Welcome to the IUSCA Journal

Publishing Research with a View to the Future

Abstract

In recent times, there has been a recognised need for innovation and progression within academic institutions, to ensure that evidenced-based research and applied articles are available to the entire strength and conditioning (S&C) community. With research often taking several years to reach publication, being subject to high publications costs, and the content often only accessible through a paywall, the number of open-access journals has risen over the past decade, with approximately 12% of the world's articles being published in fully open-access journals.¹ The authors suggest that is increase is due, in part, to the fact that authors (and funders') feel that research published on publicly funded research should be free for anyone to read.

In an article published in Nature, titled Open access: The true cost of science publishing,² Michael Eisen, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that scientists can get much better value by publishing in open-access journals, which make articles free for everyone to read. When asked about the cost of publication, Eisen responded: “It’s still ludicrous how much it costs to publish research – let alone what we pay. The biggest travesty is that the scientific community carries out peer review – a major part of scholarly publishing, for free, yet subscription-journal publishers charge billions of dollars per year, all told, for scientists to read the final product.” (p. 426).

To help bridge the gap between academia and the strength and conditioning field of practice, there is a need to offer publication to a broader range of academics, students, coaches and other practitioners to deliver a unique and innovative publication model through the use of Open Journal Systems.³ Such transformative approaches to publication are well recognised. Most recently, John Willinsky provides further endorsement of the Open Journal approach in his article published in Slaw, Canada's Online Legal Magazine.⁴  Willinsky highlights that the advantages of a subscribe-to-open model go beyond this simplicity: “No article processing charges for authors to pay (as in many other open access journals). No 12-36 month embargoes before the work is open. No revenue loss or quality reduction for publishers.”

The International Universities Strength and Conditioning Association (IUSCA) Journal offers the world’s first, free to submit, free to publish, open access journal in the field of strength and conditioning. Such a platform provides significant opportunity for international strength and conditioning collaboration, and a pathway for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and academic staff, to publish strength and conditioning research through an innovative community peer-review model, which will allow all members of the IUSCA community to take part in the review process.

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the IUSCA Journal.

Stephen P. Bird, Ph.D.

Editor-in-Chief, IUSCA Journal.