Welcome to JSAMS!

Article Outline

• Copyright

I am delighted to welcome you to the first issue of the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport (JSAMS) for 2006 and the first issue with our new publishing house, Elsevier. We hope you enjoy the new format and content of our journal as much as we do!

This issue heralds a new standard of publishing in our journal and brings you a very strong focus on highlighting high quality and leading edge research and thinking. This first issue for 2006 has deliberately been constructed as a bumper issue to showcase both the range of disciplines we publish from (biomechanics, clinical sports medicine, injury prevention, physical activity, psychology and sports science) and the variety of article types our authors adopt to best suit their research communication (from original research papers to reviews to short reports to case reports to letters to the editor). Two new categories of papers are making their debut in this issue: lead articles and education pieces. The former are papers with significant research and practical application and deserve their particular highlighting in each issue. These are accompanied by commentaries by the leading experts in the field, who add their thoughts on the topic. We begin in this issue to also publish occasional education pieces on topics of relevance to our authors and readers.

Over the year, you will also witness many other improvements to the journals’ publishing of its manuscripts. From this year, all new papers will be published on-line ahead of print publication. After all author and editor corrections have been made to the final documents, the corrected proof will appear on-line within a two week period. It is then available through Science Direct (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/14402440). This means that authors will be able to disseminate their research findings earlier than previously and the practical implications of the research implemented or realised sooner. For people with subscriptions to the journal or Science Direct, there is a complete electronic archive of all back issues dating back to 1998.

Already, the process of submitting manuscripts to the journal and tracking their progress is available at http://ees.elsevier.com/jsams/default.asp. This has impacted favourably on review times and reduced editorial office handling of papers considerably. Feedback from our authors and reviewers who have used the system has been very positive so-far and we have had at least a doubling of submissions to the journal since this system was introduced.

This issue also welcomes 5 new Editorial Board members: biomechanists Dr. Tim Hewitt from the Cincinnati Children's Sports Medicine Biodynamics Center, USA and Dr. Peter Davidson from the University of Otago, New Zealand; sports injury epidemiologists Dr. Brent Hagel and Dr. Carolyn Emery both from the University of Calgary; sports scientist Dr. David Bentley from the University of New South Wales.

Our reviewers are another critical element of our journal's success. We have no doubt that the Elsevier Electronic Submission system will make it easier for reviewers to obtain the manuscripts to review, have access to tools to assist them in their reviews and also for communicating back with the Editorial Team after they have completed them. Most of the papers you will read in the first few issues of the 2006 volume of JSAMS will have been assessed by reviewers of our old paper based system. The insight and commitment of these reviewers to ensuring a high standard of sports medicine/sports science research reporting is gratefully acknowledged by the entire Editorial Board. These people are formally listed on pages 192–193 of this issue.