International Journal of Strength and Conditioning follows the guidence of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The IJSC takes the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Inevitably, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, do arise. IJSC takes such publishing ethics issues seriously and our editors are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy. To verify the originality of content submitted to our journals, we may use plagarism software to check submissions against previous publications. IJSC works with ORCID and Crossref to provide reviewers with credit for their work and assign DOI.

For further guidence on the Publication Ethics that the IJSC adheres to, please visit: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines 

 

Integrity

In line with the prestigious Universities that we represent and collaborate with, we uphold high standards with regards to the publication process and the disemination of research. We are also passionate about Open Science, and believe that scientific research should be open and available for the entire community to benefit.
To support our authors through the publication process, our editorial team will provide specific support where required and supply guidelines and policies regarding research integrity and ethics. 

Any concerns should be raised by email to: info@iusca.org

Concerns will be addressed by following COPE guidelines where possible and/or by escalating the matter through our board. 

Editorial Process

Our Editorial Process at the International Journal of Strength and Conditioning is paramount to our success in providing a high-quality and influential journal within the field of sport science. We have therefore put significant measures in place to ensure a fair and transparant review process, with robust protocls and procedures. 

All submitted articles are initially reviewed by a member of our Editorial Board to ensure that the article meets basic requirements. If approved, the article will then be placed into 'Community Review' where members of the IUSCA community and the wider sports science community (with ORCID) can comment and review. This process usually last for around 6 weeks. 

At this point, final revisions can be made and then the article will undergo traditional Peer Review by our Editorial Board. If the article passes this stage, then it will be assigned a DOI and published within the journal. 

The journal utilises a continuous publication model. 

Editorial Board

Our Editorial Board consists of experts within the field of S&C and Sport Science. The names and affiliations of these experts can be found here: https://journal.iusca.org/index.php/Journal/about/editorialTeam

The Board is led by our Editor-in-Chief. 

Peer Review

As stated above, the Peer Review process constists of several stages of rigorous review by experts within the field. Peer Review is vital to the process of scientific publication, and as an organisation we provide training and support where appropriate to our reviewers. 

Further detailed information regarding our Peer Review process can be found here: https://journal.iusca.org/index.php/Journal/peerreview

We follow the guideance of COPE for Peer Review, which can be found here: Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers (English) | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics

Our journal takes significant steps to ensure that publication meets our high standards and requirements. 
Submission and publication in the journal is free, and subject to our community and editorial review process. The following conditions must be met for submission:

• The article must not have been published before
• The article must be original work and not subject to plagiarism
• The article should address an important topic within the field, helping to advance the profession
• All authors must agree to publication
• All work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
• The Author Guidelines should have been read and the article must be formatted and styled accordingly
• The editorial board reserves the right to remove any article, at any time, without prior notice or explanation
• The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc. in the articles of this journal, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations
• The members of the editorial board try to guide the review process as carefully as possible but cannot take legal responsibility for the outcome and aftermath of acceptance or rejection
• While the advice and information in this journal is believed to be true and accurate on the date each article is published, neither the authors, the editors, or the IUSCA can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may have occurred.

In addition to this we reserve the right to place all submissions through appropriate plagiarism software. Submissions containing suspected plagiarism, in whole or part, will be rejected. This policy also applies to Redundant or Duplicate publication. Any suspected plagiarism or duplication should be directed to our Editorial Team or through email to: info@iusca.org 

For further guidence on the Publication Ethics that the IJSC adheres to, please visit: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines 

Retractions, Corrections, and Clarifications

Where articles have been published and later found to break our terms, or not meet our strict guidelines for plagiarism, duplication, etc., then our Editors will consider retration. In this process we aim to follow COPE guidelines, which can be found here: Retraction guidelines | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics

Where retraction is not appropriate, then Correction, or Expression of Concern may be considered. To assist in the tracking of publication and changes, we also partner with Crossref, who provide a DOI.

Withdrawal - Permission for withdrawal will only be granted in the very rare circumstance in which we have a legal obligation to remove a paper, such as if it contains private personal information or it is subject to a substantiated copyright claim. In cases where a paper is withdrawn, it will be marked as "Withdrawn/Retracted", which includes the original paper’s metadata (author, title, abstract, DOI, etc.), and the reason for withdrawal. After that point, the paper will be locked to further modification. Since articles accepted into 'Community Review' will have been pre-published online and indexed through Scholarly databases, they will not be able to be removed. 

Copyright and Licensing

All work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Articles published in IJSC will be Open-Access articles distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The copyright is retained by the author(s).

Authors may deposit their submission on universitiy servers or similar at any point during the publication process.

Authors and Authorship

Deatailed information for Authors can be found here: https://journal.iusca.org/index.php/Journal/information/authors

In short, all authors must have significantly contributed to the research; the author(s) are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes; and authors should provide a list of references, financial support; it is also forbidden to publish same research in more than one journal.

We also utilise ORCID as a means of verifying authorship and identifying indivisuals invloved in the publication of an article. 

Archiving

All articles are stored in backup in two separate locations; first on the publisher's hard-drive, the second on an independent server.  

Ownership and Management

The International Journal of Strength and Conditioning is owned and managed by the International Universities Strength and Conditioning Association. This is a nonprofit organisation, developed for the betterment of the University community.