BJSM has a mission to provide clinically-relevant material for clinicians in the broad field of sport and exercise medicine. BJSM aims to serve member societies such as BASEM (UK), AMSSM (US), ACSP (Australia and New Zealand), SASMA (South Africa) SSPTA (Switzerland) and ECOSEP (Europe). Will your paper be of interest to those readers? Because we receive 1000 papers annually, and can only publish about 8-10 original submissions in each of our 16 issues annually, our acceptance of original submissions is limited to around 150 per year – say 10-15%.

Thus, to help authors, we only send 40% of submissions out for external peer review. The editor and deputy editors (Khan, Pluim, Cook) screen papers for (i) relevance to our field and (ii) study design. Papers that are unlikely to be of interest to the target audience and those with a design that is open to biased conclusions are redirected to authors rapidly so they can be submitted elsewhere. Thus, recent acceptances show fewer cross-sectional studies. Case series and case reports are not part of BJSM anymore but the BMJ has its own Case Reports journal ‘BMJ Case Reports’ which is proving wildly popular.

We appreciate that many ‘publishable’ papers cannot fit inside our small envelope but fortunately there are many good journals in our field. We are always delighted to see papers that didn’t make it through our filter show up in associated sports medicine and physiotherapy journals. And one paper we rejected was resubmitted to BMJ and got published there! Great news! Peer review has limitations and has more than an element of subjectivity.

Clinical relevance, superior quality study designs where appropriate. Studies that clinicians can build on or that influence policy. BJSM is aiming for impact – in the true sense of that word!

Thanks for considering BJSM and keep those high-quality submissions coming!

BJSM is transparent about its peer-review process. We receive 1000 papers a year and can only publish about 10% of them. So 60% of papers are returned to authors after the editorial team has reviewed them. Who’s the editorial team? It’s Karim Khan, Babette Pluim and Jill Cook. So these are called ‘rejected without external review’. This should happen within a week of submission so the good news is that if the paper doesn’t look like having a chance to get into BJSM, authors have it back without delay.

Today, I’ll focus on what it takes to get through that first hurdle – to have a paper sent for external review. BJSM’s mission is to provide clinically useful material for clinicians the world over. Our summary slogan could be ‘clinically-relevant’ and ‘global/international’. Will your paper influence practice or policy in sport and exercise medicine? There are many ways to do that so we have a broad scope. Our member societies include BASEM, AMSSM, ECOSEP and the Swiss Sports Physiotherapy Association so papers should be of interest to those readers.

We are also endorsed by sports and exercise medicine societies in South Africa (SASMA), Australia and New Zealand (ACSP) so BJSM has wide reach. Our plan to focus on clinical relevance came after consultation with folks from all our member societies. We are executing a strategy which has us aiming to provide multimedia value to clinicians as they practice every day and work with active individuals in various settings. (Hence the videos and podcasts on the home page).

Sports clinicians are involved in public health so papers about physical activity and health are clearly relevant. Papers that will influence decision-makers in the field of exercise and health are also important. Data that will help teams perform better in relation to health issues are grist for the mill. But if you have a new ‘play’ in basketball that would fit better in a coaching or coaching science journals.

If you are interested in the peer-review process, see the BMJ ‘Head to Head’ (two articles, one for, one against ‘open’ peer review). Also, BJSM has a take on innovation and the problems that researchers have in challenging conventional thinking.

I’ll clarify this more about BJSM’s process in the next few days among our other blog topics. Feel free to ask questions or to comment.

The editorial team is delighted to receive randomised controlled trials. Please remember to use the CONSORT checklist and to incorporate as many elements as you can. Our aim is that all RCTs published in BJSM conform to the CONSORT statement.

CONSORT, stands for Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials. The CONSORT Statement is an evidence-based, minimum set of recommendations for reporting RCTs. It helps you prepare your paper for submission. The CONSORT Statement comprises a 22-item checklist and a flow diagram, along with some brief descriptive text. The checklist items focus on reporting how the trial was designed, analyzed, and interpreted; the flow diagram displays the progress of all participants through the trial. The Statement has been translated into several languages.

You might also be interested in the EQUATOR network website. This website simplifies good reporting of health research. The resources are aimed at authors, reviewers, and developers of reporting guidelines. The website features a collection of reporting guidelines that includes:

• CONSORT Statement (for reporting randomised controlled trials, as above)
• QUOROM, recently renamed PRISMA (for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomised trials)
• STROBE Statement (for reporting observational studies)
• STARD Statement (for reporting diagnostic accuracy studies) and many other guidelines identified through extensive literature searches.

I am very excited and most grateful that 6 international leaders in sports and exercise medicine have agreed to serve as Senior Associate Editors in Chief – Babette Pluim (Netherlands), Jill Cook (Australia), Liza Arendt (US), Steven Stovitz (US), Roald Bahr (Norway) and Timothy Noakes (South Africa).

This senior leadership group and I will take the first 5 months of the year to catch up with the hardworking Editorial Board and engage all those who wish to contribute to the Journal.The new Associate Editors and the expanded Editorial Board will be listed in the June issue of BJSM.

To contribute to the direction of BJSM, I encourage you to provide input either in person (e.g., The RendezVous Conference in Las Vegas (March 25-29), my visit to various UK centres in early May) or on email (karim.khan@ubc.ca).

The BJSM vision that aims to reflect the diverse interests of the world of sport and exercise medicine will be on the web by June 1^st.

We aim to make the BJSM the premier clinically-relevant original data journal and online community. BJSM is one of the ‘specialist journals’ of the BMJ publishing group. The mother ship – the BMJ – aims to ‘help doctors make better decisions’.

BMJ editors ask 3 questions about manuscripts that are submitted:

1. Is it new?
2. Is it true?
3. Will it change what doctors do?

Given the expertise, resources, and brand recognition of the BMJ, it seems that team BJSM might do well to follow that game plan in the first instance. Thus, we will focus on clnically-relevant health and human performance.We’ll aim to accept and solicit material that is new, true, and has the potential to change the things you do.

We hope this Blog helps us engage a global community to find answers.

Exciting times!