AJSM -- About American Journal of Sports Medicine

Submissions

Authors should register on our online submission site at http://ajsm-submit.highwire.org/.

When manuscripts have been received by the editorial office, the corresponding author will be sent an acknowledgment giving an assigned manuscript number, which should be used with all subsequent correspondence for anything related to that particular manuscript.

The following items are required on submission:

Blinded manuscript including the abstract and figures legends. No identifying information should appear in the uploaded manuscript. Please remove author names, initials, and institutions.
Copyright transfer and Conflict of Interest statements. These forms are available for download from the author area of the website. All authors must sign both forms and return to AJSM by fax or uploaded online as a PDF.
What is known about the subject and what this study adds to the existing knowledge. These brief statements will be available to reviewers to place the study in context.

Cover letter, acknowledgments, and suggested reviewers are optional. If a paper has more than 5 authors, a cover letter detailing the contributions of all authors should be included in the appropriate box on the submission page.

Manuscript Formats

Manuscript pages should be typed double-spaced with the pages and lines numbered consecutively. Manuscripts should be 6000 words or fewer. There are also limitations on figures, tables, and references; see guidelines below. The system handles most common word processing formats; however, Word and PDF are preferred.

Abstract

Abstracts should summarize the contents of the article in 300 words or less. The abstract should be structured in the following format:
Background: In one or two sentences, summarize the scientific body of knowledge surrounding your study and how this led to your investigation.
Hypothesis: State the theory(ies) that you are attempting to prove or disprove by your study or the purpose if no hypothesis exist.
Study Design: Identify the overall design of your study. See list below.
Methods: Succinctly summarize the overall methods you used in your investigation. Include the study population, type of intervention, method of data collection and length of the study.
Results: Report the most important results of your study. Only include positive results that are statistically significant, or important negative results that are supported by adequate power. Report actual data, not just p values.
Conclusions: State the answer to your original question or hypothesis. Summarize the most important conclusions that can be directly drawn from your study.
Clinical Relevance: If yours was a laboratory study, describe its relevance to clinical sports medicine.
Key Terms: Provide at least 4 key words for indexing.

Study Designs

Meta-analysis: A systematic overview of studies that pools results of two or more studies to obtain an overall answer to a question or interest. Summarizes quantitatively the evidence regarding a treatment, procedure, or association.
Systematic Review: An article that examines published material on a clearly described subject in a systematic way. There must be a description of how the evidence on this topic was tracked down, from what sources and with what inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial: A group of patients is randomized into an experimental group and a control group. These groups are followed up for the variables / outcomes of interest.
Crossover Study Design: The administration of two or more experimental therapies one after the other in a specified or random order to the same group of patients.
Cohort Study: Involves identification of two groups (cohorts) of patients, one which did receive the exposure of interest, and one which did not, and following these cohorts forward for the outcome of interest.
Case-control Study: A study that involves identifying patients who have the outcome of interest (cases) and patients without the same outcome (controls), and looking back to see if they had the exposure of interest.
Cross-Sectional Study: The observation of a defined population at a single point in time or time interval. Exposure and outcome are determined simultaneously.
Case Series: Describes characteristics of a group of patients with a particular disease or who have undergone a particular procedure. No control group is used in the study, although the discussion may compare the results to others published in the literature.
Case Report: Similar to the Case Series, except that only one or a small group of cases is reported.
Descriptive Epidemiology Study: Observational study describing the injuries occurring in a particular sport.
Controlled Laboratory Study: An in vitro or in vivo investigation in which one group receiving an experimental treatment is compared to one or more groups receiving no treatment or an alternate treatment.
Descriptive Laboratory Study: An in vivo or in vitro study that describes characteristics such as anatomy, physiology, or kinesiology of a broad range of subjects or a specific group of interest.
Abstracts longer than 300 words will be edited and the corresponding author will be asked to approve the reduced abstract or to assist in shortening it to the required length. Abbreviations are not allowed in abstracts.

Text

In general, follow the standard IMRAD (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion) format for writing scientific articles. The author is responsible for all statements made in the work, including copy editor changes, which the author will have an opportunity to verify. Papers including human or animal subjects must include a statement of approval by appropriate agencies. The institution should not be mention by name in the blinded manuscript, but should be added on acceptance.

Reports on surgery, except in rare instances, require a minimum follow-up of two years.

Use generic names of drugs or devices. If a particular brand was used in a study, insert the brand name along with the name and location of the manufacturer in parentheses after the generic name when the drug or device is first mentioned in the text.

Use metric units in measurements (that is, centimeter vs inch, kilogram vs pound)

Abbreviations should be used sparingly. When abbreviations are used, give the full term followed by the abbreviation in parentheses the first time it is mentioned in the text, such as femur-ACL-tibia complex (FATC).

Use of a CONSORT flow diagram is recommended to illustrate the grouping and flow of patients in all clinical studies, whether randomized clinical trials or otherwise.

Statistical methods should be described in detail. Actual P values should be used unless less than .001. Reporting of 95% Confidence Intervals is encouraged.

Acknowledgment

Type acknowledgments in the box provided on the submission page. Give credit to sponsors, donors, or grantors; technical assistants; and professional colleagues who contributed to the quality of the paper but are not listed as authors. Please briefly describe the contributions made by persons being acknowledged.

References

References should be typed double-spaced in alphabetical order and numbered according to the alphabetical listing. Except for review articles, references should be limited to 60. If references are not in alphabetical order the uploaded file will be REJECTED and will have to be resubmitted with the references in the correct form. When author entries are the same, alphabetize by the first word of the title. In general, use the Index Medicus form for abbreviating journal titles and the AMA Manual of Style for format. Note: references must be retrievable. Do not include in the reference list presentations from meetings that have not been published. Data such as presentations and articles that have been submitted for publication but have not been accepted must be put in the text as unpublished data immediately after mention of the information (for example, "Smith and Jones (unpublished data, 2000) noted. . ."). Personal communications and other references to unpublished data are discouraged.

References will be linked to Medline citations for the reviewers. Authors can include articles that are in Publish-Ahead-of-Print mode. To ensure that the references are linked correctly, please provide the PMID number from Medline at the end of the reference. For example: Emery CA, Meeuwisse WH. Injury Rates, Risk Factors, and Mechanisms of Injury in Minor Hockey. Am J Sports Med. 2006 Jul 21; [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 16861577

Figures (Illustrations) and Tables

The number of figures and tables should not exceed 3 journal pages. One journal page equals 1 large table or figure, 2 medium tables or figures, or 4 small tables or figures. Medium tables and figures will be a page width and half the length of the page, small tables and figures are one column width and take up half the length of the page or less.

Any material that is submitted with an article that has been reproduced in another source (that is, that has been copyrighted previously) must conform to the current copyright regulations. It is the author's responsibility to obtain written permission for reproduction of copyrighted material and for providing the editorial office with that documentation before the material will be reproduced in the Journal.

Be sure to include figure legends in the text or as a separate file. The figure legend should include descriptions of each figure part and identify the meaning of any symbols or arrows. Terms used for labels and in the legend must be consistent with those in the text.

Color will be used in the journal where needed (example, histology slides or surgical photographs). All other figures, such as bar graphs and charts, should be submitted in black and white.

Figures for papers accepted for publication must meet the requirements of the publisher, Sage Publications. Files for line drawings should be created at 1200 dpi, for color photographs at 300 dpi, and for black and white photographs at 300 dpi. You can check the quality of your figures at the Preflight tool for our printer http://dx.sheridan.com/

Charts and graphs can be submitted in the original form created. Photographs or drawing embedded in Word or PowerPoint are not acceptable for publication. Glossy prints can be sent to the journal if you cannot meet the digital art requirements for publication.

All photographs of patients that disclose their identity must be accompanied by a signed photographic release, granting permission for their likeness to be reproduced in the article. If this is not provided, the patient's eyes must be occluded to prevent recognition.

For tables, the system accepts most common word processing formats. Tables should be numbered consecutively, and have a title that describes the content and purpose of the table. Tables should enhance, not duplicate, information in the text.

Video

Videos may be submitted with a manuscript and, if approved by the editor, will be posted online with the article when published. Video is encouraged for manuscripts reporting surgical, examination, or exercise techniques or injury mechanisms. For more information about the format requirements for videos, please review the Video Format Guide. For detailed information pertaining to copyright and permissions requirements, view the Video Permission and Fair Use Quick Guide. For videos with identifiable subjects, subjects will need to sign the Audio-Visual Likeness Release form. It is the author's responsibility to submit signed release forms, if necessary, for each video.

Accepted Manuscripts

Once an article is accepted and typeset, authors will be required to carefully read and correct their manuscript proofs that have been copy edited by the publisher. Any extensive changes made by authors on the proofs (except for correction of typographical errors) will be charged to authors at the rate of $2 a line. Authors are responsible for ordering reprints of their articles; a reprint order form is provided with the page proofs. Completed articles will be published on our website before print publication.

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