The deadline for proposals for the 2011 IOC World Conference on Prevention of Injury & Illness in Sport is November 1st 2009 - act now!

- K. Khan

Based on the tremendous success of the 1st and 2nd World Congresses on Sports Injury Prevention in Oslo in 2005 and Tromsø in 2008, their successor, the IOC World Conference on Prevention of Injury & Illness in Sport, will be held in Monaco from 7 to 9 April 2011. The scientific committee now welcomes your proposals for meeting sessions and speakers. The deadline for submission of proposals is 1 November 2009.

When submitting proposals, please refer to the enclosed definitions of meeting sessions. To be considered for inclusion in the programme, your proposal must strictly follow the format outlined in the enclosed instructions. Your proposal will be evaluated by the scientific committee, and the final programme of invited speakers will be ready by 1 February 2009.

The IOC World Conference on Prevention of Injury & Illness in Sport will follow the model of the 2005 & 2008 congresses, with a multidisciplinary perspective on sports injury prevention for different sports and different injury types, including studies on intervention methods, epidemiology, risk factors and injury mechanisms. However, as reflected by the change in title, the scope of the congress will be expanded from sports injury prevention, to also include the prevention of other health problems associated with sports participation.

The three-day programme will include four or five keynote lectures, about 20 symposia, 15-20 workshops, in addition to free communications and posters. Please note that, at this time, we are asking only for proposals for keynote lectures, symposia and workshops – not abstracts for free communications. The deadline for submission of abstracts for free communications and posters will be 1 January 2011.

Please reply to Cherine Fahmy at info@ioc-preventionconference.org at your earliest convenience, but not later than 1 November 2009.

Note that although the congress committee will cover the cost of accommodation and social events for invited speakers, we will not be able to reimburse travel costs, since we plan to invite a considerable number of international speakers to be able to feature a first-class programme. We encourage you to visit the congress website, where more information will be posted over the next few months.

Monaco is situated on the most beautiful coast in Europe, built on a rock between the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea. Its mild climate, easy access, excellent hotels and security are the principal qualities which make Monaco a prestigious destination for an unforgettable event. Furthermore, the Grimaldi Forum, a state-of- the-art conference centre for the 3rd millennium, daringly built out over the sea with a total area of 35.000 m2, is the perfect location to receive a high standard congress such as the IOC World Conference on Prevention of Injury & Illness in Sport”.

We welcome your programme proposals and look forward to a spectacular congress in Monaco in June 2011! Yours faithfully,

Roald Bahr (s)
President, Scientific Committee

Fredrik Bendiksen (s)
President, Organising Committee

Photo by _Pixelmaniac_ (available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license)

In the November WarmUp (editorial, for those not familiar with BJSM jargon!) I promised to explain why BJSM has to reject many good papers. The simple answer is that 1000 doesn’t got into 180. Without giving away crucial trade secrets to our friendly competitors, I can share with you that BJSM receives close to 1000 submissions per year. And as those of you inclined toward accounting and other obsessive-compulsive pursuits will have noticed, we have 80 pages per issue. And some of those pages are already accounted for. So you can see we can publish only about 15 average length articles.

To help authors get rapid decisions, 40-60% of submissions are evaluated by a couple of editors and returned rather rapidly to authors. The research area might not be in BJSM’s scope — it does not mean that the research isn’t good. But given that only 15-20% of submissions can be accepted, BJSM needs to focus on the 500 or so papers that will provide the final 180. Clearly peer-review is not an exact science. There is no algorithm for ‘rapid rejection’. I don’t claim it is ‘objective’ in the way that the Olympic 100m final result is adjudicated. But as authors, all the editorial team appreciates the hard work that goes into papers; we have all had many papers rejected and we all have had differences of opinions with editors. An imperfect system but a better one has not yet caught on.

Focusing on the positive, how can you maximise your chances of review and publication?
A few quick tips on how to get papers accepted by BJSM:

1. Choose an interesting area of research.
2. Highlight the innovation in your research in a 3-paragraph introduction if you can. Most great papers need only 3 paragraphs to explain why the project was done.
3. A catchy (but honest) title is better than a boring title.
4. Emphasise the clinical relevance in your discussion - why will this research make a difference to clinical practice, policy, or to coaches?

We like randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses. But that’s not all. See recent issues for interesting cohort studies. Cross-sectional studies and retrospective surveys, broadly speaking, obtain a lower priority than their counterparts that provide higher on the levels of evidence. Not rocket science.

As a BJSM and blog reader I thank you for considering BJSM and for giving us a chance. We know from the e-data that are now readily available that BJSM is widely downloaded and clicked-upon. We encourage you to give us a try as both an author and a reader. And as I have said consistently, feedback and debate is welcomed. BJSM aims to be the leading resource for new knowledge and debate in the broadly defined field of clinical sports medicine. Our target audience is physicians and physiotherapists who work in musculoskeletal medicine and exercise, as well as physiologists, scientists and public health authorities who believe that physical activity is the most powerful single health modality that a person can readily adopt.

Enjoy this issue.

Sudden cardiac death has always been at the apex of ’serious’ sports medicine conditions. We all agree that one death is one too many. Sports physicians with expertise in cardiac issues — Jon Drezner and Babette Pluim — will guest edit a 2009 Themed Issue that will include, but not be limited to, original data and commentary on the use of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in the athletic setting, emergency preparedness for sudden cardiac arrest, and the secondary prevention of sudden cardiac death in young athletes.

We look forward to the opportunity to work with authors, groups convening to provide consensus statements, and partner journals to contribute to minimizing sudden cardiac death in the sporting setting.

This special issue will form the June 2009 Issue of BJSM. More details will follow and the deadline for submissions is 11:00 pm, Dec 31. 2008.

Right now BJSM has double blind review — we ask authors to anonymize their papers, reviewers’ names are shrouded in secrecy. BJSM is the only BMJ publication that has this policy.

Is it time to adopt BMJ approach and have open review? Do you believe the evidence that ‘big name’ authors have papers accepted more readily? Do you believe that there are personal and corporate pressures that influence reviewers? Fiona Godlee, editor of BMJ commented on this in 2002.

Let us know on the blog as we reconsider this policy at BJSM.