For Reviewers
Guidelines for Reviewers
What to check, how to report it, and what the journal asks of you while you hold an unpublished manuscript.
Before you accept
The invitation carries the abstract so you can decide on scope and on conflicts before seeing the full text.
- Expertise. Can you assess the central method, not only the topic? Decline if the manuscript turns on a technique you do not use, and say so — it helps the editor find the right person.
- Conflicts. Recent co-authorship, the same institution, a shared grant, a competing manuscript in preparation, or a relationship with a manufacturer whose product is under test. Declare it and decline.
- Time. Accept only if you can review within the period the invitation states. Declining promptly is more useful than accepting and delaying.
- Double-blind manuscripts. For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors.
Confidentiality and conduct
- A manuscript under review is confidential. Do not share it, discuss it outside the review, or use anything in it before publication.
- Do not contact the authors about a manuscript you are reviewing.
- After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
- Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.
- If you would like a colleague or a supervised trainee to contribute to the review, ask the editor first and name them in the report.
What to assess
Does it belong, and does it add?
Is the sport, exercise or physical-activity question the study’s own contribution? Does the work add something a reader could use? A null or confirmatory result can; a restatement of the literature does not.
Does the design answer the question?
Apply checks appropriate to the design, including participants or materials, sampling, measurements or qualitative procedures, and computational assumptions. Distinguish prespecified from exploratory analyses. Assess whether the method supports the claim rather than requiring one design for every study.
Does the statistics match the design?
Appropriate tests, assumptions checked, effect sizes with intervals rather than p-values alone, multiplicity handled, and missing data accounted for.
Are they reported completely?
Every pre-specified outcome reported, whichever way it went. Figures and tables that match the text. Numbers that add up across the manuscript.
Does the claim exceed the evidence?
This is the most common problem in this field. Check that the conclusion is about the population studied, the intervention delivered and the outcome measured — and nothing wider.
Is the paperwork actually there?
Check applicable ethics approval or exemption and consent or authorized waiver; consent to publish identifiable material; trial registration where required; data availability; and the reporting guidance appropriate to the design.
Checks specific to this field
| Study type | Check particularly |
|---|---|
| Exercise or training intervention | Training status at baseline; frequency, intensity, duration, mode and progression; the comparator; adherence; dropouts; adverse events |
| Injury study | An explicit injury definition and classification; how diagnosis was made; an exposure denominator; follow-up long enough to observe what is claimed |
| Rehabilitation study | Progression criteria; the comparator including usual care; functional outcomes with known measurement properties; return-to-sport criteria; reinjury |
| Exercise physiology or performance | Testing conditions and prior exercise; familiarization; validity and reliability in this population; recovery between trials; whether practical significance is addressed, not only statistical |
| Biomechanics | Marker or sensor placement, sampling and filtering, the model used; number of trials and how combined; reliability of the reported measures |
| Sports nutrition or supplement | Dose, timing, form and source; background dietary control; blinding and placebo; funding and manufacturer relationship; safety; whether the performance claim exceeds the trial |
| Case report | Whether it carries a novel diagnostic, therapeutic or mechanistic insight; consent to publish; whether the patient could be identified from indirect detail |
Writing the report
- Summarize the study in your own words. Two or three sentences. It shows the editor and the authors what you understood the paper to claim.
- Give your overall assessment. What the manuscript contributes, and what stands between it and publication.
- List major points. Numbered, specific, and each one something the authors can act on. Say what would resolve it.
- List minor points separately. Keep them apart from the major ones so the authors can see what is binding.
- Confidential comments to the editor. Anything you would not put to the authors, including suspicions of misconduct.
Write the report you would want to receive. Criticize the work, not the authors; give a reason for every request; and distinguish what the manuscript must fix from what you would have done differently.
When to stop and flag
- Text or figures that appear to be taken from elsewhere.
- Images that appear duplicated, spliced or otherwise manipulated.
- Results that cannot be reconciled with the method or with each other.
- Ethics approval or consent that does not cover what was done.
- An undisclosed relationship with a product or sponsor under test.
- The same study apparently published or submitted elsewhere.
Raise these with the editor rather than in the report to the authors. The journal investigates; the reviewer is not asked to.
Reviewing for JSEM
The journal is always short of reviewers in rehabilitation, biomechanics and clinical sports medicine. If you publish in the journal’s core domains and would be willing to review, write to the editorial office with your subject area and a link to your publication record or ORCID iD.
Editorial policies · What the journal publishes · Guidelines for editors · Write to the editorial office
Across the journal
Journal of Sports and Exercise Medicine (JSEM) · ISSN 2694-2283 · Crossref DOI prefix 10.14302 · publishing since 2018 · published open access by Open Access Pub under CC BY 4.0, with copyright retained by authors. Editorial decisions are independent of any fee, service, membership or role.
Peer review
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
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