Journal Updates (7.16.23)
JIS Community,
I’ll try to make these announcements on a semi-annual basis. We’ve undergone many changes at Journal of Intercollegiate Sport recently, so I wanted to provide an update. First, I want to thank many of you for the well wishes on my recent appointment at EIC. I’ve been grateful for the excellent mentorship provided by Dr. Welty Peachey since I joined as associate editor a year ago and the foundation provided by the previous JIS editors since its creation in 2008.
Like many of you, the timing of the journal’s creation and my research agenda has meant that JIS has been especially important for me as a scholarly outlet. My goal is to position the journal to being at the forefront of choices for authors publishing and the readership interested in the college sport industry. Here are some of the changes we have implemented recently at JIS.
Topics:
- Review Board
- Pilot with SMGT Doc Programs
- Review Time Shortened from Three to One Month
- Logo Changes
- Jitterbug
- Social Media
- Smaller Changes
- Future Plans
- We have recently implemented several review board changes.
- Twelve editorial board members were rotated off and six new members were added. The six new additions are Drs. Lisa Rubin, Sayvon Foster, Ajhanai Keaton, Liz Taylor, David Pifer, and Charles Macaulay. These changes are allowing a new set of folks to review scholarship at JIS and providing greater coverage of recent topics being submitted to the journal. A few more review board members will be added in 2024. Happy to add these new folks to the journal!
- Created a pilot program with sport management/administration doctoral programs where advanced stage doctoral students are given an opportunity to be a reviewer.
- Article reviews are often an under-prepared experience for doctoral students. From talking to doc students and new PhDs, there is a lot of mystery of what is expected from reviewing a journal article and the best approach.
- Our approach has been reaching out to handful of doctoral granting institutions, collecting names of students who the program believes are more prepared for reviewing and have the time availability to complete them, collecting information on their expertise, and partnering them with experienced board members. Once the student has submitted their review, I provide them feedback on their submission, and I also share the other reviewer’s feedback. So far this has been a successful program that will continue in 2024.
- Review time windows has been reduced from three months to one month.
- This change was done for three reasons – (1) this is advantageous for authors, (2) it makes the journal as competitive as possible for authors deciding on a journal outlet, and (3) early reviewer data is showing the great majority of reviewers are completing their reviews in a 30-day window already. We have been slowly integrating this over the past 18 months to good results. I’ll be sharing our review data at the end of the year.
- Logo changes
- You’ll notice on the website and our new social media (via Twitter) account that we have created new logos for the journals. It was time to explore new branding for the journal that was functional as a brand on new journal articles (going forward) and social media friendly. There are three new logos: (a) for the website, (b) for social media/thumbnails, and (c) for published articles. These were designed with scoreboard aesthetics, particularly a nod to the old-school bulb scoreboards, creating a connection between our logo and a standard structure within college sport.
- Jitterbug integration for each article
- All article webpages now have an application called Jitterbug that is providing month-by-month counting stats for article downloads. This will provide faculty a statistical tool for supporting your research’s impact. Here is an example article webpage, just scroll down and you’ll see the download graphic: https://journals.ku.edu/jis/article/view/14523
- Social Media
- Recently created a social media account on Twitter (@JofInterSport)
- Smaller changes
- Switched from the page numbers resetting from every issue to every volume.
- Authors will be asked to submit their references from before submission to after acceptance. You still need to include references with your manuscript, this was a separate action.
- Future Plans
- We have a meeting with KU Press soon to start the process to becoming a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). This work will take place later this summer and into the fall semester.
- I’m exploring a manuscript guidelines refresh for authors. I’ll wait until we get feedback from DOAJ on what’s needed on our website before starting this process.
- As mentioned earlier, I have been digging through some of the KU Press reports to collect year-by-year data on journal statistics, such as submissions, completed reviews, time to acceptance, average review time, etc. I have all the data from 2019 (transition to KU Press) to current, but I’ll wait until 2023 has closed before releasing everything.
- I’ll look to add an Associate Editor in the fall semester.
- I’m cautiously exploring a special issue topic for 2025. We’ll want assurances that potential guest editors have a timely topic, assurances of sticking to deadlines, and it fits within our purpose.
I know it’s a long e-mail, so I appreciate those of you who stuck through this update to the end. Again, I really appreciate the leadership of the past editors and support provided by the editorial board members since the journal’s inception. We hope these changes will position the journal for further, great success moving forward.
