New Issue & Journal Updates – Journal of Intercollegiate Sport

2024-02-19

JIS Community,

I hope everyone is having a great spring semester. We have lots of new information to provide to our community.

First, I am happy to announce that our first issue of the 2024 year has now been published. We’ve had a growing number and quality of submissions to JIS, which is showcased by the excellent and diverse set of topics in our new issue.

New Issue

Examining the framing of mental health in Division I student-athlete handbooks
David Cassilo, Jimmy Sanderson

Examining Faculty Perspectives on the Role and Value of Intercollegiate Athletics
Molly Harry, Daniel Springer

Good student-athlete representation
Vicki Schull, Lisa A. Kihl 

“We are the minority”: Latinx student-athletes experiences within their Predominantly White Institutions
Melody Alanis, George B. Cunningham, Natasha T. Brison

Identity Dynamics in Collegiate Olympic Athletes Post-Tokyo 2020: A Pre-Post Study
Grace Kazmierski-Davie, Khalid Ballouli

Reframing the Service Environment in Collegiate Sport: A Transformative Sport Service Research Approach
Yiqi Yang, Erika Gray, Keita Kinoshita, Eric MacIntosh

Journal Updates

I wanted to provide everyone with an update on journal activities, as we have stayed active in the second half of 2023. Lots of great nuggets!

  • New Associate Editor
  • Editorial Board Changes
  • DOAJ
  • Web of Science
  • Journal Data
  • Future Plans

New Associate Editor - Pleased to announce that Dr. Elizabeth Taylor (Temple University) has joined the journal as Associate Editor. She has been an EOB member for some years and has published multiple times at JIS. I have collaborated with Dr. Taylor many times in the past, so I fully expect a strong rapport with her throughout her term and us maintaining the aggressive timeline set last year.

Editorial Board Changes - Several editorial board changes were made last year. This year, some smaller changes were made based on excellent guest reviews and submission trends. We have added Dominque Kropp (Xavier University) and Nataliya Bredikhina (University of Kansas) to the board. There is a need for an extra 1-3 board members. Of particular interest are individuals who have expertise in athletic identity, NIL, and academics. If you are interested in being a guest reviewer, please e-mail me (matt.huml@uc.edu) and provide some details on your research expertise. Happy to support opportunities for doctoral students as well, as we already use them as our review team and the editorial staff provides them further feedback on their review.

DOAJ - Our journal was approved and listed on the Directory of Open-Access Journal repository. This included revisions and review of our submission guidelines and author permissions for published papers. This is an important component for our pledge towards open access and provides us with an important distinction on author control and journal accessibility.

Web of Science - We are in the beginning stages of being listed on Web of Science. The long-term goal is to achieve an impact factor and make the journal more attractive to researchers and more valuable to authors in their tenure, promotion, or merit reviews. We will try to provide more updates later this year.

Journal Data- If you are still reading at this point, let’s nerd out for a moment and talk about journal data. First, JIS is the 4th most downloaded journal with the KU Press journal portfolio (out of 56). Next, we set several (good!) records this past year; the 2023 year had (a) the most submissions received, shortest timeframe to first decision, total completed reviews, shortest average timeframe of completed review, shortest days to accept, and shortest days to reject. Here is the breakdown of journal data:

2023 Journal Data

Submissions Received: 63 (highest ever, up 21% from last year)
Acceptance Rate: 26% (JIS historical acceptance rate is 28%)
Days to First Decision: 4 (lowest ever, down 50%)
Completed Reviews: 125 (highest ever, up 56% from last year)
Articles Published: 16 (second highest since KU Press, up 60% from last year)

Days to Accept: 175 (shortest timeframe ever, down 30% from last year)
Days to Reject: 38 (shortest timeframe ever, down 62% from last year)

Average Days for Completed Review: 24.53 (shortest timeframe ever, down 36% from last year)

I plan on tracking these data points every year to maintain journal health and identify areas that need to be improved. Thanks to our EOB, guest reviewers, authors, and KU Press staff for helping us make big strides in performance this past year.

Future Plans -Here are a few things being planned for the future:

  • We’ve been told that website changes will be upcoming. I believe these website changes will alter how the JIS website looks when it’s rolled out, but this is still TBD.
  • The journal will consider a 2025 special issue. If you have a topic, please reach out to us.
    • It will be important for the journal to have special issue editors that will maintain the quick response rate set in 2023 and maintain consistent communication between submitting authors, reviewers, and the JIS
  • Changes to the manuscript guidelines. This summer we are going to review all manuscript guidelines and do a full revamp, if necessary. If you have feedback on what you would like to see or how we can do things differently, we want to hear from you!