Notice to the Authors and Readers of the International Journal of Sports Medicine (IJSM) - Online Manuscript Submission in Preparation

Dear Readers and Authors,

The growing esteem of IJSM as one of the leading international journals on sports medicine attracts an ever-increasing number of authors from throughout the world. Consequently, the number of article submissions is growing continuously. This is, in the first place, very good news for those who are responsible for the journal's quality as well as for the readers who benefit from the still growing impact of IJSM. As a consequence of the increase of high-quality papers submitted, it is with pride and pleasure that we inform you the number of issues produced in 2006 will be raised to 12 per annum. Thieme Publishers express their respect and gratitude to the Editors and the Reviewers for their successful work for the journal.

The still growing number of submissions is also a challenge for the American and European Editorial Offices who have to organize the peer review of the submitted papers. In order to facilitate the whole reviewing process, the publisher has now decided to provide an online submission system for both authors and editors of IJSM. The system will support the complete process of submitting and reviewing manuscripts, as well as the correspondence between authors, editorial office and the reviewers. The system will be launched on January 1st, 2006. Until then, manuscript submissions shall be executed in the traditional way.

Important: Beginning from January 1st, 2006, authors are asked to refrain from submitting paper copies of their manuscripts and to exclusively use the online submission system. Please note that after January 1st no paper copies will be accepted at all.

The URL address of the system will be disclosed in the December issue of IJSM. In addition to this, authors are asked to follow the information given on the journal's home page at www.thieme.de/sportsmed. As soon as the submission system is online, the publisher will place a hyperlink at the journal's page.

The publisher and editors of IJSM are confident that the implementation of the online submission system will represent an important improvement for our authors. For this purpose, Thieme is cooperating with the world's leading provider of manuscript tracking systems. The system itself will help to reduce the administrative time spans and thus shorten the publication time. It is easy to operate and offers a maximum of convenience to authors and editors.

The publishers will provide any help needed for the time of transition to the new system, and we kindly ask the authors to support the work of the Editorial Offices by using the new facilities.

The publishers and the editors