Submissions

Author Guidelines

AUTHORSHIP, RESPONSIBILITY AND ORIGINALITY

The authorship of an article must be exclusively reserved for researchers that contributed in a substantial manner to its content, development and writing of the manuscript and that accept responsibility for its content. In order to be attributed authorship, researchers must obey all the ICMJE and APA criteria, namely: substantial contribution to the formulation of a research problem, design of the research methodology, data collection, statistical analysis and data interpretation; participation in the writing and critical review of the article, and approval of the final version of the manuscript's content to be submitted. The order of the authors in the manuscript must be agreed upon beforehand and must be accepted by all the authors. All those contributions that do not obey the criteria for authorship attribution can be specifically presented in the acknowledgement section.

The views and content of published material are the exclusive responsibility of their authors. The editors and the Desafio Singular Editions are not responsible for statements made and opinions expressed by contributors. These views and content of published material are of the exclusive responsibility of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or the Publisher.

It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain written authorization for the reproduction of material, graphics or photographs that had been previously published and that will appear again in the submitted article.

1. Ethical Behaviour

Legal and ethical principles must be honoured all along the process of research until the final result of writing and submitting a manuscript for publication. Besides the ethical behaviour in conducting research with human beings (if this is the case) according to the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must assert that they honoured the behavioural code and ethical aspects of scientific practice proposed by APA and ICMJE. Such statement must be asserted in a written document to be attached to the letter of submission.

The research protocol must be, if possible, submitted prior to approval by an ethics committee on research, and a copy of the agreement must also be attached to the letter of submission. In the impossibility of submission of the research protocol, the authors must denote the reasons why not.

2. Conflicts of interest

Scientific practice must honour the necessary exemption in the presentation of results and conclusions with immunity from any obligation or duty. Personal relationships or economic/commercial involvement could introduce a potential conflict of interest. As such, authors must precisely and clearly express all their relations and financial support acquired from individuals, entities or institutions. Such a statement will be published as part of the article. All the authors must explicit in a proper application form to be attached to the letter of submission the presence or the absence of a conflict of interest.

Conflict of interest itself does not constitute a reason for the rejection of the manuscript since such conflict is clearly stated.

3. Sources of financial support

Authors must declare external sources of financing and scholarships that supported the development of their research, referring to the particular author getting the support and the complete reference to the project being supported. Such information will be part of the published article.

MANUSCRIPT STRUCTURE AND PREPARATION

Manuscripts must be submitted in digital formatting and prepared using the word processor Microsoft Word no older than 97/03. Manuscripts must be written in paper format A4 with 2.5 cm margins, Times New Roman or Arial font size 12 with double line spacing. The pages must be numbered sequentially in the heading with right alignment. Authors are recommended to follow the template available here.

Manuscripts must be compulsorily organized in the following way:

First page/Title page: The first page (title page) must include a short, brief and relevant title (up to 40 characters), in English. It must also be referred to the type/section of the paper and, if it is the case, the sources of financing (complete reference to the project being supported).

Second page/Abstract: The second page will include again the title in English followed by a structured abstract not exceeding 200 words and up to six keywords. Keywords must be essential terms for the research presented, suitable for use in an index and acceptable as medical descriptors (MeSH) or descriptors in the Health Sciences (DeCS). Editorials do not require an Abstract.

Third page on: From page three of the body of the manuscript, it must appear according to the specific sections of each type of article. After the Reference section, attachments must appear separately on a new page according to the following order: footnotes, tables and figures. Images or photographs must be indicated as figures.

1. Article types/sections

Journal Motricidade publishes quantitative as well as qualitative studies. Authors must target their formulation according to one of the following formats: research article and review article.

Editorials are the editors' responsibility, and renowned researchers or academics may eventually be invited. Editorials are articles giving opinions or perspectives on a specific and contemporary scientific issue, on already published material in the journal Motricidade and on aspects related to the editorial process.

Original article: Original articles cover scientific reports, from original basic or clinical research, carried out on one or more of the areas covered by the journal Motricidade. Authors must, as often as possible, adopt an interdisciplinary perspective. Original articles must not exceed 40 references and must mandatorily include an Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusions and References. The Method section must be divided into Participants, Measures, Procedures and Statistical Analysis. The studies' limitations must be presented in the Discussion section. Original articles must represent an original and innovative contribution to the areas covered by the journal Motricidade.

Review Article: Review articles constitute works of critical analysis on the literature review carried out by researchers with a consolidated trajectory and recognition by their peers in the scientific community. Journal Motricidade favours the publication of review articles in a systematic review format or meta-analysis. As such, review articles must not exceed 50 references and must include the following mandatory chapters: Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, and References. In the Method chapter, authors must extensively, precisely and clearly express the databases consulted (sampling process), the inclusion/exclusion criteria of scientific articles (including representation by means of charts), the process of information analysis and systematic organization and the statistical method adopted (if this is the case). Those references included in the systematic review or meta-analysis must be identified using an asterisk in the reference chapter. Review articles will be mainly designed by invitation from journal Motricidade's editors or by authors with an H index over 5. Authors that are not included in these criteria may previously contact the editors by e-mail in order to suggest a review and submit an abstract on the review proposed, a rationale for the proposal, the method used and the main contributions it may bring to specialized literature. From its volume 8, the journal Motricidade will not publish articles based on literature reviews carried out in the context of dissertations and thesis.

Research Note: Research notes should be considered as discussion notes, where the author(s) can explore or expose new ideas, theoretical perspectives, research programs, or methodological approaches. Research notes do not have to follow the same section organization as an original or review article. However, research notes must bring a valuable contribution to the scientific-specific community, where the author(s) should highlight the new arguments or ways of thinking to Motricidade’s readers. Research Notes do not need an abstract.

Research notes are preferable between 3,000 and 4,000 words (over 4,000 may be accepted under certain conditions). Furthermore, Research Note author(s) should adhere to the submission instructions regarding Style guidelines. Research notes are reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and one or more Associate Editors. The editor-in-Chief or any member of the editorial team can address Research notes invitations.

2. Style guidelines

Journal Motricidade adopts the Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 7th edition) guidelines. Authors interested in publishing in the journal Motricidade must follow the appropriate guidelines and consider that disregard for these guidelines itself constitute reason enough for the manuscript to be rejected.

The citation of authors in the text must respect the logical author-date, including surname and year of publication. When the reference appears during text presentation the publication year must only be included in parentheses. When two or more references appear in parentheses, author's names must appear in alphabetical order.

In order to facilitate the appropriate author's citations, one may consult the following table.

When using abbreviations, the authors must follow accepted international standards. The first time a usual term appears in the text, its abbreviation must appear in parentheses.

Capital letters must appear in the following situations: titles, subheadings and sections of the manuscript; in the first word of each phrase and caption; for scales' names and measuring instruments; for proper names and names of substances, medicines or associated elements; and in names followed by numbers.

3 Presentation of results

The presentation of results must be as complete as possible, allowing the readers to grasp the analysis carried out.

Symbols and units of measurement must comply with the International System of Units - SI. Statistical symbols must be presented in italics with the exception of Greek alphabetic characters and superscripts or subscripts. In presenting arithmetic operators (e.g. +, −, =, <, >), a space must be inserted after the symbol. Authors must be conscious of using the appropriate subtraction operator (−) and not the dash punctuation mark (-) instead.

A decimal point should be used as a decimal mark, and it is suggested that, in general, decimal values are presented containing two decimals.

Precise significance values (p) must be reported according to their accurate value (p= 0.008 and not p< 0.01) as well as the presentation of corresponding effect sizes.

Tables and figures must be identified using Arabic numerals and concise titles. Authors must indicate the specific location for tables and figures inside the text - “insert table number... about here” or “insert figure... about here”. Coloured materials must be avoided.

Tables and figures must represent a concise way of the main results presentation and must not repeat the results already in the text. Tables and figures may contain notes underneath presenting general, specific or probabilistic information. Specific notes must be designated through superscript lowercase letters, and probabilistic notes must be presented through asterisks (e.g. * p< 0.05, ** p< 0.01).

The table’s width must be 7.5 or 15.5 cm. In terms of figures, integral images inside the manuscript or in attachment will be accepted in the following formats: jpg, tif, png or gif. The resolution must be equal to or above 600 pixel and must be dimensioned between 7.5 and 15.5 cm. It is suggested that the preparation and formatting of figures/graphs are compatible with Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint. The impossibility of editing these files will lead to the loss of resolution or formatting different from the graphic style of the journal Motricidade with prejudice to the authors.

Tables and figures must obey rules of general formatting, being accepted font size not smaller than 8.

4. References

Journal Motricidade adopts APA's (7^th edition) guidelines for formatting references. Style guidelines require the organized presentation of a specific set of details, and it is mandatory the citation of the complete names of the scientific periodicals. Only references cited along the manuscript must appear in this chapter. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the information presented in the reference list.

If there is one, authors must provide the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of references at the end of each reference.

For a detailed description of the various presentation formatting of differing types of references, authors are advised to refer to the APA Manual. In order to facilitate the correct citation of references, some examples are provided below:

Article in scientific periodical without DOI:

Matthews, C. E., Freedson, P. S., Hebert, J. R., Stanek, E. J., Merriam, P. A., & Ockene, I. S. (2000). Comparing physical activity assessment methods in the Seasonal Variation of Blood Cholesterol Study. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 32(5), 976-984.

Article in a scientific periodical with DOI:

Child, R. B., Wilkinson, D. M., & Fallowfield, J. L. (2000). Effects of a training taper on tissue damage indices, serum antioxidant capacity and half-marathon running performance. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 21(5), 325-331. doi: 10.1055/s-2000-3778

Article in a exclusively digital scientific periodical  (without page number) DOI:

Bauman, A., Bull, F., Chey, T., Craig, C. L., Ainsworth, B. E., & Sallis, J. F. (2009). The international prevalence study on physical activity: Results from 20 countries. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 6(1). doi: 10.1186/1479-5868-6-21

Article in a scientific periodical with more than seven authors:

Hollander, A. P., De Groot, G., van Ingen Schenau, G. J., Toussaint, H. M., De Best, H., Peeters, W., … Schreurs, A. W. (1986). Measurement of active drag during crawl stroke swimming. Journal of Sports Sciences, 4(1), 21-30.

Book:

Noakes, T., & Granger, S. (2003). Running injuries: How to prevent and overcome them (3ª ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Book with editors:

Polidoro, R. J. (Ed.). (2000). Sport and physical activity in the modern world. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Book chapter:

Thomas, K. T., Gallagher, J. D., & Thomas, J. R. (2001). Motor development and skill acquisition during childhood and adolescence. In R. N. Singer, H. A. Hausenblas, & C. M. Janelle (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (2ª ed., pp. 20-52). New York, NY: Wiley & Sons.

Ph.D. Thesis:

Tucher, G. (2015). Functional performance test for competitive water polo players: measure validity, reliability and sensitivity (Doctoral Thesis in Sports Sciences). University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real.

Master Dissertation:

Cordovil, D. (2017). Methodology for the assessment of perceived vs real aquatic competence: “Know to swim” application to Portuguese schools at Azorean Islands (Master Dissertation in Teaching Physical Education in Basic and Secondary School). University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real.