Aims and Scope of the Journal of Sports and Exercise Medicine

Core scientific domains

The five core domains below describe the journal’s scientific scope. The wider areas and interdisciplinary guidance show how related work fits. Listed topics are illustrative, not exhaustive.

1. 01

   Sports injury medicine and prevention

   The clinical study of injury in athletes and physically active people: how it happens, how it is recognized, how it is treated, and how it is prevented.

   • Acute and overuse injury mechanisms, diagnosis and management
   • Musculoskeletal injury epidemiology and surveillance in competitive and recreational sport
   • Concussion and head-injury assessment, management and return-to-play decision-making
   • Injury-prevention programs, screening methods and their predictive value
   • Sports traumatology, sideline and emergency care
   • Outcomes of surgical and non-surgical intervention
2. 02

   Exercise physiology and the response to training

   How the body responds to a single bout of exercise and adapts to repeated bouts, measured in the laboratory and in the field.

   • Cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary and autonomic responses to acute and chronic exercise
   • Metabolic and molecular adaptation to endurance, resistance and high-intensity training
   • Neuromuscular performance, fatigue and recovery
   • Exercise testing, performance assessment and the validation of field tests
   • Training load, periodization, monitoring and the management of overreaching
   • Environmental physiology: heat, cold, altitude, hypoxia and immersion
3. 03

   Rehabilitation and return to sport

   The restoration of function after injury or surgery, and the evidence behind the decision to resume activity.

   • Therapeutic exercise prescription and graded loading after injury
   • Post-surgical rehabilitation protocols and their outcomes
   • Criteria-based progression and return-to-sport decision frameworks
   • Functional and patient-reported outcome measurement
   • Manual therapy and physical modalities in a sports or musculoskeletal context
   • Neuromuscular re-education and reinjury prevention
4. 04

   Biomechanics and motor control

   The mechanics and the control of human movement, as they bear on injury mechanism, rehabilitation and performance.

   • Kinematics and kinetics of sport-specific movement, including three-dimensional motion analysis
   • Ground reaction force, joint loading and tissue load estimation
   • Gait and running biomechanics
   • Motor control, electromyography and neural contributions to movement
   • Biomechanical risk factors for musculoskeletal injury, and kinetic-chain hypotheses
   • Equipment, footwear and orthotic biomechanics; computational musculoskeletal modeling
5. 05

   Exercise medicine: physical activity in health and disease

   Exercise studied as prevention and as treatment, in clinical populations and across the lifespan. This is the second half of the journal’s title and it carries the same weight as the first.

   • Exercise as therapy in cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, oncological, neurological and musculoskeletal disease
   • Exercise prescription, dose and safety in clinical populations
   • Mind–body and movement-based interventions, including outcomes, experiences, adherence, and safety
   • Physical activity, sedentary behavior and health across populations
   • Growth, maturation, and training in youth; exercise across adulthood and aging, including sarcopenia and falls
   • Adapted physical activity, para-athlete health and exercise with disability or chronic illness; sex-related and reproductive-health questions relevant to exercise across the life course

Established wider areas

The following areas contribute to sports and exercise medicine and are considered alongside the core domains.

• Sport and exercise cardiology. Cardiac adaptation to training, pre-participation cardiovascular screening and its interpretation, arrhythmia and sudden cardiac events in sport, and exercise in the management of cardiovascular disease.
• Sports nutrition. Nutritional strategy, hydration, energy availability, relative energy deficiency in sport (REDs) in female and male athletes, supplements, and ergogenic aids, when the question concerns exercise response, recovery, adaptation, or athlete health.
• Sport and exercise psychology. Performance psychology, adherence and motivation, the psychological course of injury and return to sport, and mental health in athletes and in exercising populations.
• Molecular and cellular exercise biology. Gene expression, protein synthesis, mitochondrial adaptation, inflammatory and immune responses to exercise, and the mechanisms underlying training adaptation.
• Comparative and animal models of exercise. Exercise physiology and musculoskeletal adaptation studied across species, with a clear contribution to exercise, movement, or training biology. Human clinical translation is not required for basic or comparative work. In vivo animal studies should follow ARRIVE reporting guidance.
• Measurement, methods and technology. Validation of wearable devices, sensors and monitoring systems; laboratory and field test development; and analytical or statistical methods developed for exercise and sports-medicine data.
• Anti-doping research. Detection methods, physiological effects, health consequences, prevention, athlete experiences, and therapeutic use exemptions when the research informs athlete health or anti-doping practice.
• Regenerative and injectable therapies for activity-related musculoskeletal injury. Mechanistic, preclinical, observational, and clinical research is considered. Therapeutic efficacy claims require appropriate comparative evidence; preliminary findings must be identified as such.

Interdisciplinary submissions

Interdisciplinary work fits when its principal contribution concerns sport, exercise, physical activity, or related health and function. A sporting setting alone is insufficient. Studies may include inactive participants and findings may apply across sports; neither limits scope when the research question is relevant.

Orthopedics and surgery

Fits when the principal question concerns sports or activity-related injury, treatment, function, or return to activity. Every study need not measure return to sport.

Cardiology

Fits as sport and exercise cardiology: the athlete’s heart, screening, exercise testing, or exercise as an intervention.

Neurology and neuroscience

Fits for concussion and head injury, motor control, neuromuscular function, and exercise in neurological disease.

Nutrition and metabolism

Fits where the exposure or outcome is exercise performance, recovery, adaptation or athlete health.

Psychology and behavioral science

Fits where the setting is sport, exercise or injury and the outcome bears on performance, adherence, recovery or athlete wellbeing.

Public health and epidemiology

Fits when physical activity or sedentary behavior is a principal exposure, intervention, outcome, or research question, including determinants, participation, access, and implementation. An incidental covariate is insufficient.

Engineering and materials

Fits when device, garment, or implant research addresses exercise, activity-related rehabilitation, or sport through appropriate laboratory, biomechanical, computational, or human evaluation. Clinical deployment is not a scope requirement.

Data science and machine learning

Fits when a computational or statistical contribution addresses sport, exercise, movement, or related health. Predictive models require evaluation on data not used to fit them; simulation and exploratory methods require checks appropriate to their purpose, assumptions, uncertainty, and claims.

Physiotherapy and allied health

Fits when rehabilitation or musculoskeletal practice addresses activity-related injury, exercise, movement, or function. Unrelated allied-health practice is outside scope.

Study and contribution types

Preparation requirements by article type

Scientific expectations

Reporting should enable readers to assess the question, methods, evidence, and limitations. The details required depend on the study design and research setting.

• Who or what was studied. Describe participants, datasets, tissues, species, or models and the sampling or selection process. Report relevant age, sex, training status, competitive level, and injury history for human studies, with appropriate privacy safeguards.
• What was studied and how. Describe interventions, exposures, measurements, qualitative procedures, or computational assumptions in sufficient detail to assess the work. Distinguish prespecified outcomes and analyses from exploratory or post hoc work; report uncertainty and limitations.
• Ethics and participant protection. For human research, report the responsible ethics body's approval or applicable exemption, and informed consent or an authorized waiver, with relevant reference details. Obtain written consent for publication of identifiable material and protect indirect identifiers. For animal research, report applicable approvals and welfare safeguards.
• What stood to gain. Funding and competing interests disclosed in full. Research involving supplements, devices, footwear or wearables is welcome, and studies funded by a manufacturer must demonstrate independent rights of data analysis and interpretation. Scientific relevance decides fit; a commercial relationship neither qualifies nor disqualifies a manuscript.

Editorial policies in full · Instructions for authors

Outside the scope

The following boundaries distinguish unrelated subject matter from research within scope. Scientific quality, reporting, and ethical compliance are assessed separately.

• Clinical or biomedical research in which sport, exercise or physical activity is incidental. Exercise mentioned as a covariate or a recommendation does not place a study in this journal.
• Coaching or tactical content without a substantive question about exercise science, movement, physical or psychological performance, participation in physical activity, or athlete health.
• Fitness and wellness promotion or testimonials presented as research. Research on exercise experiences, adherence, or patient-reported outcomes is eligible; its design and measures must support its claims. Perceptions alone do not establish physiological change or treatment efficacy.
• Sports management, economics, facilities, marketing, governance and law without a substantive sport or exercise health question. Research on access to physical activity, exercise-service delivery, or athlete health policy is assessed by the same contribution test.
• Nutrition, psychology or public-health research with no substantive exercise or sport question, judged by the test in the interdisciplinary section above.
• Device, software or materials engineering with no substantive application or scientific contribution to exercise, activity-related rehabilitation, or sport.
• Accounts of athletes, teams or events without a substantive research or scholarly question. Descriptive epidemiology and qualitative research can contribute evidence without identifying a mechanism.
• Material that encourages doping or unsafe performance enhancement. Research on doping and critical analysis of anti-doping practice are eligible when relevant to athlete health or anti-doping science; studying such practices does not endorse them.

Does your research belong here

Three questions. If the answer to all three is yes, the journal is a reasonable place to send the manuscript.

1. Is the sport, exercise or physical-activity question yours to answer? The principal contribution should concern sport, exercise, physical activity, or related health and function.
2. Does the method support the claim? Use the evidentiary standards appropriate to the design, including qualitative, observational, mechanistic, clinical, or computational work. Keep conclusions within what the evidence supports.
3. Can a reader place the finding? Describe the research setting, participants or materials, methods, and limitations so readers can judge the contribution and its applicability. A clinical application is not required for every study.

Across the journal