The goal of JASM is to be a valuable addition to the practical, specialist literature by focusing on empirical results and conceptual work that can inform sport industry practice. Accordingly, only manuscripts that make a strong contribution to the sport industry based on practical, conceptual/empirical grounding will be considered for publication.
Manuscripts may address a wide range of issues in sport management but must be presented concisely in order to quickly communicate important pieces of new and innovative research. For example, theoretical manuscripts could be presented as a thought-provoking precursor to a fully developed manuscript to be submitted to elsewhere. Similarly, an experimental or empirical manuscript should offer robust, thorough, and complete results, but should be presented in a digestible, concise, and practical tone.
In order to meet the applied focus of the journal, manuscripts must provide readers a medium to digest a large amount of material in a usable form. The following are important aspects of this concise format:
- Manuscripts must be kept to approximately 3,000 words (equivalent to approximately 15-16 pages, double spaced, 12pt, Times New Roman font) including references, tables, figures, and illustrations.
- Abstracts should not exceed 100 words and 3-5 keywords should be included after the abstract to guide the reader.
- Review of literature sections should be brief and perhaps even included in the manuscript preamble (1-1.5 page maximum). Authors should only cite the most relevant works guiding/supporting the submitted manuscript (e.g., “see X, Y, and Z for a complete review” is a highly encouraged manner to present this material). Authors should offer succinct objectives of the work and adequate background that avoids a detailed literature survey or a summary of prior results.
- Authors should try, when possible, to avoid lengthy statistical dialogue, but instead (as above) cite works that readers can reference for a complete review of the analytic technique employed. We encourage robust statistical analyses but results presentations should be granular, explanatory, digestible, and practically focused.
- Implications for the research should be presented in a manner consistent with the practical scope of JASM. All submitted manuscripts must contain an implications section for initial review consideration.
- Reference pages should adhere to the guidelines included in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: 6th Edition. Authors are responsible for precise execution of this requirement. Please note that periods after authors’ initials require ONE space before the next initial (Ex: Walker, M. B.), and that ONE space is to be used after each period (EX: Andrew, D. P. S. (2012). The study of…).
Prose Guide for Authors
*Note: Section titles do not have to be consistent with those presented below.
I. Research Problem(s) Addressed: Very clearly and concisely state the purpose of the manuscript and what it examined. A concise and focused preamble should be wrapped around an equally concise and focused purpose statement.
Example: The purpose of this manuscript was to examine the attitudes of NCAA Division I men’s intercollegiate basketball season ticket holders regarding seat assessment fees.
a. State the importance of the issue(s) contained in the manuscript and why they are worthy of the practitioner’s time and attention. Alternatively, if the study is more theoretical/conceptual in nature, this information should describe why the issue being discussed is worthy of future researcher attention.
Example: This research contains timely information that reveals a significant number of season ticket holders surveyed were unhappy with the additional assessment fees that came with new arena construction and/or retrofitting/redevelopment. The research also revealed that a significant number of the season ticket holders were willing to pay such fees if guaranteed the first rights of refusal to purchase tickets, regardless of their levels of understanding of and/or agreement with the purpose of the fee.
b. Identify the intended audience/stakeholder group(s) the study was designed to inform. This information should identify any gaps in the literature, or pressing need for the study in sport and sport-related disciplines.
Example: This article is likely useful to intercollegiate athletics department personnel and other major stakeholders of intercollegiate athletics, particularly those involved with or considering capital campaigns that include new facility development, facility retrofitting, reseating, or ticket price adjustments. Other sport managers at varying levels of sport who are involved with revenue generation through seating will also find this article useful.
II. Background, Literature Review, and/or Framework: Provide a detailed version of item “b” above that clearly explains the important facets and background of the issues examined in the manuscript. It should resemble an extremely shortened version of the literature review including only references that are so germane to the manuscript they cannot be ignored. If utilized, theoretical frameworks should also be presented in this section but should be tightly woven into the related/core literature. As stated above, this section should be 1-1.5 pages.
III. Method: Clearly explain what you measured and how you measured it. While this section should be concise, it should also be detailed enough to assist future scholars with both replication and extension of the presented work. If the manuscript is theoretical/conceptual in nature, this section can be used to offer testable propositions, or clearly explain how the concept(s) being discussed might be applied to sport and sport-related organizations.
IV. Results: In very simplistic language, explain everything that the study found or did not find. Bring as little statistical jargon into this section as possible (with the exceptions of “significant” and “non-significant” findings and explanations regarding the size of the significant effects). Instead, explain the results/major logical points of the study in everyday terms. Effect sizes or the amount of explained variance, while necessary, should be presented in practical easy to understand language.
V. Discussion and Implications: Tell why the findings/conclusions of this study matter, state how things should or should not be done differently as a result of the study, and underscore the importance of the research to practitioners. Moreover, what constructive things can readers learn from the results? Simply, answer/amplify the “so what” question. Explain who can use this manuscript and how the practical implications are useful for those in the field. If the manuscript is theoretical/conceptual in nature, clear prescriptions for future research should be offered (i.e., in the form of an agenda presentation, but in everyday language). Beyond restating what is contained in the preamble, this information should be significantly more focused on the feedback loop to the theory and/or concepts under investigation.
Online Submission Instructions
Fees are not required for submission or publication in Journal of Applied Sport Management.
To submit a manuscript to Journal of Applied Sport Management (JASM), the author must have an account with TRACE.
Submission Preparation Checklist As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor). The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.Publication Ethics Statement
The Journal of Applied Sport Management (JASM) is committed to upholding the highest ethical standards for publication. As such, JASM strives to adhere to the publication guidelines outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which can be found at https://publicationethics.org.