Data Sharing, Availability and Reproducibility

The Journal of Leadership in Sport and Management (JLSM) supports transparency, reproducibility, and responsible sharing of research data and other materials underlying published research.

Authors should make the data supporting the findings of their work available whenever this is ethically, legally, and practically possible. JLSM recognises that unrestricted public sharing may not be appropriate for all research, particularly studies involving human participants, confidential or sensitive information, contractual restrictions, or data that could permit identification of individuals or small groups of participants.

Data Availability Statement

Research articles should include a Data Availability Statement describing whether and under what conditions the data supporting the findings are available.

Depending on the circumstances, appropriate statements may include:

Publicly available data
“The data supporting the findings of this study are available in [repository name] at [persistent identifier or URL].”

Data available on reasonable request
“The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.”

Restricted data
“The data are not publicly available due to ethical, privacy, confidentiality, or legal restrictions.”

Data contained within the article
“The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and/or its supplementary materials.”

Where data cannot be shared, authors should provide a concise explanation of the restriction.

Research Data Repositories

When data can be shared publicly, authors are encouraged to deposit them in a recognised disciplinary, institutional, or general-purpose repository that provides persistent access and, preferably, a persistent identifier.

Where appropriate, datasets should be cited in the manuscript in a manner that enables them to be identified and accessed independently of the article.

Human Participant and Athlete Data

Particular care must be taken with data obtained from human participants, including athletes.

Public availability of a dataset does not override ethical obligations, informed-consent conditions, privacy protections, data-protection requirements, or applicable legislation.

Authors should consider whether combinations of variables could permit re-identification even when obvious personal identifiers have been removed.

JLSM will not require authors to make participant-level data publicly available when doing so would conflict with ethical approval, informed consent, privacy requirements, contractual obligations, or applicable law.

Supporting Materials and Analytical Transparency

Where relevant to the research design, authors are encouraged to make supporting materials available, including study protocols, questionnaires, codebooks, analytical code, statistical syntax, computational procedures, or other materials necessary to understand or reproduce the analysis.

For studies relying substantially on custom software or computational procedures, sufficient methodological information should be provided to allow independent evaluation of the analysis.

Data During Peer Review

Editors or reviewers may request access to relevant underlying data or supporting materials when this is reasonably necessary to evaluate the validity or integrity of a submitted manuscript.

Any data supplied for confidential peer review will be treated as confidential material and must not be used for purposes unrelated to the evaluation of the manuscript.

Data Retention and Research Integrity

Authors should retain research data and documentation for an appropriate period in accordance with applicable institutional, disciplinary, ethical, funding, and legal requirements.

If legitimate concerns arise regarding the accuracy or integrity of submitted or published research, JLSM may request access to relevant data, analytical materials, or documentation.

An unjustified refusal or inability to provide materials necessary to investigate a serious integrity concern may be taken into consideration in determining appropriate editorial action.

Reproducibility and Transparent Reporting

Authors should report research methods and analyses with sufficient detail to permit appropriate scientific evaluation and, where reasonably possible, replication or reproduction of the work.

JLSM encourages the use of recognized reporting guidelines, study registration, preregistration, protocol publication, and other open-science practices when these are appropriate to the research design.

These practices are encouraged to strengthen transparency and reproducibility but are not automatically mandatory unless specified for a particular article type or study design.