Following a recent International Journal of Strength and Conditioning (IJSC) Editorial Board meeting, it has been decided that changes will be made to the current community/peer review protocol.
The current procedure has been to perform a brief editorial assessment of submitted articles before publishing in our community review format. The intention for this was to allow members of the S&C and wider sport science community an opportunity to critique and provide feedback to authors at an initial stage of publication. Authors would then make necessary changes before resubmitting for traditional peer review.
While we received positive feedback on this idea, in practice the community engagement has been limited, and there is some concern that; even though community review articles do not receive DOI numbers, and they are not officially published within the IJSC, people unfamiliar with this process may mistake the articles for fully peer reviewed research.
We have therefore made the decision to discontinue the community review format and instead utilise a traditional two stage peer review protocol. In addition, to maintain the community aspect and engagement with the wider S&C/sport science community, a ‘post-publication commentary’ will be enabled, where readers will have the opportunity to provide their thoughts, opinions, and ideas for future research alongside the published article.
The IJSC will provide further details of this ‘post-publication commentary’ process over the coming weeks.
Please accept our apologies for any delays in publication over the coming weeks as we adjust to this new procedure.
Stephen Bird,
Editor-in-Chief, on behalf of the IJSC
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