Sport Science

About Sport Science

Sport Science — the Travnik journal, verified and disambiguated

Sport Science is the title of a peer-reviewed sport-science journal published by the University of Travnik in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with print ISSN 1840-3662 and online ISSN 1840-3670. It has been covered by Scopus-derived listings from 2008, and its subject home in those listings is orthopedics and sports medicine together with physical therapy, sports therapy and rehabilitation, both at Q4. Its standard abbreviation is Sport Sci. Those identifiers matter more for this journal than for almost any other, because Sport Science is also the name of at least one completely different journal — an Indonesian journal of sports science and physical education from Universitas Negeri Padang — and because the phrase itself is the name of an entire field. Every claim in this profile is about the Travnik title identified by the two ISSNs above, and readers should check those numbers before applying anything here to any other publication that shares the name.

Quick facts

• Title: Sport Science
• Abbreviation: Sport Sci.
• ISSN: 1840-3662 (print); 1840-3670 (online)
• Publisher: University of Travnik
• Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Coverage in Scopus-derived listings: 2008–2022 in one summary; the older Journals World record gave 2008–2023
• Subject categories (SCImago-derived): Orthopedics and Sports Medicine (Q4); Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation (Q4)
• SCImago rank value in aggregator summary: 0.153

The disambiguation problem, stated plainly

Search for this journal by name alone and you will mix three different things: the Travnik journal profiled here, the Indonesian Sport Science published by the Faculty of Sports Science at Universitas Negeri Padang — a twice-yearly journal in Indonesian and English, in print from 2001 to 2016 and online and print from 2017, with its own different ISSNs and its own scope in sports science and physical education — and general writing about sport science as a discipline. None of the Indonesian journal's history, frequency or publisher belongs in this record, and none of the Travnik journal's metrics belong in theirs. The clean separation rule is mechanical: match on ISSN 1840-3662 or 1840-3670 and on the University of Travnik, or do not match at all. That rule also protects authors. Submitting to, citing, or paying any charge to the wrong same-named journal is an avoidable error, and it is avoided at the identifier check, not at the payment stage.

The same caution applies inside this site. A site search for the ISSNs carried out for this profile returned, alongside this record, an unrelated Spanish anaesthesiology journal as a false hit — a reminder that a search hit is only a candidate. Its record was fetched directly and shows entirely different ISSNs (2340-3284 and 0034-9356) and a different title, so it is not a duplicate of Sport Science and no pairing arises. Twin checking for a generically named journal has to end with a direct fetch of the candidate's own identifiers, exactly as was done there, or it proves nothing.

Scope and readership

The Travnik Sport Science sits where sport, movement and health meet. Its SCImago-derived categories place it in orthopedics and sports medicine and in physical therapy, sports therapy and rehabilitation, which together point to a readership of sport scientists, coaches and physical-education specialists, physiotherapists and rehabilitation practitioners, and sports-medicine clinicians working in the western Balkans and wider Europe. Work that belongs here typically measures something about athletes, trainees, pupils or patients in movement: performance, training response, injury, recovery, motor behaviour, or the psychological and educational setting in which training and rehabilitation happen.

OpenAlex topic analysis for the exact source resolved from ISSN 1840-3662 (source S2764766473) shows what that has meant in practice. Its topic clusters are all in physical education and sport: physical education and training studies, physical education and sport studies, sports science and education, sports performance and training, and sports and physical education studies. The repetition in those labels is itself information — this is a journal whose published centre is education and training in sport, viewed from several angles, rather than a laboratory physiology title or a clinical medicine title. A manuscript about how a training programme changes performance, how physical education is taught and learned, or how athletes develop and are supported, speaks its language. A manuscript about a surgical technique with no training or rehabilitation dimension, or about elite-sport business with no movement or education content, would need a strong argument for fit.

Metrics — three systems, three answers, all labelled

This record is a textbook case of why a single unlabelled h-index misleads. The older Journals World template stored an h-index of 26. A SCImago-derived aggregator summary in hand gives an h-index of 21 in its headline table, a SCImago rank value of 0.153, an overall rank of 21766, a best quartile of Q4, coverage of 2008–2022, and 69 citations received in the last three years in its Scopus-based count. OpenAlex, resolved directly from the ISSN, gives a third picture: for source S2764766473 it records 493 works and 657 citations, with an OpenAlex h-index of 11. OpenAlex also lists only the print ISSN, 1840-3662, for that source, and its yearly counts in the response received run through about 2020, which suggests its record for this title is incomplete for recent years.

None of those figures should be silently substituted for another. The SCImago-derived figures describe Scopus coverage and are the right ones for a Scopus-based comparison, quoted with their source. The OpenAlex totals describe the open record OpenAlex has assembled and are useful for discovery, quoted with their source. The stored figure of 26 could not be matched to either system in the material in hand for this profile, so it is reported here as a stored value awaiting a named source, not as a verified current indicator. If a promotion or accreditation file asks for this journal's standing, the honest entry is: Q4 in orthopedics and sports medicine and in physical therapy, sports therapy and rehabilitation, in SCImago-derived listings based on Scopus, with the h-index for the exact year and system the file requires, checked in that system at the time of filing.

A DOAJ search by ISSN carried out for this profile returned no matching record, and OpenAlex flags the source as not in DOAJ. No DOAJ listing is therefore claimed. Likewise, no official article charge, acceptance rate or review timeline could be verified from an official page in hand, so none is stated: for this journal those practical details are, in a form this profile could verify, not publicly disclosed, and any figure offered by a third-party site should be confirmed with the University of Travnik journal office before it is acted on.

Publishing in Sport Science — guidance for authors

Write for the reader this journal actually gathers. That reader is likely to be a practitioner-researcher: someone who trains athletes, teaches physical education, or rehabilitates movement, and who reads research to change a programme, a test battery or a teaching approach. The manuscripts that serve that reader share habits. They describe participants precisely — age, sex, competitive level, training history — because in sport a result for elite adults and a result for school pupils are different results. They describe the intervention or measurement in replicable detail: the programme's frequency, intensity, duration and progression; the test protocol and its reliability; the equipment and conditions. They report effect sizes and variability, not only significance, because a coach needs to know whether a change is large enough to matter on the field or in the gym. And they discuss the result in the setting where it will be used, including who it does not apply to.

Studies in physical education need the same discipline with an educational accent: name the school level and setting, describe the teaching method as another teacher would need it described to repeat it, and separate what pupils learned from how much they enjoyed the lessons, since both matter and they are not the same outcome. Rehabilitation and sports-therapy work needs a clinical accent: define the condition and its stage, describe usual care honestly if there is a comparison, and report adherence and adverse events, because a therapy that works only for the minority who complete it is a different therapy in practice. Across all three strands, ethics approval and participant consent — with particular care for minors, who are frequent participants in this field — should be stated exactly, and data on children should be handled and described to the higher standard that work requires.

Before submitting, confirm the basics from the journal's current official presence rather than from any directory, including this profile: the submission route, the language or languages accepted and the abstract requirements, the current editorial office, and whether the journal is actively accepting submissions for the period you are targeting. That last check matters here. Scopus-derived coverage in the material in hand ends in 2022 or 2023 depending on the summary, and OpenAlex's counts thin out earlier, so the journal's recent publishing rhythm could not be confirmed from index data alone. A short enquiry to the university or journal office, before you format a manuscript to its style, is time well spent and is normal practice for a small university journal.

Why a small university journal can still be the right choice

It is easy to read Q4 and small counts and dismiss a title like this one. That reading misses what such a journal does in its ecosystem. Regional sport science needs venues where studies of Balkan athletes, schools and clinics can be published with their context intact, where young researchers in Travnik and comparable universities learn peer review by taking part in it, and where practitioners who will never read a large commercial title can find work about people like the ones they train and treat. The citation totals are modest because the community is modest and because much of its use is practical rather than citational. An author whose aim is to reach that community, to record a well-done regional study, or to contribute to the training and education literature its topic history shows, may be better served here than in a larger journal where the same paper would be an outlier. An author whose aim is maximum Scopus visibility, or whose institution counts only higher-quartile titles, should weigh that honestly before submitting, rather than discovering the mismatch after publication.

What a careful reader can learn from its topic history

The OpenAlex topic history deserves a second look, because it tells prospective authors and readers something a scope paragraph cannot. All five of its largest clusters sit in physical education, training and sport performance, and the counts are of a similar order — no single narrow specialism dominates the journal's record. That pattern is characteristic of a generalist regional sport-science title: it publishes the mix its community submits, from school physical education to athlete training to the educational setting of sport, rather than curating a single research programme. For a reader, that means browsing whole issues is worthwhile; a relevant paper may sit under a heading you would not have searched. For an author, it means the editorial question is less likely to be whether your subfield is fashionable this year and more likely to be whether the study is sound, clearly reported and useful to the practitioners and teachers who form the core readership.

It also means comparisons with other sport titles should be made carefully. A specialist physiology journal and a generalist education-and-training journal will accumulate citations at different rates for reasons that have nothing to do with editorial quality: laboratory physiology is cited by a large international research community, while a well-done study of physical education in Bosnian schools is used mainly by teachers and researchers in comparable systems, many of whom publish rarely. Judged against its own community and purpose — the standard this profile applies to every small regional title — the Travnik Sport Science has a coherent record: continuous Scopus-derived coverage from 2008 into the early 2020s, a stable subject identity, and a topic profile that matches its stated field. Judged as if it were competing with large international titles for the same manuscripts, it would look different, but that was never the competition it entered.

There is a further, practical consequence of the journal's generalist regional character for anyone building a reading list or a review. Because its papers report studies from schools, clubs, clinics and universities in its region, its back issues function as a partial record of what sport and physical education in the western Balkans actually studied in the 2008 to 2023 period: which sports, which age groups, which tests and which teaching questions drew researchers' attention. A historian of sport, or a researcher planning a new study who wants to know what has already been measured in comparable Bosnian and regional populations, will find that record useful in a way that its citation totals do not capture. Search it by participant group and by method, not only by keyword, and read the methods sections closely, because the value of a regional study for replication lies in its protocol detail. That use — as a regional evidence archive — is a legitimate reason to keep, cite and preserve a small journal, and it is one more reason this profile records its identity carefully enough for future readers to find it without confusing it with its Indonesian namesake.

Finally, a word on expectations for review and correspondence, stated as guidance rather than as a claim about this journal's current office practice. Small university journals commonly run their editorial work alongside teaching duties, so correspondence may move at an academic rather than a commercial pace, and a polite enquiry that quotes your manuscript title and submission date is the right way to follow up. Keep your own copies of everything you send, note the date and route of submission, and do not submit the same manuscript elsewhere while it is under consideration here. Those habits protect authors in any small-journal relationship, whatever the office's current timetable turns out to be.

Frequently asked questions

Which Sport Science is this?
The University of Travnik journal from Bosnia and Herzegovina, ISSN 1840-3662 (print) and 1840-3670 (online). It is not the Indonesian journal of the same name from Universitas Negeri Padang, which has different publishers and identifiers.

Who publishes it?
The University of Travnik. The older Journals World template stored the publisher as the bare number 9078, a garbled numeric value that should be replaced by this name.

What subjects does it cover?
Sport science centred on physical education, training, performance, sports medicine and rehabilitation, reflected in SCImago-derived categories of Orthopedics and Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation, both Q4.

What is its h-index?
It depends on the system, so quote the system: 21 in the SCImago-derived aggregator summary in hand, 11 in OpenAlex for source S2764766473 (493 works, 657 citations), and 26 as an older stored value on this site that could not be matched to a named source for this profile.

Is it still publishing?
Index coverage in hand runs to 2022–2023 and could not confirm the current rhythm. Confirm directly with the journal or university office before submitting.

Does it charge authors, and is it in DOAJ?
No official charge could be verified for this profile, and a DOAJ ISSN search returned no matching record, so neither a charge nor a DOAJ listing is claimed here.

Sources and verification note

Sources consulted directly for this profile include SCImago-derived aggregator summaries for the Travnik title giving its publisher, country, categories, rank value, coverage and Scopus-based indicators, the Indonesian namesake journal's own site for the disambiguation contrast, and OpenAlex source S2764766473 resolved from ISSN 1840-3662 for works, citations, topics and yearly counts. A DOAJ ISSN search returned no matching record, and a Journals World twin search was resolved by directly fetching the single candidate record returned, which proved to be an unrelated Spanish title with different ISSNs. Structured-field note for this site: the older template stored the publisher as the bare number 9078, a garbled numeric publisher value, not a name; the publisher is the University of Travnik.