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INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS
(Last updated: 11 Jul 2024)

Biology of Sport is the official journal of the Institute of Sport – National Research Institute located in Warsaw (Poland) published since 1984.

AIM AND SCOPE
Biology of Sport is an international scientific peer-reviewed journal, published quarterly in electronic format. The journal publishes articles concerning basic and applied sciences in sport: sports and exercise physiology, sports genetics, training and testing, sports performance and analysis, as well as in other biological aspects related to sport.
Biology of Sport invites the submission of high quality original research articles, short communications and review papers. Please note that only those manuscripts that have not been published anywhere else are eligible for consideration. The only exception is the presentation of preliminary data (i.e. as an abstract); in such cases the authors are obliged to make an appropriate note in the manuscript.
A cover letter (authors’ statement) must be signed by all authors, stating that all the above requirements have been appropriately fulfilled and that they agree to publication of the manuscript in Biology of Sport. The authors are solely responsible for the scientific content as well as for the ethical and legal aspects of their work. Detailed information on preparation of the manuscript is described in the Instructions for Authors.

EDITORIAL PROCESS
To achieve the aim of publishing top-quality papers, the editorial process in Biology of Sport consists of two stages: pre-review (1) and peer review (2).

First stage: Pre-review
After submission, a paper enters the pre-review stage. The aim of pre-review is to identify papers potential interesting for Biology of Sport readers.
The pre-review assessment is based on the following criteria:
1. Does the paper fall within the broad remit of Biology of Sport?
2. Is the paper appropriately formatted for Biology of Sport?
3. Is the paper novel and interesting?
4. Is the subject area covered by the paper topical and, hence, potentially of interest to a wide readership?
5. Does the paper have the potential to make a substantial contribution to the development of a broad sports subject area?

Second stage: Peer review evaluation
If a paper is not rejected at the pre-review stage it then goes into peer review. Each paper is typically reviewed by two independent reviewers (more if necessary, and in some cases the review process can rely on the report of only one reviewer) and a member of the editorial team then makes a decision concerning publication, either:
• Reject – the paper is not acceptable for publication and re-submission will not be considered; or
• Major Revision – the paper requires major changes and needs to go through the review process again with no guarantee of acceptance; or
• Minor Revision – the paper is provisionally accepted, subject to conditions that need to be addressed in producing a final version of the manuscript.
In both cases of revision, the authors are allowed a period of 4 weeks to return their corrected manuscripts. Any extension of that period has to be discussed with the editor in chief.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES
The editors of Biology of Sport support the policy of prevention of ghostwriting, guest authorship and plagiarism.
Ghostwriting is the case of contributing to a publication without revealing one’s participation as one of the authors or without reference to one’s role in the acknowledgments in the publication.
Guest authorship (honorary authorship) is the case of insignificant contribution of the author or its complete absence and nevertheless being named as the author or co-author of the publication.
The editors reserve the right to reveal all aspects of scientific dishonesty, i.e. failure to comply with actions eliminating the occurrence of the aforementioned practices.
The editors require that authors reveal individual co-authors’ contributions to
the publication. When submitting a manuscript, the authors will be requested to declare their contribution to:
study design/planning, data collection/entry, data analysis/statistics, data interpretation, preparation of manuscript, literature analysis/search, collection of funds.
Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else’s work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. The authors accept that a submitted manuscript may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works. Manuscripts that are found to have been plagiarized will incur plagiarism sanctions: immediate rejection of the submitted manuscript or published article, no return of the article-processing charge, prohibition of any new submissions.

Ethical Approval
All experimental studies using human or animal subjects should include an explicit statement in the Material and Methods section identifying the ethics committee approval for each study. It is recommended (not required) to obtain a certificate of completion of the training course “Protecting Human Research Participants” from the National Institute of Health. Any doubts concerning fulfilment of the ethical standards will lead to rejection of the manuscript.

AUTHORS’ STATEMENT
Papers must be accompanied by the authors’ statement, which is available on the journal’s webpage in the section Information for Authors.
Permissions: Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material protected by copyright used in their manuscripts.
Reprints: Reprints of individual articles are available only from authors. Reprints in large quantities, for commercial or academic use, may be purchased from the publisher.

AUTHORS’ FEE (APC; Article Processing Charges)
Upon manuscript acceptance for publication, a publication fee of 800 euros (4,000 PLN or 900 USD) will be charged. Authors are required to transfer this amount to the publisher’s bank account. This policy applies to manuscripts submitted on or after 1 November 2024.

The corresponding author is responsible for all documentation necessary for proper processing of the bank transfer.
The publication fee should be transferred to the account of the publisher:

Beneficiary Name: Instytut Sportu - Panstwowy Instytut Badawczy
Beneficiary Address: Trylogii 2/16, 01-982 Warsaw, Poland
Beneficiary Bank Name: Bank BNP Paribas Bank Polska S.A.
Beneficiary Bank Address: Kasprzaka 10/16, 01-211 Warsaw, Poland
Payment Reference: Manuscript ID (example: 00012-2016), Correspondence Author Name

Payments in PLN:

Bank Account Number (IBAN): PL 15 2030 0045 1110 0000 0260 9620
Beneficiary Bank SWIFT: PPABPLPK

Account numbers for foreign Authors: 

Payments in EUR:  

IBAN: PL74 1600 0003 1030 5731 9000 0030  
SWIFT/BIC: PPABPLPK

Payments in USD:  

IBAN: PL47 1600 0003 1030 5731 9000 0031  
SWIFT: PPABPLPK

In the title of transfer operation, the reference number of the manuscript, which is automatically given during the submission process, should be written.
Bank transfer charges should be covered by the payer (the sender).
Please scan and e-mail the remittance receipt when the payment has been made.
In the title of the transfer operation, the reference number of the manuscript, which is automatically given during the submission process, should be written.

MANUSCRIPT REQUIREMENTS
Manuscripts that do not comply with the requirements for the scope of the journal, ethics, style, and format will not enter the peer-review process.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPT
Original articles should not exceed 3800 words excluding abstract, references, tables and figures. Short communications not exceed 2000 words, and review articles 6000 words.
Articles should be submitted as text files, prepared in Microsoft Word with Times New Roman font, 12-point type, double-spaced with 2.5 cm margins on all 4 sides of the page. The articles are published in English. Manuscripts sent in other languages will not be accepted. English text verification before submission is strongly suggested for non-native English authors.

Submitted manuscripts should include at least two files. The first file is the title page with authors’ names. The second file includes title, abstract, keywords, body text, references. Tables (numbered in Arabic numerals) and illustrations (numbered in Arabic numerals) should be prepared on separate sheets. System will automatically compose a file that will serve as a blind copy for reviewers and should not contain elements allowing identification of authors.

First file – title page
• Title: Regular font size
• Head title: Regular font size
• Authors: name, surname and affiliation(s).
Example: Peter Black1, Jack White2
ORCID ID – list the ORCID numbers for all authors using this persistent digital identifier
List a username (handle) for Twitter or/and Facebook authors accounts.
• Acknowledgements: information concerning financial support, technical assistance, and intellectual contributions not associated with authorship should be provided.
• Conflict of interest declaration. For example: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Second file – blind version of manuscript
• Title: Regular font size
• Head title: Regular font size
• Abstract: no more than 250 words, including objectives, methods, results and conclusions.
• Key words: up to 6 key words (preferably, according to the Index Medicus - Medical Subjects Headings (MeSH) terms (http://www.Nlm.Nih.Gov/mesh).

Manuscript should be organized into the following sections:
• Introduction – summary of current knowledge leading to the overall design and purpose of the study.
• Materials and Methods: clear description of methods applied in the study including subjects, intervention, measurements, data collection procedure and statistics (preferably, including the sample size calculation or the statistical power of analysis). The International System of Units (SI) and standard abbreviations should be used. Any methods already well described and widely known should not be described in detail and should refer to an appropriate reference. However, any new method should be described in precise detail to allow readers to repeat it.
- Ethics: Authors must declare that the experiments reported in the manuscript were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration and that the participants signed an informed consent form.
• Results: Both positive and/or negative results of the study should be described in detail. This section should rely on tables and figures with a minimum of accompanying text. Titles and legends of tables and figures should allow them to be regarded as self-explanatory. There should be no repetition of data already presented, tables or figures.
• Discussion: Results of the study should be critically discussed from the point of view of limitations of the research project, method applied, and current knowledge available in the literature. Interpretation of the results is encouraged, while avoiding speculations. The end of the discussion section should present practical implications of the results of the study.
• Conclusions: Main findings and novel elements of the results should be summarized in the Conclusions. The authors should refrain from making conclusions about facts not demonstrated by their study.
• References: All references must be numbered consecutively (in order of appearance in the body text) and citations of references in the text should be identified using numbers in square brackets. The limit for the number of references is 40 for original papers. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the information in each reference is complete and accurate. References should follow the format adopted by the United States National Library of Medicine (Patrias K. National Library of Medicine Recommended Formats for Bibliographic Citation. Bethesda (MD): The Library; 1991) and employed in Index Medicus.
Examples:
Original article:
Pokrywka P, Kaliszewski P, Majorczyk E, Zembron-Lacny A. Genes in sport and doping. Biol Sport. 2013;30(3):155-161.
(List all authors; optionally: number of issue could be omitted and a database’s unique identifier for the citation could be added. There is dot in the end of abbreviated name of journal).
Book and monographs:
Personal author(s):
Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical Microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.
Chapter in a book:
Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The Genetic Basis of Human Cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002. p. 93-113.

• Figures and Tables: The authors should include all figures and tables as separated files. The figures and tables, counted together, should not exceed 8. All figures should be cited in the paper in a consecutive order and have a clear description of the content and identification of any symbols. Normally, all figures are printed in black but in the e-journal version color illustrations may be exceptionally printed. If the article is accepted, the authors will be asked to provide the source files of the figures. Each figure should be supplied in a separate electronic file. Figures should be supplied in bitmap formats (TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.). Bitmap images should be of a resolution of at least 300 dpi unless the resolution is intentionally set to a lower level for scientific reasons. If a bitmap image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers.

COPYRIGHT
The copyright for publications appearing in Biology of Sport belongs to the Institute of Sport – National Research Institute located in Warsaw, Poland. Reproduction of the publication in any form or by any means requires the permission of the editors. The authors may reproduce their own work for non-commercial purposes with clear indication of the original publisher.
The rights to the article are usually transferred by the authors to the owner of the journal, who makes it available under the Creative Commons license. However, if the author does not want to transfer the copyright to the publisher, he/she may contact the editorial office and set separate rules - under which the editorial office may publish an article in the journal. For the detailed information, please contact with editorial office.
Content of the electronic version of Biology of Sport is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION PATHWAY
Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors (the corresponding author) of the manuscript through the online submission system.

To submit a manuscript via the web site, go to the https://www.editorialsystem.com/biolsport and then follow the on-screen instructions. Firstly, you will need to log into the submission system. If you are already registered in Author Database in Biology of Sport use your User ID and Password to log on.
If you are not already registered, you can register by clicking on the “Create New Account” button. You will be asked for basic personal/contact data.

Once submitted for review, each manuscript will be assigned a unique reference number. This number should be used in all subsequent correspondence.