This journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts (previously Manuscript Central) to peer review manuscript submissions. Please read the guide for ScholarOne authors before making a submission. Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

Instructions for Authors

Submitting a Paper to Sports Biomechanics

Failure to adhere to these guidelines may result in the paper being returned to you for revision before it is sent for review.

• Original Research
• Reviews - normally only by invitation from the editor
• Methods and Theoretical Perspectives
• Teaching Biomechanics
• Letter to Editor

Regardless of the category of submission, papers must be scientifically rigorous and will be peer reviewed by at least two reviewers with expertise in the topic.

Authors should endeavour to write in a style that is 'reader friendly' and, in particular, 'coach friendly'. Achieving this while maintaining scientific rigour is obviously a major challenge for authors, reviewers and the editorial team. The avoidance of non-standard abbreviations and mnemonics greatly enhances a paper's readability, as does writing in plain English and avoiding overuse of the passive voice. Keeping the paragraphs in reasonable lengths with clear key points will also help improving a manuscript's readability.

Structure
Authors are required to adhere to the following structure for 'Original Research' papers; some of these sections may not be relevant for other types of paper.

Title:
The title should reflect the practical importance of the research as well as indicate its scientific basis.

Abstract:
The abstract should be not more than 200 words. Include the word count at the end of the abstract. The abstract should summarise the main findings and should conclude with clear statements off the research questions of the study. Refrain from including generic or explanatory statements in the abstract.

Introduction:
The introduction should clearly elaborate the potential benefits of the research and its findings for sport practitioners. The aims and objectives should be stated so as to capture both the contribution to knowledge and the practical benefits of the study. All hypotheses should be clearly formulated based on a sound theoretical framework. Plain descriptive studies with no systematic research focus or underlying theoretical framework won't be accepted. Authors should elaborate on explaining the mechanisms, not on simply describing the phenomena. The study objectives and hypotheses should be justified fully within the introduction and the rest of the manuscript must be tightly organized around the study objectives/hypotheses.

Methods:
The methods section should document the overall procedures and the participants involved, provide sufficient detail to allow replication of the study, and give relevant technical information to establish clearly the scientific merit of the study. However, authors should seek to make this material comprehensible to a non-specialist reader and provide guidance when technical information is presented. Material that is difficult for a non-specialist reader, such as complex mathematical models, should be included as an appendix and referred to in the methods section.

Using an appropriate sample size is essential in generalizing the study findings. Studies using a small sample without proper justification may be returned to the authors immediately with no further consideration. A section should be dedicated to the statistical methods/procedures used and it should explicitly include the independent and dependant variables used in the analysis.

The methods may also incorporate the following:

1. Simple definitions of technical terms; this may be included as a section of its own at the beginning of the methods section.
2. If appropriate, and if not already incorporated into the introduction, a description of the rationale for selecting particular variables for analysis and their relationship to performance or injury should be included.
3. Where appropriate, information to establish the validity and reliability of the methods, and the magnitude of errors, should be provided, except in review papers. A statement that approval for the study was obtained from the appropriate research ethics committee must be included.

Results:
Sport practitioners should not be prevented from grasping the results because of a lack of knowledge of statistical procedures and terminology. However, no claims should be made without citing the relevant statistical results. Avoid using redundant numerical data in the text that are already presented in the tables and/or figures.

Discussion and Implications:
This section should be separate from the results section and should elaborate the implications of the results; it should also make clear the limitations of the study. It should be possible to read this section without recourse to the statistical results or further statistical information and terminology. Practitioners should be able to skip the results section and understand the findings of the study, and their implications for sport performance or injury prevention, from the discussion and implications section alone. Achieving this requires skill from authors to restate findings simply without repeating unnecessarily the information provided in the results section. If appropriate, this section may include coaching practices, training drills and activities that are indicated by, or arise from, the research or review.

Conclusion:
The conclusion should summarise the main scientific findings and their practical implications in the context of the study's aims and objectives.

References:
Please ensure that the paper contains adequate referencing. Be fastidious with checking reference details, ensuring that all references given in the body of the document appear in the reference list and that authors and years of publication correspond. For referencing style, see comments later in these guidelines.

Formatting
Authors are required to adhere to the following formatting guidelines.

General Instructions

• Manuscripts should be written in UK English, double spaced in 12 Font with normal character spacing.
• Add continuous line numbers to the main document (abstract to appendices) as reviewers will use only the line numbers to specify locations in the manuscript. Do not restart line numbers on each page.
• Allow at least 25 mm borders at top, bottom, left and right of each page, laid out as if to be printed on A4 or Letter-size paper.
• Unless otherwise specified in these Guidelines, the formatting and referencing style should conform to the guidelines in the Fifth Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2002).
• Please be very careful to conform to the format for figures, tables, references, and overall style established for Sports Biomechanics. In the case of citations and references, please use the style and punctuation conventions given below.

Tables and Figures

• Tables must be created in Word and not imported from another package.
• Tables should be laid out with clear row and column headings, units where appropriate, no vertical lines, and horizontal lines only between the table title and column headings, between the column headings and the main body of the table, and after the main body of the table. Place the table caption above the table.
• Tables and figures must not be imbedded in the text. Tables may be added to the end of the main document followed by a list of the figure captions and the figures; the figures must not contain titles or notes. Ultimately, figures must be submitted as separate image files (JPG, TIFF, etc.).
• Do not send figures in a format that cannot be edited, such as EPS. Do not submit illustrations or graphs created in MS Word or Excel, as these cannot be imported into the typesetting programs used. If you do submit figures in such formats, the cost of redrawing may be passed back to you.
• Pay attention to the relative proportion of the figure and the text used in the figure including the axis scales.
• All figures must be of camera-ready quality. They can be submitted in black and white or colour.
• Photographs should be scanned at a minimum of 300 dpi and line illustrations should be scanned at a minimum of 600 dpi. The final size of the scan to be about 250 x 200 mm.
• On line illustrations, do not use a line weight of less than 1 point.
• TIFF images should be sent either uncompressed or compressed using lossless compression software packages, such as LZW.
• Images downloaded from the internet and JPEGs are usually low resolution (72 dpi) and unsuitable for reproduction.
• Do not use tints on computer-generated illustrations that are lighter than 15% or darker than 70%. Do not use pattern or colour fills.
• Copyright permission must be obtained for all figures taken from other sources, including the internet.

• Use SI units throughout. The standard unit of time is 's', not 'sec'.
• Put a space between the number and the unit except for ° and %.
• To help practitioners to read your data, use the convention m/s rather than m·s^-1. Bracket and use powers to avoid ambiguity: for example, use m/s² not m/s/s; (kg·m)/s; W/(m·K).
• Do not give results to too many significant figures; be guided by how accurately you can measure or calculate a variable. Three significant figures is a good rule-of-thumb, but few data acquisition systems used in sports biomechanics can measure to better than 1°, so giving a figure of 13.7 ° is unrealistic.
• Scalar variables, including statistical symbols such as p, t and r, should be in italics, vectors in bold typeface, constants and abbreviations, such as sin, that are not variables should be in roman typeface; all should usually be lower case. Greek symbols, and subscripts and superscripts that are identifiers not variables should be in roman typeface; for example, θ not θ, x_i where i = 1,2,3… but r₁, F_max.

Citations in the Text
Sports Biomechanics follows the standard APA (American Psychological Association) citation style. Please find the APA style guidelines here and the quick guide here.

The main document should include the title page with:

• the title of the paper
• between three and five keywords in alphabetical order
• author list and contact information of the contact author
• acknowledgements, if any

A list of all authors with first names and their institutional affiliations, the full electronic, phone, fax and postal address of the contact author should appear in the title page.

Authors must also submit a separate scanned cover letter, signed by the contact author with the authority of all of the authors, which establishes the originality of the material submitted, that it has not previously been published (except, perhaps, as an abstract) and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Authors MUST provide names of at least two preferred reviewers with their contact info including the affiliations and email addresses. The preferred reviewers must be experts in the contents area with track records (publications) and sufficiently fluent in English to perform the review. Authors may also register their non-preferred reviewers/associate editors in the submission process, if any.

Manuscript Submission Checklist

1. Is a cover letter included with necessary signature(s) and originality statements?

2. Is a title page included with the paper title, keywords, author contact info, and the acknowledgement statements (optional)?

3. Is the manuscript organized in the following structure?

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Methods, Results, and Discussion and Implications (Submissions other than Original Research may use a different section structure here.)
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendix (optional)
• Tables with captions
• List of figure captions
• Separate image files of the figures

4. Do the citations and references conform to the APA format?

5. Is the manuscript double-spaced and using proper margins (2.5 cm)?

6. Is the main document (Abstract to Appendix) line numbered continuously? (Do not restart line numbers on each page.)

7. Is the manuscript free of grammatical and spelling errors? (Run a spelling/grammar checker program before finalising the manuscript.)

8. Is the manuscript free of unnecessary non-standard abbreviations and mnemonics?

9. Is the manuscript written in a reader-friendly manner?

10. Are the names and contact information of at least two preferred reviewers included? Are the preferred reviewers experts in the contents area with track records and sufficiently fluent in English?

Decision Categories
You should be informed of the results of the review about eight weeks after submission of your manuscript. On the basis of the review, your paper will be categorised as one of the following.

Reject: Not suitable for publication in Sports Biomechanics.
Resubmit: The paper may be resubmitted as a new paper after a thorough revision.
Major revision: The paper will be accepted only if the concerns of the reviewers are addressed to their satisfaction. The paper will be rejected if the authors fail to make satisfactory responses to the reviewers' concerns.
Minor revision: The authors must respond to the reviewers' concerns to the satisfaction of the editor and, in some cases, one or both reviewers.
Accept: The paper is accepted with only minor editing by the editor.

Free article access: Corresponding authors will receive free online access to their article through our website (www.informaworld.com) and a complimentary copy of the issue containing their article. Reprints of articles published in this journal can be purchased through Rightslink® when proofs are received. If you have any queries, please contact our reprints department at reprints@tandf.co.uk

Visit our Author Services website for further resources and guides to the complete publication process and beyond.