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal — managing submissions, peer review, publication, indexing, and communication with authors, reviewers, and readers — and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any third party.

  • Personal data is processed lawfully, fairly, and transparently, and stored securely.
  • Reviewer identities are protected within the double-blind process.
  • Author contact details published with an article (e.g., corresponding-author email, ORCID, affiliation) are limited to what is necessary for scholarly communication and, being part of the CC BY published record, become publicly available.
  • Aggregated usage statistics may be collected to improve the service; no data is sold.
  • Individuals may request access to, correction of, or deletion of their personal data by contacting the editorial office, subject to the integrity of the published scholarly record.

11. Complaints, Appeals, Corrections, Retractions and Withdrawals

Complaints and Appeals

Authors who believe an editorial decision was based on a misunderstanding or error may appeal. Appeals must be submitted in writing to the editorial office, addressed to the Editor-in-Chief, with a detailed, point-by-point response to the reviewers' and editors' comments and clear justification. The Editor-in-Chief (or an uninvolved senior editor) will reconsider the case; additional expert opinion may be sought. The decision on an appeal is final. Complaints about editorial process, conduct, or ethics are handled promptly, confidentially, and in accordance with COPE guidance; if unresolved, they may be escalated to the publisher.

Corrections

Honest errors that affect the record but not the reliability of the findings are corrected via a Correction (Erratum/Corrigendum) notice, linked bidirectionally to the original article, which itself remains available.

Expressions of Concern

Where there is well-founded but unproven concern about the integrity of a published article, the editors may issue an Expression of Concern while an investigation proceeds.

Retractions

Articles are retracted where findings are demonstrably unreliable (through error or misconduct), where there is plagiarism, unethical research, or redundant publication, or where major undisclosed conflicts exist. A clearly labelled, freely available retraction notice explains the reason; the original article is retained and marked "Retracted." Retractions follow COPE Retraction Guidelines.

Withdrawals

Authors may request withdrawal of a manuscript before acceptance. After acceptance and publication of the version of record, articles cannot simply be withdrawn; concerns are addressed through correction or retraction as above. Advance Articles found to contain fundamental errors before issue assignment may be withdrawn with an explanatory note.

12. Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure

Transparency about the origins and independence of research is essential to trust. All authors must include, before the reference list, a Conflict of Interest statement and a Funding statement.

  • Conflicts of interest include financial relationships (employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, paid expert testimony, patents, equipment or supplement provision by manufacturers) and non-financial relationships (personal, academic, or institutional) that a reasonable reader might consider relevant. If none exist, authors must state: "The authors declare no conflict of interest."
  • Funding statements must name all sources of financial and material support, with grant numbers where applicable, and describe the funder's role (if any) in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and the decision to publish. Where there was no external funding, authors must state so.
  • Sponsorship, including by sport federations, clubs, or equipment/supplement manufacturers, must be disclosed; sponsors may not control the interpretation or reporting of results.
  • Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves where a conflict exists.

13. Data Availability and Research Integrity (Human-Participant Sports Research)

Because much sport-science research involves human participants — athletes, patients, students, and children — the journal applies stringent ethical requirements.

Ethical Approval

  • All studies involving human participants must have been approved by an appropriately constituted research ethics committee or institutional review board, and the approving body and protocol/approval number must be stated in the Methods.
  • Research must conform to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association) and to applicable national regulations of Uzbekistan.
  • Studies involving animals must comply with relevant welfare regulations and be approved accordingly.

Informed Consent

  • Written informed consent must be obtained from all participants (or from parents/legal guardians for minors, with the assent of the minor where appropriate), including consent to participate and consent to publish anonymised data.
  • For any identifiable participant (e.g., in images, videos, or case reports), explicit written consent for publication is mandatory.
  • The confidentiality and anonymity of participants must be protected throughout.

Registration and Reporting Standards

  • Clinical trials should be prospectively registered in a recognised public registry, and the registration number stated.
  • Authors are encouraged to follow recognised reporting guidelines (CONSORT for trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, CARE for case reports).

Data Availability Statement

Every research article must include a Data Availability Statement describing whether and how the underlying data can be accessed (e.g., "The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request," or a repository name and accession/DOI). Where data cannot be shared (for example, to protect participant privacy), the reason must be stated. The journal encourages open data and open materials wherever ethically and legally possible.

14. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Policy

The journal recognises the growing use of generative AI and AI-assisted tools (large language models, image and figure generators, and similar). Their use is regulated to protect integrity, accountability, and transparency, consistent with COPE and ICMJE positions.

  • AI cannot be an author. Generative AI tools do not meet the criteria for authorship, as they cannot take responsibility for the work, approve the final version, or manage conflicts of interest. AI tools must not be listed as authors or co-authors.
  • Disclosure is mandatory. Authors who used generative AI in the preparation of the manuscript (for drafting text, language editing beyond simple grammar/spell-checking, code, or analysis) must disclose this in a dedicated statement, specifying the tool, version, and how it was used. Basic reference-management and grammar tools do not require disclosure.
  • Author responsibility. Authors are fully responsible for the entire content of their manuscript, including any part produced with AI assistance, and must verify all facts, citations, and outputs. AI tools are known to produce fabricated or inaccurate content and biased results.
  • Images and data. The use of generative AI to create, alter, or manipulate original research images, figures, or data (other than clearly labelled AI-generated illustrative content used with permission) is not permitted, as it undermines scientific integrity.
  • Reviewers and editors. Reviewers and editors must not upload manuscripts or any part of them into public generative-AI systems, as this breaches the confidentiality of the peer-review process. Reviewers must not delegate their critical assessment to AI.

These editorial policies are maintained by the editorial board of Sports Scientific Research and are reviewed periodically to remain aligned with evolving international standards (COPE, DOAJ, ICMJE, Scopus CSAB, Web of Science, Crossref).