On submission, authors are required to nominate up to four expert referees for their paper; these potential referees must not have been informed that they have been nominated or be members of the authors' institutions. The nominated referees may or may not be used, at the Section Editor's discretion, and at least one of the referees involved in the review of the paper will be independent of the nominated list.

3. Originality
We require authors to confirm the originality of material by ticking the appropriate checkbox on submission of the manuscript. Material submitted will not enter the refereeing process until such an undertaking has been received.

We discourage the practice of publishing parts of one study in different journals. Authors who submit a manuscript to the Journal of Sports Sciences from a study, some of these data from which has been or will be published elsewhere, must provide a strong justification in the accompanying letter to the Section Editor. The justification for not publishing all of the data together in one manuscript or as multiple papers in a single issue of the Journal of Sports Sciences must also be included in the covering letter.

4. Effective communication
Papers should be written and arranged in a style that is succinct and easy to follow. An informative title, a concise abstract and a well written introduction will help to achieve this. Authors should avoid some of the more common pitfalls, such as excessive use of the passive voice and past tense and unnecessary use of fabricated abbreviations within the text. The Journal would prefer authors to describe human volunteers as participants rather than subjects in the methods section. Figures and tables should be used to add to the clarity of the paper, not to pad it out. At all times, please try to think about your readers, who will not all be specialists in your discipline.

5. Manuscript
(a) General
The manuscript must be in English; UK English spellings and words should be used in preference to other versions of English. It must be word-processed, double-spaced throughout, with a 4 cm margin on the left side, with no 'headers and footers' (other than page numbers), and without footnotes unless these are absolutely necessary. Arrange the manuscript under headings (such as Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions) and subheadings. Ideally, the main body of the text should not exceed 4,000 words, excluding references. Longer manuscripts may be accepted at the discretion of the respective Section Editor. Authors must make every effort to ensure that manuscripts are presented as concisely as possible. The Editors cannot consider for publication papers that are seriously deficient in presentation or that depart substantially from these 'Notes and Guidelines'.

(b) Ethics of human experimentation
The Journal will accept only papers that conform to the highest standards of ethics and participant protection. All experimental work in which humans are participants must conform to the laws of the country in which the work took place. The manuscript should contain a statement to the effect that the work reported has been approved by a recognised ethics committee or review board. There are two exceptions: 1. Where information is in the public domain such as on a website that contains statistical or other archive-type data, formal ethics approval is not necessarily a requirement but a statement about the source of the data must be made. 2. Retrospective analysis of data, such as those produced as a result of long-term monitoring of athletes that provides information worthy of broadcast to a wider audience: reporting of these data is seen as exceptional. The Journal's clear preference is for prior approval of experimental work, but it is recognised that information can arise from local applied sport science work that has not had prior ethics approval. In such instances, it must be made clear that data were collected as part of an athlete monitoring program and that none of the measurements was made for research purposes: authors must provide a detailed explanation of the absence of formal ethics approval.  Normally, statements about ethics approval or sources of data should be made at the beginning of the methods section.

(c) Anonymous refereeing
Because of the adoption of anonymous refereeing by the Journal with effect from 1 January 1998, the title page and manuscript should include no information that clearly identifies the authors or their affiliations. Authors should submit a separate cover letter, which is not part of the manuscript, that can include the following information: the full title; the names of the authors without qualifications or titles; the affiliations and full addresses of the authors; the name, address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the author responsible for all correspondence and correction of proofs. Any acknowledgements should also appear on this page, not in the manuscript. These acknowledgements will appear in the printed version if the manuscript is accepted.

(d) Title page
Include the following information on the first page of the manuscript: the full title; a running title of no more than 75 characters and spaces; and up to five keywords for indexing purposes.

(e) The abstract
The abstract must not exceed 200 words and it must summarize the paper, giving a clear indication of the conclusions it contains.

(f) Tables and illustrations
Illustrations and tables must accompany the manuscript but not be included in the text. Authors may wish to express a preference for the location of tables and figures by including comments such as ****Table 1 near here**** or ****Figure 2 near here**** separated by at least one line space from the main text. Tables, referred to as 'Table 1', 'Table 2', and so on, must be numbered in the order in which they occur in the text. Tables must be clearly and simply laid out with clear row and column legends, units where appropriate, no vertical lines and horizontal lines only between the table title and column headings, between the column headings and the main body of the table, and after the main body of the table.

Photographs and line drawings, referred to as 'Figure 1', 'Figure 2', and so on, must be numbered in the order in which they occur in the text. Diagrams and drawings should be produced using a computer drawing or graphics package. All illustrations must be suitable for reduction to single column (84 mm) or page width (174 mm) of the Journal, with particular attention to lettering size. Photographs must be reproduced as black and white image files.

(h) References
The Journal uses the APA reference style, which is a variation of the Harvard system. The following examples should make clear the most important points. References in the text are cited as follows: Smith (1985) . . . or (Brown & Green, 1996). Where there are between three and five authors, all authors should be given in the first citation in the text; subsequent references to the same source should give the first author only followed by et al.. Where there are six or more authors, the first author only, followed by et al., should be cited in all instances. In the reference list, the first six authors only should be listed, followed by et al. Citations of different publications by the same author(s) are differentiated as Green (1993a), (Brown et al., 1995b). Multiple citations are listed in ascending chronological order. Within a year, they are organized in alphabetical sequence of the first author. Examples: Smith (1995), Brown & Green (1996), Jones et al. (1996); or (Smith, 1995; Brown & Green, 1996; Jones et al., 1996). The following should make clear how multiple publications by the same authors are treated in such lists: Smith (1991, 1995), Brown & Green (1992, 1993), Jones et al. (1993, 1996a,b); or (Smith, 1991, 1995; Brown & Green, 1992, 1993; Jones et al., 1993, l996a,b).

A list of all cited references should be collected at the end of the paper in alphabetical order by, in the first instant, the first author's surname. Where the name of the first author appears more than once, the order is determined by: first, the number of co-authors (zero, one, or more than one); secondly, for one co-author, the first co-author's surname then the year; for two or more co-authors, year then order as dictated by the use of 1990a,b,c (for example) in the citations. The following is an example of how references would be ordered in the reference list: Brown (1980), Brown (1990), Brown & Jones (1977), Brown & Smith (1973). Brown & Smith (1975), Brown, Smith & Jones (1990a), Brown, Jones, Smith, Jones & Brown (1990b), Brown, Jones & Smith (1990c). Note that the last three examples would all have been cited as Brown et al. in the text, with the a, b and c relating to the order of citation. The names and initials of all authors should be given in the list of references. The style should follow the examples below:

Books
Zatsiorsky, V.M. (1995). Science and practice of strength training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Journals (Papers or Abstracts)
Elliott, B., Marshall, R. & Noffal, G. (1996). The role of upper limb segment rotations in the development of racket-head speed in the squash forehand. Journal of Sports Sciences, 14, 159-165.

Chapters in Books
Stephenson, D.G., Lamb, G.D., Stephenson, G.M.M. & Fryer, M.W (1996). Mechanisms of excitation and contraction coupling relevant to skeletal muscle fatigue. In S.C. Gandavia, R.M. Enoka, A.J. McManus, D.G. Stuart & C.K.Thomas (Eds.), Fatigue: Neural and muscular mechanisms (pp. 45-56). New York: Plenum Press.

Chapters in Published Books of Conference Proceedings or Abstracts
Howe, B.L. & Bell, G.J. (1986). Mood states and motivation of triathletes. In J. Watkins, T. Reilly & L. Burwitz (Eds.), Sports science: Proceedings of the VII Commonwealth and International Conference on Sport, Physical Education, Dance, Recreation and Health (pp. 273-278). London: E & FN Spon.

The issue number of a journal should be included only to avoid confusion, as when for example the pagination starts from 1 in each issue rather than being continuous across a volume; in such cases use 16(4), etc. Authors should seek to minimize references to non-published material, including collections of conference abstracts that are not generally available through libraries or electronic databases. When it is absolutely necessary to reference unpublished material, this must be done within the citation in the body of the paper, for example (Bartlett & Bremble, unpublished data); the material must not be included in the list of references. Secondary references should be avoided if at all possible; if not, the reference should be listed as, for example: Full reference (cited in Zatsiorsky, V.M., 1995, Science and Practice of Strength Training. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics).

6. Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest
It is the sole responsibility of authors to disclose any affiliation with any organisation with a financial interest, direct or indirect, in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript (such as consultancies, employment, expert testimony, honoraria, speakers'bureaus, retainers, stock options or ownership) that may affect the conduct or reporting of the work submitted. If uncertain as to what might be considered a potential conflict of interest, authors should err on the side of full disclosure. Information about potential conflict of interest should be clearly stated at the point of submission (for example in a cover letter, or where available within the appropriate field on the journal' Manuscript Central site). This may be made available to reviewers and may be published with the manuscript at the discretion of the Editors.

10. Copyright
It is a condition of publication that authors assign copyright or licence the publication rights in their articles, including abstracts, to Taylor & Francis. This enables us to ensure full copyright protection and to disseminate the article, and of course the Journal, to the widest possible readership in print and electronic formats as appropriate. Authors retain many rights under the Taylor & Francis rights policies, which can be found at www.informaworld.com/authors_journals_copyright_position. Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material from other sources.