About the Journal
Journal of Medicine, Exercise and Health Science is an international, English-language academic journal to be established in Canada. It focuses on medicine and health sciences, with a distinctive emphasis on exercise science, sports medicine, rehabilitation, sports nutrition, physical activity, and population health.
The journal publishes high-quality original research and reviews across clinical medicine, exercise-based interventions, rehabilitation, nutrition, and public health. It promotes the translation of scientific evidence into clinical practice, rehabilitation strategies, and health promotion.
All submissions must be written in English and meet high standards of scientific rigor, methodological quality, and research ethics.
1. Research Ethics and Publication Ethics
The journal takes academic integrity, research ethics, and publication ethics seriously. All authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to follow the ethical principles applicable to medical and health science journals and to protect the rights of research participants, the authenticity of data, the fairness of peer review, and the credibility of scholarly publishing.
1.1 Human Research Ethics
All research involving human participants, patients, athletes, healthy individuals, students, older adults, children and adolescents, special populations, human tissues, biological samples, personal health data, medical images, exercise performance data, or identifiable personal information must receive approval from an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review board before the study begins.
The manuscript must clearly state:
- The name of the ethics committee or institutional review board;
- The ethics approval number;
- The method of obtaining informed consent;
- Measures taken to protect participant privacy;
- Whether the study complied with relevant international ethical principles and applicable local laws and regulations.
For studies involving minors, older adults, persons with disabilities, patients, athletes, or other potentially dependent or vulnerable populations, authors should describe the additional protection measures taken to ensure voluntariness, informed participation, the right to withdraw, and privacy protection.
If a study was exempted from ethics approval according to local regulations, authors must provide an exemption statement from the relevant ethics committee, institutional review body, or administrative authority and explain the reason for exemption in the manuscript.
1.2 Informed Consent
Studies involving human participants must obtain informed consent from the participants themselves or their legal guardians. Informed consent should include the purpose of the study, research procedures, potential risks, possible benefits, data use, privacy protection, and the right to withdraw.
For manuscripts containing identifiable personal information, clinical images, athlete photographs, video screenshots, medical images, or case details, authors must obtain permission for publication. Even if the material has been anonymized, explicit publication consent should be obtained if the individual may still be identifiable.
1.3 Clinical Trial Registration
Manuscripts reporting clinical trials, exercise intervention trials, rehabilitation intervention trials, nutrition intervention trials, or other prospective intervention studies should be registered in a publicly accessible clinical trial registry before the study begins.
The manuscript should provide the registry name, registration number, and registration date.
If a clinical or intervention study was not prospectively registered, authors should explain the reason. The editorial office will decide whether the manuscript can be sent for peer review based on the nature of the study, ethical risk, and transparency requirements.
1.4 Animal Research Ethics
Animal studies must comply with animal welfare and laboratory animal ethics requirements and must be approved by an appropriate animal ethics committee. The manuscript should state the ethics approval body, approval number, animal source, housing conditions, experimental procedures, anesthesia or analgesia measures, and humane endpoints.
Authors should follow the principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement wherever possible to reduce animal suffering and unnecessary animal use.
1.5 Data Authenticity and Traceability
Authors must ensure that all research data are authentic, complete, accurate, and traceable. The editorial office reserves the right to request original data, study protocols, ethics approval documents, statistical codes, original image files, or other supporting materials during peer review, revision, or after publication.
Data fabrication, data falsification, selective reporting, concealment of unfavorable results, inappropriate deletion of outliers, image manipulation, or fabrication of research procedures constitutes serious academic misconduct. If such misconduct is confirmed, the editorial office may reject the manuscript, retract the article, issue a correction, or notify the authors’ institution.
1.6 Duplicate Publication and Duplicate Submission
Manuscripts submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by another journal and must not have been published elsewhere in substantially the same form, including in journals, conference proceedings, books, or online publication platforms.
If the manuscript overlaps with any published, submitted, or in-preparation work by the authors in terms of data, samples, methods, figures, tables, or text, the authors must disclose this at submission and provide the relevant documents for editorial assessment.
Concealed duplicate publication, salami publication, or duplicate submission will be treated as academic misconduct.
1.7 Plagiarism and Text Recycling
Authors must ensure that the manuscript is original and does not involve plagiarism, inappropriate use of others’ text, data, figures, ideas, study designs, or unpublished materials. When using the work of others, authors must provide accurate citations.
The journal may use text similarity detection tools to screen submitted manuscripts. Similarity percentage alone is not the sole criterion for editorial decision-making. The editorial office will consider the nature, source, extent, and academic impact of the overlap. Manuscripts involving serious plagiarism or inappropriate reuse of the authors’ own published work will be rejected.
1.8 Authorship and Author Contributions
Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial academic contributions to the conception or design of the study, acquisition of data, data analysis, interpretation of results, manuscript drafting, or critical revision of important intellectual content.
Individuals who only provide funding, administrative support, general supervision, patient recruitment, data collection assistance, or language editing should not normally be listed as authors, but may be acknowledged where appropriate.
The journal recommends that manuscripts include an author contribution statement specifying each author’s role in study design, data collection, statistical analysis, manuscript writing, revision, and final approval.
1.9 Conflicts of Interest
All authors must disclose any conflicts of interest that could influence the study design, data interpretation, manuscript preparation, or publication decision. Conflicts of interest may include, but are not limited to, financial interests, employment relationships, consulting roles, patent rights, product promotion, institutional relationships, academic competition, personal relationships, or other factors that may affect objectivity.
If there is no conflict of interest, authors should state:
“The authors declare no conflict of interest.”
1.10 Funding Statement
All sources of financial support, project funding, institutional support, or industry sponsorship should be disclosed, including the name of the funding body and grant number where applicable.
Authors should state whether the funder was involved in study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
1.11 Data Availability Statement
The journal encourages authors to share research data where this does not violate ethics approval, privacy protection, legal requirements, or informed consent. Authors should include a data availability statement explaining whether the data are publicly available, how they can be accessed, any restrictions on access, or the reason why they cannot be shared.
For personal health data, clinical information, athlete performance data, identifiable images, or sensitive population data, authors must strictly comply with privacy protection and data security requirements.
1.12 Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools
If artificial intelligence tools are used in manuscript preparation, language editing, data processing, statistical analysis, image generation, or literature organization, authors must clearly state the name of the tool, its purpose, and the scope of its use.
Artificial intelligence tools must not be listed as authors. Authors are fully responsible for the entire content of the manuscript, including text, data, figures, code, references, and conclusions generated or modified with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools. Authors must not use artificial intelligence tools to fabricate data, create false references, invent research procedures, or conceal academic misconduct.
1.13 Image and Data Processing Ethics
All image processing must follow the principles of authenticity and transparency. Authors must not alter the meaning of original data through selective cropping, splicing, enhancement, deletion, duplication, movement, or local modification.
If brightness, contrast, color, or size adjustments are made, such adjustments should be applied to the whole image and should not selectively alter key regions. If images are spliced, the boundaries should be clearly marked and explained in the figure legend.
1.14 Peer Review Ethics
The journal uses a peer review process consisting of editorial screening, double-blind external peer review, and final decision by the Editor-in-Chief. All peer review should be confidential, fair, independent, and professional.
Reviewers must keep manuscripts confidential and must not use manuscript content for personal research, teaching, commercial purposes, or any purpose unrelated to peer review. Reviewers should decline the review if they have a potential conflict of interest involving the authors, institutions, research topic, or competing work.
Reviewer comments should be based on academic quality, study design, methodological rigor, data reliability, interpretation of results, and journal suitability. Personal attacks, discriminatory language, or irrelevant comments are not acceptable.
1.15 Editorial Ethics
Editorial decisions should be based on academic quality, research ethics, originality, methodological rigor, and suitability for the journal. Editors should remain fair, independent, and confidential. Editorial judgment must not be influenced by authors’ nationality, gender, age, institution, academic rank, ethnicity, religion, political opinion, or personal relationships.
If academic misconduct, ethical risks, or conflicts of interest are identified during submission, peer review, or after publication, the editorial office may request clarification, supporting materials, manuscript revision, suspension of review, rejection, retraction, or notification of the relevant institution.
2. Acceptance, Proofreading, and Publication
After acceptance, authors must submit final files, complete language and format checks, and confirm page proofs according to the editorial office’s instructions. The corresponding author is responsible for checking the proofs and ensuring the accuracy of author names, affiliations, funding information, tables, figures, references, and main text.
At the proof stage, only typographical errors, spelling errors, and obvious factual errors should be corrected. Substantive changes to results, data analysis, author order, or core conclusions are not normally permitted. If major changes are necessary, authors must submit a written explanation and obtain approval from the editorial office.
3. Retractions, Corrections, and Post-Publication Discussion
The journal supports post-publication academic oversight. If a published article is found to involve data errors, ethical issues, duplicate publication, image problems, statistical errors, authorship disputes, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or other issues that may affect reliability, the editorial office will take appropriate action according to the nature of the problem. Such actions may include correction, expression of concern, retraction, or notification of the authors’ institution.
Authors who identify errors in their published articles should contact the editorial office promptly and request a correction or retraction where appropriate. Readers, reviewers, or other researchers may also submit academic concerns about published articles to the editorial office.
4. Copyright and Publication License
Upon acceptance, authors must complete copyright or publication license documents according to the journal’s policy. Specific copyright policies, open access agreements, and article use licenses will be determined by the journal’s publication policy.
Authors are responsible for ensuring that any third-party images, scales, questionnaires, tables, databases, software, or other materials used in the manuscript have been properly authorized or used in accordance with applicable law and appropriate citation practice. Authors are responsible for any copyright-related disputes arising from their manuscript.
5. Publication Frequency and Fees
The journal is published quarterly, with four issues per year. The number of articles in each issue may be adjusted by the editorial office according to accepted manuscripts, editorial planning, and journal development.
At present, the journal does not charge submission fees, peer review fees, page charges, or article processing charges. If the journal’s fee policy changes in the future, the editorial office will announce such changes in advance and clearly state them in the submission system.
6. Contact Information
For questions about submission, peer review, publication, or ethics, authors should contact the journal through the submission system or the official editorial office email address. The submission website, editorial email address, postal address, and telephone number will be provided on the official journal website.
7. Supplementary Provisions
These Instructions for Authors are interpreted by the Editorial Office of Journal of Medicine, Exercise and Health Science. The editorial office may revise these instructions according to journal development, publication policy, international standards for medical journals, and relevant laws and regulations. Updated instructions will be published on the journal website or in the submission system.
