Submissions

Author Guidelines

Preparation of manuscripts

The manuscript must be written in English. The guideline for the preparation of manuscripts is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

An article must be prepared using the Article Template and submitted in a single file in MS WORD format. A doctoral thesis abstract must be prepared using the Doctoral Thesis Abstract Template and submitted in a single file in MS WORD format. Manuscripts must be typed using the appropriate template, with 2 cm margin on the left and 1 cm on the right, 3 cm margin at the top and 2 cm margin at the bottom of the page. Pages should be numbered in the bottom-center beginning with the title page numbered as page 1.  Line numbering should be switched on.

All manuscripts must be submitted online at https://journals.lsu.lt/baltic-journal-of-sport-health. The article should be submitted together with the supplements:

• Supplement 1. Authors' copyright statement for submitted articles proving that the article submitted is original and not previously published.
• Supplement 2. Cover Letter with the title of the article, the authors’ names and surnames, affiliations and e-mails, research interests, scientific degrees and titles, ORCID iDs.

If assistance is needed, contact zurnalas@lsu.lt.

The beginning of the article should contain the title of the article; the authors’ names and surnames and their institutional affiliations (indicating the city and the country); telephone and e-mail address for the corresponding author.

The abstract (250 words), revealing the scientific problem and providing the major data of the research, should be included after the title and the affiliations. It must be structured into the following sections: Background. Methods. Results. Conclusion. Keywords (from 3 to 5 informative words and/or phrases) should not duplicate words in the title.

After the abstract, the full text of the manuscript should begin. It should be structured as follows:

Introduction. It should contain a clear statement of the problem of the research, the extent of its solution, the new arguments for its solution (for theoretical papers), most important papers on the subject, the aim, the object and the original hypothesis of the study.

Methods. In this part the choice of specific methods of the research should be grounded. The research participants, methods, apparatus and procedures should be identified in sufficient detail. If the methods of the research used are not well known and widely recognized the reasons for the choice of a particular method should be stated. References should be given for all non-standard methods used. Appropriate statistical analysis should be performed based upon the experimental design carried out. It is necessary to indicate the methods of mathematical statistics applied (statistical reliability, statistical power, confidence interval, effect size), and to explain the estimation of the sample size. Information that will identify human subjects must not be included. Research involving human subjects should be carried out following the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Results. The findings of the study should be presented concisely, consistently and logically, not repeating the chosen methods. The statistical significance and statistical power of the finding should be denoted.

Discussion. At the beginning of the discussion section the authors should provide major original research statements that are supported by the data. We recommend structuring the discussion of the findings into subsections (each original research finding should be discussed in a different subsection). The data and the conclusions of the research are compared to the data obtained by other researchers evaluating their similarities and differences. Authors should emphasize the original and important features of the study and avoid repeating all the data presented within the Results section.

Conclusions. The conclusions provided should be formulated clearly and logically avoiding excessive verbiage. The most important requirement for the research conclusions is their originality in the world. It is advisable to indicate the further perspectives of the research.

Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used: “Conceptualisation, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y., and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualisation, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.” Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.

Funding: Please add: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by NAME OF FUNDER, grant number XXX”.

Informed Consent Statement: Any research article describing a study involving humans should contain one of these statements: “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study” OR “Patient consent was waived due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification)”. For studies not involving humans, please indicate “Not applicable”.

Acknowledgements: All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance, or proofreading the article, etc.).

Conflicts of Interest: Declare conflicts of interest or state “The authors declare no conflict of interest”.

References. Only published materials (with the exception of dissertations) and sources referred to in the text of the article should be included in the list of references. References should be consistent with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

All abbreviations should be explained in parentheses what they stand for on their first occurrence in the text. Non-standard special abbreviations and symbols need only to be defined at first mention. The results of all measurements and symbols for all physical units should be those of the System International (SI) Units. In the text of the article all numbers up to ten are to be written in words and all numbers starting from eleven on – in Arabic figures.

Every table should have a short subtitle with a sequential number given above the table (the tables are numbered in the same sequence as that of references given in the text). All explanations should be in the text of the article or in a short note added to the table. The symbols and abbreviations given in the tables should coincide with the ones used in the text. The location of the table should be indicated in the text, e.g. [Insert Table 1 here].

All figures are to be numbered consecutively giving the sequential number in Arabic numerals, e.g. Figure 1. The location of the figure should be indicated the text, e.g. [Insert Figure 1 here]. The figures should be presented in open file formats so that they could be edited.

In-text references should be cited as follows: Brown (2011) investigated… or: An investigation (Brown, 1991) found …. References cited in the text with two authors should list both names: Wright and Mander (2002) found…; Reviews of research on sport and reading (Wright & Morgan, 2001) have concluded… References cited in the text with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name (even the first citation).

In the reference section, references should be listed in alphabetical order taking account of the first author. First the references in Latin characters are given, then – in Russian (Cyrillic) characters. Only the first 19 names, an ellipsis, and the last name should be included when the work contains 21 or more authors. In the case when there are several references of the same author published at the same year, they must be marked by letters, e.g. 2001a, 2001b, etc. in the list of references and in the article, too.

If there is a DOI (digital object identifier) number, then include that.  Begin the DOI number with https://doi.org (according to the latest publication of the APA Style Guide to Electronic Resources). If the resource was found online and does not have a DOI, end the reference with the precise URL needed to access the resource.

Examples:

Books (print and online):

Author, A. A. (year). Title of work (x ed., Vol. x).  Publisher. DOI or URL

Chapter in an edited book:

Author, A. (year). Title of the book chapter. In A. A. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (x ed., pp. #–#). Publisher. DOI or URL

Journal and newspaper articles (print and online)

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (year). Title of the article. Name of the Periodical, volume number(issue number), pp. #–#. DOI

These are the most common examples cited. More examples can be found in the submission template. Furthermore, for a complete list of examples please consult Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.