1.The SPAcE Project
EXTREMESPORTMED – Society of Outdoor Sports Medicine Launches the SPAcE Project.
SPAcE is an acronym for Sports, Physical Activity and Environment and the project intends to create a peer-reviewed journal focused on the world of sport, physical activity and their interaction with the environment which will serve as an internationally relevant scientific reference.
2. Vision
2.1.The narrative.
The title of the journal will be “The journal of outdoor sports medicine and science”, and the primary focus shall be on outdoor sports, which specifically include adventure and extreme sports.
If traditional sports perform measurable actions (time, score) in controlled conditions (stadiums, circuits, and courts), outdoor activities revolutionize the concept of sport that is now seen as a free interpretation in the environment (freestyle).
Therefore, although the focus is on the adventure and extreme sports, the journal will embrace a broad spectrum of submissions based on the relationship between sport and physical activity in relation to the environment.
2.2.Macro areas of interest
Sport science and medicine, Leisure activities, Environment, Ecology and sustainability, Humanitarian, Social sciences, Psychology, Technology.
3. When
The first phase of the project (the launch) will last about two years. This first phase of launch, which will end with the submission to Scopus, will be followed by a second phase of consolidation (about 1 year) before the third phase of development (whose beginning could coincide with the submission to Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters) and PubMED.
4. How:
We will perform seven synergistic actions summarized as follows.
4.1. Adoption of international standards and protocols for selection and certification of scientific articles.
4.2. Enhance the journal’s scientific network in order to accelerate the internationalization process.
4.3. Alignment of the journal with international publishing ‘best practices’ by using technological innovations in publishing to improve the services to readers, authors, reviewers, contributors and sponsors.
4.4. Publication through a dedicated digital platform that manages, implements, tracks, and generates statistics on workflow and editorial services provided.
4.5. Publication of articles of high editorial quality according to the standards of Open
Access and in the broader horizon of Open Science.
4.6. Adoption of communication and promotion practices to maximize the impact, visibility, and reputation of the journal and association (EXTREMESPORTMED) both nationally and internationally.
4.7. Registration on the most important international bibliographical and citation repertories.
5. Who?
5.1. International Advisory Board
The journal’s International Advisory Board (IAB) will be composed of opinion leaders and key researchers who will support SPAcE by lending their expertise and advice on various editorial issues free of charge.
5.2. Board Members
The journal IAB should be represented by a balanced distribution of gender, race, and geographical areas which will be organized by areas of scientific expertise and functions. The board members will be considered as dynamic elements of the journal and subject to continuous updating. Each section of the journal will correspond to a disciplinary area of Outdoor Sports Medicine. The scientific organization chart of the journal will need to complement but be distinct from the governance chart, the editorial staff, and the technical staff.
The relationship between the journal and the committees will be regulated by a specific model of private agreement that specify roles, responsibilities, confidentiality clauses, duration of mandates, free service, etc.
5.3. Duration of Mandates
The duration of the first mandate is defined as one year for the first collaboration. Thereafter, it will renewable in two year increments. The short duration of the mandates is established in order to make the journal dynamic and able to react promptly to the rapid changes in the editorial world, as well as to the need to guarantee an eventual turnover, necessary for the maintenance of a project that, being carried out on a voluntary basis, cannot guarantee the acquisition of positions disconnected from the real contribution to the project.
The IAB members, whose primary responsibility is to oversee the review process, will also:
– Monitor the quality and quantity of proposals and publications.
– Promote the magazine’s activities in the appropriate venues.
– Solicit articles, edit special issues, and identify editors and reviewers.
– Act as reviewers when their expertise is needed.
– Participate in regular (e.g., quarterly) teleconferences with the editorial staff
editorial staff.
– Serve as ambassadors of the journal abroad.
5.4. Reviewers
Reviewers will be selected on an ongoing basis to assist the editors in the peer review process based on their expertise. Authors themselves will be asked to suggest potential reviewers, and relationships in this case will be governed by ad hoc policies.
Editor in Chief
In the launch phase, in order to ensure the success of the project, an Editor in Chief will be identified for each macro-area of the journal (2.2).
6. Typology of SPAcE articles:
– Original articles
– Short communications
– Reviews
– Supplementary Reviews
– Systematic Reviews
– Meta-analyses
– Invited articles
– Online-only letters and Observations
– Letters to the Editor
– Commentaries
– Book review
– Clinical trial
– Current opinions
7. Structure of SPAcE Articles
– Section (original articles, review, point of views etc.)
– Title page, abstract, keywords
– Introduction, materials and methods, notes, results discussions
– Identification of origin date, evidence of localization
– Recognition of authorship
– Analysis of data
– Identification of integrity
– Attribution of credibility
– Collaborations
– References
– Ethics approval and consent to participate
– Consent for publication
– Availability of data and material
– Competing interests
– Funding
– Authors’ contributions
– Acknowledgements
– Authors’ information
– Citations
– Parent author
– Competing interests
– Copyright
– Licenses
– Statistics
– Altmetrics
- Article publishing flowchart
9. Frequency of Publication
The frequency of the journal will be continuous.
Author submits -> Editor in Chief assigns to a Section Editor.
Section Editor -> Certification through Peer Review -> Publication.
At semi-annual intervals, the articles published in this way will be collected in a booklet.
Articles related to a particular theme, even if published at different intervals, can then be linked to each other (Virtual Issue) creating digital dossiers that can also be printed.
SPAcE will also make available preprints of articles (Accepted Manuscript Online – AMO).
AMOs:
This will be the full accepted version of the article prior to formatting.
The AMOs will be accompanied by a copy of the article, including all revisions made as a result of the review process.
AMOs will be accompanied by a simple header, an article code, the DOI code and
a watermark ‘Accepted Manuscript’ with the date of acceptance.
AMOs will be published within 72 hours of acceptance and will not contain any editing or layout.
10. Digital Objective Identifier
All articles will be assigned a DOI (Digital Objective Identifier) for digital identification and tracking.
DOI registration will be done through the international agency Crossref, which will make articles easier to find, cite, link to, and evaluate.
11. Crossref
Metadata for articles, including fields such as dates, titles, authors, affiliations, etc., along with a DOI (digital object identifier). Through Crossref, SPAcE will distribute the metadata making it accessible to a number of international systems and organizations that will help enhance the value of the project.
12. Platform and Management
The journal will be published on the OJS digital platform.
Thanks to the platform, SPAcE editors will be able to manage all the workflow in a more effective way by tracking of the progress of everything from a single article and to the whole issue.
Main features and purposes of the platform
– management of the submission and peer review process through a dedicated website
to the journal.
– configuration of the editorial workflow (contribution requirements; sub-sections or sections)
– implementation of OAI-PMH compliant Metadata
– access to content defined according to role: Journal Manager, Editor in Chief, Section
Editor, Copyeditor, Reviewer, Author
– simple and advanced search in the content archive with search functions by author,
title, summary, full-text, display mode with summary preview
– standard management of correspondence by sending predefined e-mails
– creation and updating of tools for articles: (How to cite item, Finding References, Share this article, Email the author)
– support for DOI, ORCID, NBN digital identifiers
– production statistics processing and Counter compliant access; Google Analytics,
article views etc.
13. Marketing
13.1 Communication Strategies
In order to expand the SPAcE network, a communication strategy will be designed which will include:
– word of mouth
– press releases
– participation in conferences and organization of events to promote the magazine
magazine
– sending of hard copies for promotional purposes
– direct and permission marketing
– construction of mailing lists
– use of e-alerts, rss feeds
– discussion lists
13.2. Structure of SPAcE articles
13.3. Marketing Plan
– Abstracts on Hygiene & Communicable Diseases
– Academic Search
– Academic Search Alumni Edition
– ACNP Catalogo Italiano dei Periodici
– BASE Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
– BIOSIS Preview (Clarivate Analytics)
– Cabell’s Directory
– CAB Abstracts
– Current Contents: Clinical Medicine (Clarivate Analytics)
– DOAJ, Directory of Open Access Journal
– EZB–Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek – Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg
– Google Scholar
– Embase
– Global Health
– Health & Medical Collection
– Health Research Premium Collection
– Hospital Premium Collection
– JournalSeek – A Searchable Database of Online Scholarly Journals
– JournalTOCs – Journal Tables of Contents (TOCs)
– MEDLINE/PubMed
– Nutrition Abstracts & Reviews Series A: Human & Experimental
– ProQuest Central
– Science Citation Index Expanded (Clarivate Analytics)
– SCOPUS (Elsevier)
– OAIster [OCLC – Digital Collection Services] – WorldCat
– PLEIADI – Portale per la Letteratura scientifica Elettronica Italiana su Archivi aperti e
Depositi Istituzionali
– Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory
13.4 Social Networking
Opening of SPAcE social media accounts; Timeline of performance analysis.