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.

Submission Categories
Papers may be submitted for publication in Sports Biomechanics in any of the following categories:

• Original Research
• Reviews - normally only by invitation from the editor
• New 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, should summarise the main findings and should conclude with clear statements off the practical implications of the research for practitioners or, in the case of papers for 'New Methods and Theoretical Perspectives', for sports biomechanists. Include the word count at the end of 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. 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. A simple outline of how particular variables are related to performance could be included in the introduction, if appropriate.

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. Elaborate statistical procedures should also be included in an appendix.

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. This description should be simple, with an appropriate heading such as 'Variables Selected for Analysis and Their Relevance to Performance (or Injury)'.
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 Arial 12 Font with normal character spacing.
• Add line numbersto the main document (abstract, paper body, and references) CONTINUOUSLY. (Do not restart 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.

Units, Symbols and Numbers

• Use SI units throughout. Where multiples of the base SI unit are used, choose 10³ or 10^-3 multiples, for example use mm not cm.
• 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
Ramsey and Smith (2003) reported ... or ... softball players in the USA (Ramsey and Smith, 2003).
Bartlett et al. (1996) reported ... or ... novice javelin throwers (Bartlett et al., 1996).
Use et al. rather than the full list of authors even on first citation if there are more than two authors.

Arrange multiple citations in chronological order of date of publication, separating references by a semi-colon, for example, (Tysvaer and Storli, 1989; Matser et al., 1998; 1999).
When several publications occur in the same year, list within the year in alphabetical order of the first author, for example, (Elliott et al., 2001; Hamill et al., 2001; Jones, 2001).
Use a, b, c... for different publications by the same author in the same year, for example, Brown et al. (1995a; b; c) where the a, b, and c are normally in order of when they are first cited in the text.

References
In the first instance, list in order of the first author's surname. Where the name of the first author appears more than once, the order will be determined by:

• First, the number of co-authors (none, one, or more than one).
• Secondly, for one co-author, the first co-author's surname, then the year. For two or more co-authors, year then order as dictated by the use, for example, of 1998a; b; c in the citations.
• For example:
  Brown, P. M. (2001). [Details]
  Brown, P. M., and Smith, F. X. (1994). [Details]
  Brown, P. M., and Thomas, G. O. (1992). [Details]
  Brown, P. M., and Thomas, G. O. (1999). [Details]
  Brown, P. M., Smith, F. X., and Thomas, G. O. (1998a). [Details]
  Brown, P. M., Smith, F. X., and Thomas, G. O. (1998b). [Details]
  Brown, P. M., Smith, F. X., and Thomas, G. O. (2000). [Details]

Elliott, B. E., Grove, R. G., and Gibson, B. (1988). Timing of the lower limb drive and throwing limb movement in baseball pitching. International Journal of Sport Biomechanics, 4, 59-67.
Note: Journal title in full and in italics, volume number in italic typeface, no issue number unless journal starts from page 1 for each issue rather than for each volume, in which case use 3(2), where the issue number is in parentheses.

Norton, K., and Olds, T. (1996). Anthropometrica, a textbook of body measurement for sports and health courses. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Note: Book title in italics; Town of Publication: Publisher - for books published in the USA, do not include the abbreviation of the state in which the town of publication is situated - see next example.

Hay, J. G. (1993). The biomechanics of sports techniques (4^th edn.). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Krug, J., Minow, H-J., and Jassman, P. (2001). Differences between jumps on hard and elastic surfaces. In J. R. Blackwell (Ed.), Proceedings of oral sessions, XIX International symposium on biomechanics in sports (pp. 139-142). San Francisco: International Society of Biomechanics in Sports.
Note: ISBS could be used here instead of the full name of the society, as it is a universally recognised abbreviation in our domain.

Avoid the use of secondary references if at all possible; if not, use the following form. Full details of secondary reference, followed by: Cited in Authors and year of source in which it was cited. The full details of that source must also appear in the reference list.
Example: Fidelus, K. and Zienkowicz, W. (1965). Sila I predko rozwijane podczas pchniecia kula. Kultura Fizyczna, 18, 83-95. Cited in Zatsiorsky et al. (1981).
And, in the place in the list appropriate to the source reference:
Zatsiorsky, V. M, Lanka, G. E., and Shalmanov, A. A. (1981). Biomechanical analysis of shot putting technique. In D. I. Miller (Ed.), Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, Volume 9 (pp. 353-359). Philadelphia: Franklin Institute Press.
This does not follow American Psychological Association guidelines but is much more helpful to any reader who might want to chase up the secondary reference.

Process of Submission
To expedite reviewing, manuscripts will be handled electronically. All submissions should be made online at the Sports Biomechanics Manuscript Central site. New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site submissions should be made via the Author Centre.

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 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. Authors may also register their non-preferred reviewers in the submission process, if any.

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