Ethical policy and procedures

Trends in Sport Sciences (TSS) is a journal published by the University of Physical Education in Poznań in collaboration with the Termedia Publishing House. We adhere to ethical conduct standards at all stages of the publishing process. We strictly follow the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME),These associations establish standards and provide guidelines for best practices to ensure that our work meets the highest standards. Authors and editors are required to adhere to ethical principles regarding the publication of research results. In accordance with our editorial policy, we cannot accept manuscripts that do not comply with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki Declaration of Helsinki for publication.

AUTHORS' DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Authors are required to prepare and submit their articles in accordance with the requirements specified by the TSS editorial board. They must also submit a statement confirming that the content is original, that they respect third-party copyrights, that there is no conflict of interest, and that they obtained permission to use content from other sources. They agree to participate in the peer review process. They must submit any necessary amendments or corrections and provide a list of cited references.
Authors are responsible for disclosing all forms of potential conflicts of interest, including but not limited to professional, financial, and personal ties that could affect the objectivity of their work or be perceived as influencing it.
Authors may withdraw their article at any time prior to its acceptance for publication by submitting a statement through the journal’s electronic submission system.

CRITERIA FOR AUTHORSHIP AND CONTRIBUTION TO A PUBLICATION
Termedia Publishing House adheres to the standards recommended by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) regarding criteria for authorship and authors' contribution to publications. Detailed information on these criteria can be found here: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/discussion-document/authorship.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS
Articles are recommended for publication through a double-blind peer review process and are published under an open-access model. Reviewers submit their reviews through the online submission system, providing their critical feedback and comments on the article in question. All evaluations and findings in the review process should be objective. Reviewers must not have a conflict of interest and must submit an appropriate declaration before beginning the review. When justified, reviewers should identify relevant published works that have not been cited in the manuscript. The articles they review must be treated as confidential prior to publication.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS
Editors are responsible for deciding which articles to accept for publication. When carrying out these duties, editors act in a balanced, objective, and fair manner. They do not discriminate based on the authors’ gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, or ethnic or geographic origin.
If the editorial board suspects that the manuscript involves improper or unethical research procedures, it will ask the authors to submit detailed information confirming that the research protocol has been approved by an ethics committee for clinical research.

The publisher and editors are committed to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies as needed.

PLAGIARISM POLICIES
Plagiarism is the act of using other people’s words, tables, graphics, or ideas and presenting them as one’s own. This type of behavior is considered a form of fraud. Plagiarism can take various forms, ranging from deliberately duplicating others’ work for academic gain to accidentally copying content from a source without obtaining the copyright holder’s permission or without properly citing the source.
The editorial board will not accept articles involving ghostwriting or guest authorship and will disclose all such practices, particularly instances of research misconduct (violation or undermining of the ethical principles that guide scientific research) and plagiarism. Authors accept that the submitted manuscript may be checked for plagiarism in relation to previously published works. Manuscripts found to contain plagiarism are subject to sanctions, including the immediate rejection of the submitted manuscript or published article. Other sanctions include a ban on submitting further works and notification of the relevant authorities at the institutions or universities where the authors are employed.

POLICIES REGARDING ADVERTISEMENTS
All advertisements must be approved by the TSS owner, publisher or Editor-in-Chief. Advertisements are in a separate section to the content. Advertising in the TSS does not constitute a guarantee or endorsement of the product, service or company in question, nor of the claims made in the advertisement by the publisher, editors or TSS owner. Advertising is clearly distinguished from editorial content. All advertisements should identify the advertiser by trademark or signature. The publisher is not responsible for any damages, including, but not limited to, actual, direct, incidental or consequential damages.

POLICIES FOR RESEARCH ON HUMAN AND VULNERABLE POPULATIONS
Authors should adhere to the principles set out in the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki (www.wma.net). The manuscript must include a statement confirming that the study has been approved by the relevant institutional review boards or ethics committees, and that all study participants have provided informed consent. Data that could identify study participants—including patients’ full names, initials, or hospital identification numbers—must not be published.
Particularly vulnerable groups (such as children) require special protection during research. Researchers must take into account additional ethical considerations arising from working with potentially vulnerable individuals. In cases where research involves potentially vulnerable groups, such as children, older adults or adults with learning disabilities, every effort must be made to obtain informed consent that has been actively provided by the participants or their legal representatives.

CLINICAL TRIALS
Trends in Sport Sciences is published in accordance with the policies and recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The ICMJE requires that all medical journal editors mandate registration of clinical trials in a public registry before the first patient is enrolled, as a prerequisite for publishing an article. The ICMJE defines a clinical trial as a research project that prospectively assigns people, or groups of people, to an intervention—with or without concurrent comparison or control groups—to study the relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome. Examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes are any biomedical or health-related measures obtained from patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events.
The ICMJE accepts registration in any registry that is a primary register of the WHO ICTRP and includes the minimum 24-item trial registration data set, or registration in ClinicalTrials.gov, a WHO ICTRP data provider.
In accordance with the ICMJE recommendations, the editors of Trends in Sport Sciences require authors to provide the following information regarding the registered study when submitting an article for publication: the name of the registry, main ID, public title, and date of registration. The editors verify the data provided by the authors.
More information can be found here: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html.

Source: ICMJE, Clinical Trials, https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) POLICIES
At the time of submission, the TSS requires authors to disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies, such as large language models (LLMs), chatbots, or image creators, in producing the submitted work. Authors who used such technology must describe how they used it. For instance, if AI was used for writing assistance, this should be described in the acknowledgment section. If AI was used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation, describe this use in the Methods section. Chatbots should not be listed as authors because they cannot be held responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work; these responsibilities are required for authorship. Therefore, humans are responsible for any submitted material that includes the use of AI-assisted technologies. Since AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that may be incorrect, incomplete, or biased, authors should carefully review and edit the resulting text. Authors must declare that their paper is free of plagiarism, including text and images produced by AI. Humans must ensure that all quoted material is appropriately attributed and includes full citations.

JOURNAL POLICIES ON CORRECTIONS AND RETRACTIONS
To address errors or ethical concerns that arise after publication, Trends in Sport Sciences follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' guidelines for corrections and retractions.

Post-Publication Corrections/Errata
Corrections address errors that do not invalidate an article's findings, but that may affect its clarity, completeness, or accuracy. These include:
• mistakes introduced during the journal's production process, such as typographical or formatting errors. These errors do not affect the scientific integrity of the work;
• errors identified by the authors, such as mistakes in data or analysis, which may impact the scientific interpretation of the work.
Errata are published to correct or add text or information that appears anywhere within an earlier published article. Errata are labeled and published in citable form; the errata appear on a numbered page in an issue of the TSS.

Corrections/Errata Process
Anyone involved with TSS, including the authors, reviewers, readers, academic or institutional sponsors, editors, or publishers, can report an error. After reviewing the report, TSS publishes an erratum and ensures that it is linked to the original article. The erratum notice specifies the nature of the error and the changes made, in adherence to COPE guidelines for transparency.

Retractions
A retraction is an official notice informing readers that a published paper contains significant flaws or errors in content or data, rendering the findings and conclusions unreliable, and should no longer be regarded as part of the scientific literature. In order to preserve the integrity of the scientific record, a retracted paper is not removed from the journal, but it is clearly identified as such, and a notice of retraction is issued. Papers may be retracted in the following circumstances:
• Unreliable findings: The data or conclusions are unreliable due to significant errors (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error) or misconduct (e.g., fabrication or falsification of data).
• Plagiarism: The article contains content copied from other works without proper attribution.
• Redundant Publication: The article was published without proper acknowledgment, permission, or justification.
• Unauthorized Use of Data: The publication includes material or data without the necessary authorization.
• Copyright or Legal Violations: This includes issues such as copyright infringement, defamation, and privacy violations.
• Unethical Research: The research did not adhere to ethical standards, such as a lack of informed consent or ethical approval.
• Compromised Peer Review: The publication resulted from a manipulated or compromised peer review process.
• Undisclosed conflicts of interest: The authors failed to disclose significant competing interests that could unduly influence the interpretations or recommendations of the work.

Retraction Process
Errors or unethical conduct can be reported to TSS by authors, reviewers, readers, academic or institutional sponsors, editors, or publishers. After review, the journal publishes retractions and ensures they are clearly linked to the original article.
A retraction notice is promptly published on the journal’s website and made freely available to all readers. It is linked to the retracted paper and contains at least the following information:
• clear identification of the retracted paper by title and author(s) in the retraction heading,
• the date of retraction;
• the party responsible for the decision to retract the paper (the author(s) or the editors/publisher),
• the reason(s) for retraction are stated objectively and in sufficient detail.
For further information and guidance on retractions, authors and readers are advised to refer to the COPE Retraction Guidelines.

INFORMED CONSENT POLICY
All individuals have rights that cannot be infringed upon. Participants in studies have the right to decide what happens to their personal data, what they said during the study, and any photographs taken. This is especially true for images of vulnerable people, such as minors, patients, and refugees. In many instances authors must obtain written consent before including images. Identifying details such as names, dates of birth, identity numbers, and biometric characteristics (e.g., facial features) of participants should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scholarly purposes and the participant (or parent/guardian if the participant is a minor, or legal representative if the participant is incapable) has given written informed consent for publication. Under certain circumstances, consent is not required as long as the information is anonymized and the submission does not include images that could identify the person.
Informed consent for publication should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of participants does not adequately protect anonymity.
If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic profiles, authors should ensure that the alterations do not distort the meaning.
There are exceptions where it is not necessary to obtain consent:
• Images such as X-rays, laparoscopic images, ultrasound images, brain scans, and pathology slides, unless there is a concern about identifying information. In this case, authors should ensure that consent is obtained.
• If images are reused from prior publications, the publisher will assume that the prior publication obtained the relevant consent information. Authors should provide the appropriate attribution for republished images.

DATA SHARING POLICY
Trends in Sport Sciences is an open-access journal with no requirements or restrictions.
The journal is committed to a more open research landscape and facilitates faster and more effective research discovery by enabling the reproducibility and verification of data, methodology, and reporting standards. We encourage all authors of articles published in our journal to share their research data, including raw and processed data, algorithms, protocols, and methods.
All authors willing to share their data have the opportunity to do so, and the data is made available in the form of supplementary materials.

POLICY CONCERNING THE PUBLICATION OF SPECIAL THEMATIC ISSUES
Special issues of TSS are thematic and undergo the same peer review process as other issues. The journal’s editorial board exercises editorial oversight of special issues.