Publication Guide
SportRxiv (styled SportRχiv) is a free, community-led preprint server for sport, exercise, performance and health research. It was founded in 2017 and is run by STORK - the Society for Transparency, Openness, and Replication in Kinesiology - a volunteer non-profit. The server describes itself as the first community-led open-access subject repository dedicated to the movement sciences.
Two things about SportRxiv are commonly out of date in older guides. First, it no longer runs on OSF Preprints: the current server is an independent installation of PKP's Open Preprint Systems at sportrxiv.org, with hosting and DOI costs covered by the University of Ottawa Libraries. The legacy OSF collection remains readable, but new submissions go to the OPS platform. Second, posting is genuinely free - there is no APC, no submission fee and no membership requirement.
What you can post
SportRxiv accepts scholarly documents at any stage of the publication pipeline:
- Author original manuscripts (preprints) - work written by the authors that may or may not later go to a journal.
- Author accepted manuscripts (postprints) - the author's accepted version of a paper already accepted by a peer-reviewed journal, before publisher typesetting.
Accepted document types include original research, reviews, commentaries and current opinions, case studies, short communications, hypotheses, negative results, technical reports, and data or methods papers. Blog posts, dissertations (send those to Thesis Commons) and anything that does not meet basic academic reporting standards are out of scope. Text must be in English, and PDF is the preferred file format, with Word and HTML also accepted.
Scope covers all domains related to human movement: applied fields such as sport, exercise, physical activity, rehabilitation, nutrition, dance and performance, plus the underpinning sciences - physiology, biomechanics, neuroscience, psychology, and sport history, philosophy, management and pedagogy.
Which route fits your manuscript?
| Your situation | What to do on SportRxiv |
|---|---|
| Manuscript finished, journal submission imminent | Post the original manuscript as a preprint before or at submission - you get a citable Crossref DOI and a public timestamp. |
| Paper already accepted at a journal | Post the author accepted manuscript (postprint) to make the work openly readable; check the journal's self-archiving terms first. |
| Registered report, protocol or negative result unlikely to be picked up | SportRxiv accepts these, so the work stays discoverable and citable even if no journal takes it. |
| Data or code to share | Host the files on OSF or a similar repository and link them from the preprint rather than uploading them as supplements. |
| Thesis or dissertation | Out of scope - use Thesis Commons instead. |
How posting works
- Register or log in at sportrxiv.org.
- Complete the submission checklist, confirming scope, authorship and that the work is not a blog post or dissertation.
- Upload the manuscript as a PDF (recommended), Word or HTML file, with any supplementary material combined into a single file. Include DOIs in your reference list wherever available.
- Enter metadata carefully - title, all authors with ORCID iDs, abstract, keywords and subject category. Moderators check this because it drives indexing and discoverability.
- Choose a license. CC BY 4.0 is the default; you may select another license or upload your own.
- Wait for moderation, then the preprint is posted with a Crossref DOI under the 10.51224 prefix.
Moderation - what it checks and what it doesn't
SportRxiv uses pre-moderation: a submission is screened before it appears publicly, usually within 3-5 business days. The check is a scope and legitimacy check. Moderators confirm the document is scholarly work within the movement sciences, that the listed authors are real people, that there is no obvious fabrication or plagiarism, and that metadata and formatting will index correctly. Generative-AI use must be assistive rather than the primary author of the work.
Moderation is explicitly not peer review. SportRxiv does not verify data, methods or conclusions, and posting is not a statement about research quality. Judgments about correctness, novelty and contribution are left to readers and to any journal that later reviews the paper.
Citing a SportRxiv preprint
Every posted item receives a Crossref DOI, so cite it as a preprint with the DOI and label the version. A Vancouver-style example:
Author AB, Author CD. Title of the preprint. SportRxiv. 2026. Preprint. doi:10.51224/SportRxiv.1030
In APA, add the bracketed descriptor "[Preprint]" after the title and give SportRxiv as the source. Always state that the work is a preprint or an author accepted manuscript rather than a published article, and update the citation to the journal version once one exists.
How SportRxiv relates to journal submission
Posting a preprint is not a substitute for, and does not preclude, journal peer review. Most sport-science journals permit preprinting, but policies vary, so check the target journal's preprint policy before you post. Having two DOIs - one for the preprint, one for the published article - is normal and expected; indexing services link the versions. If a journal later publishes the work, you can normally leave the preprint online and add a link to the version of record.
Cost, licensing and copyright
Posting and reading are free. Hosting, platform fees and DOI registration are covered by the University of Ottawa Libraries, with STORK accepting donations to sustain the service. Authors keep copyright and choose the license at submission; CC BY 4.0 is the default. Because authors retain rights, the preprint can sit alongside a later publisher version without a rights conflict in most cases.
Ethics and integrity
SportRxiv screens for plagiarism, fabricated authorship and out-of-scope material before posting, and it operates a withdrawal process for work that should no longer stand. Because there is no peer review, readers should treat findings as provisional. STORK also runs the peer-reviewed journal Communications in Kinesiology and the Kinesiology Books platform, so authors who want formal review within the same community have a route to it.
