Research in Physical Education, Sport and Health as a Scholarly Ecosystem: Mission, Ethics, and Editorial Architecture – An Integrated Model of Scholarly Publishing

Institutional Identity and Mission of RPESH

The Research in Physical Education, Sport and Health (RPESH) journal is an international, peer-reviewed scientific publication established in 2012 by the Faculty of Physical Education, Sport and Health at “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. RPESH is dedicated to publishing high-quality research in kinesiology, sport, and health, fostering interdisciplinary approaches that connect related scientific fields.

From its inception, the journal has been conceived as more than a repository of academic articles. RPESH was founded with the ambition to create a stable and credible platform for scholarly exchange in fields that are inherently interdisciplinary, practice-oriented, and socially relevant. Physical education, sport sciences, and health research operate at the intersection of pedagogy, physiology, psychology, sociology, medicine, and public policy. RPESH responds to this complexity by providing a publication space that values methodological rigor while remaining open to diverse epistemological and disciplinary perspectives.

The journal’s international orientation is embedded in both its editorial vision and its operational design. RPESH welcomes contributions from researchers, educators, and practitioners across geographical and institutional contexts, promoting cross-border dialogue and comparative research. By doing so, it actively supports the circulation of knowledge between different academic traditions and professional environments, particularly bridging contexts where research infrastructures and publishing cultures vary significantly.

At the core of RPESH’s mission lies a commitment to academic integrity, transparency, and professional responsibility. All manuscripts undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review process conducted in accordance with internationally recognized editorial and ethical standards. The journal adheres to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), ensuring that issues of authorship, originality, conflicts of interest, and research ethics are addressed systematically and consistently.

Through these foundations, RPESH positions itself as a journal that combines institutional credibility with a forward-looking understanding of academic publishing. It is a platform that seeks not only to disseminate research results, but also to cultivate responsible scholarly practice and to contribute to the long-term development of research cultures in physical education, sport, and health.

Editorial Architecture and Ethical Framework

RPESH is structured as a transparent and carefully articulated editorial ecosystem. Its architecture reflects a deliberate effort to make the journal’s values, procedures, and responsibilities visible to all participants in the scholarly process—authors, reviewers, editors, and readers alike. Rather than hiding editorial practices behind institutional opacity, RPESH externalizes them through a clearly organized digital environment.

The journal’s website is not merely a container for published issues. It is designed as a navigable system of interconnected policy areas and operational guides, grouped into distinct sections such as About, Editorial, Privacy, For Authors, For Reviewers, and Issues. Each of these areas performs a specific institutional function:

• The About section defines the journal’s mission, scope, and identity.
• The Editorial area outlines governance structures, peer-review policy, and editorial responsibilities.
• The Privacy domain addresses data protection, GDPR compliance, reviewer data protection, and retention policies.
• The For Authors and For Reviewers sections translate editorial principles into concrete workflows and expectations.
• The Issues area anchors the journal’s continuity and archival logic.

This structure embodies a core editorial philosophy: academic publishing is not only about outcomes (articles), but about processes. RPESH treats transparency as an ethical practice. By making editorial logic explicit, the journal reduces asymmetries of information between experienced and emerging scholars and establishes a shared procedural literacy.

The ethical framework of RPESH is grounded in internationally recognized standards. The journal follows COPE principles for publication ethics, addressing issues such as plagiarism, redundant publication, authorship disputes, conflicts of interest, and research misconduct. These principles are not merely stated as abstract commitments; they are operationalized through clearly articulated policies:

• A dedicated Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
• A Plagiarism Policy linked to professional similarity checking
• Explicit Author Responsibilities
• A Peer Review Policy describing roles, criteria, and reviewer conduct
• Archiving and open-access policies ensuring long-term accessibility

Within this framework, iThenticate (by Turnitin) functions as an infrastructural component of editorial integrity. Its role is integrated into a broader screening and evaluation procedure that combines automated detection, editorial judgment, and peer review. This layered approach reflects a contemporary understanding of research ethics: integrity cannot be reduced to software output; it requires human interpretation, contextual reasoning, and disciplinary awareness.

The journal’s editorial workflow is likewise designed to be intelligible. Authors are not treated as external applicants confronting a black-box system. Instead, the journal exposes the logic of submission, review, revision, and editorial decision-making. Reviewers are positioned not only as evaluators but as participants in a shared scholarly responsibility. Editors function as mediators of quality, fairness, and coherence.

Through this architecture, RPESH constructs an environment in which academic rigor is inseparable from procedural clarity. The journal does not rely on prestige or institutional distance to assert authority. It builds legitimacy through visibility, consistency, and rule-based practice. In doing so, it aligns with contemporary expectations of responsible publishing while simultaneously addressing structural inequalities in access to publishing knowledge.

RPESH thus operates as an ethical infrastructure. Its policies, menus, and workflows are not peripheral additions; they are constitutive elements of the journal’s identity. The editorial system becomes a pedagogical space in itself—one that teaches what scholarly publishing is, how it works, and why it matters.

RPESH as a Learning-Oriented Publishing Ecosystem

What distinguishes RPESH within the landscape of academic journals is its explicit commitment to author support and capacity building. The journal is structured not only as a gatekeeping mechanism for quality, but as a learning environment that accompanies authors through the full cycle of academic publishing. This orientation is embedded in a unique triad of resources:

• Manuscript Preparation Guidelines
• Accessible Explanations: Text Walkthroughs
• Technical Step-by-Step Guides

Together, these components transform the journal from a passive publication venue into an active pedagogical infrastructure.

The Manuscript Preparation Guidelines articulate academic standards at the level of structure, content, and scholarly logic. Rather than limiting themselves to formal requirements, these guidelines explain how a scientific article is constructed: what constitutes a strong title, how an abstract functions, how an introduction frames a research problem, and how methods, results, discussion, and conclusions relate to one another. This approach recognizes that many authors—particularly early-career researchers and scholars from diverse academic traditions—have limited access to tacit publishing knowledge. RPESH externalizes this knowledge.

The Accessible Explanations: Text Walkthroughs translate academic conventions into intelligible language. They demystify the internal architecture of a scientific article and render visible the cognitive work behind scholarly writing. Instead of assuming that authors already “know the rules,” RPESH explains why those rules exist and how they operate. This pedagogical layer reframes publishing as a developmental process rather than a purely evaluative one.

The Technical Step-by-Step Guides address the procedural dimension of publishing. They provide concrete, visual, and sequential instructions for:

• submitting a manuscript,
• navigating the peer-review process,
• responding to reviewer comments, and
• understanding editorial workflows.

In doing so, the journal acknowledges that technical barriers often function as hidden exclusion mechanisms. RPESH actively dismantles these barriers by making the system legible.

This architecture positions RPESH as a learning-oriented journal. It does not dilute standards; rather, it clarifies them. The journal maintains rigorous peer review and ethical screening while simultaneously recognizing that excellence is cultivated, not assumed. Authors are treated as developing scholars whose work can be strengthened through structured guidance.

This philosophy also reshapes the role of reviewers and editors. Review is not framed solely as judgment but as contribution to scholarly development. Editorial decisions are embedded within a communicative process that emphasizes clarity, fairness, and improvement. Even rejection becomes part of a learning trajectory.

By integrating pedagogy into infrastructure, RPESH responds to structural asymmetries in global academic publishing. It acknowledges that access to publishing competence is unevenly distributed and that journals can either reproduce or mitigate these inequalities. RPESH chooses the latter.

The journal thus operates on two intertwined levels:

1. As a scientific platform for disseminating research in physical education, sport, and health.
2. As a capacity-building environment that fosters academic literacy, ethical awareness, and procedural competence.

In this dual role, RPESH contributes not only to knowledge production but to the formation of scholarly communities. It functions as a bridge between established academic norms and emerging research cultures, enabling participation without lowering standards.

Positioning RPESH in the International Academic Landscape

Within the contemporary ecology of academic publishing, journals are no longer evaluated solely by the quality of the articles they publish. They are increasingly assessed as institutional systems: as ethical infrastructures, as learning environments, and as agents shaping research cultures. RPESH aligns itself with this expanded understanding of what a journal is and what it can do.

By combining rigorous peer review, COPE-aligned ethical governance, and a uniquely developed author-support framework, RPESH positions itself as a journal that bridges global academic standards with contextual sensitivity. It speaks simultaneously to international expectations of quality and to the realities of diverse research environments.

This positioning is particularly significant in fields such as physical education, sport, and health, where research is closely intertwined with practice, policy, and social impact. RPESH recognizes that knowledge in these domains is produced across heterogeneous contexts—universities, schools, sports institutions, health systems, and community settings. The journal’s openness to interdisciplinary approaches and applied research reflects this reality. It does not privilege a single methodological orthodoxy; instead, it evaluates work through criteria of clarity, rigor, relevance, and ethical responsibility.

In this sense, RPESH functions as a mediating institution between global academic norms and local research cultures. It enables scholars from different epistemic traditions to enter a shared publishing space governed by transparent rules and common standards. The journal thus contributes to the internationalization of research without erasing contextual specificity.

The long-term strategic orientation of RPESH is directed toward sustainability, credibility, and institutional maturation. The continuous refinement of editorial policies and the expansion of pedagogical resources signal an understanding of publishing as an evolving practice. RPESH does not treat its current form as final; it treats it as a living system that grows through reflection, evaluation, and adaptation..

This orientation aligns RPESH with contemporary debates on responsible research and innovation, open science, and equitable access to scholarly communication. By making its procedures visible and its expectations intelligible, the journal contributes to a culture of accountability. By supporting authors through structured guidance, it contributes to a culture of inclusion. By maintaining rigorous standards, it contributes to a culture of excellence.

RPESH therefore occupies a distinctive position: it is neither a purely traditional journal nor a purely pedagogical platform. It is a hybrid scholarly institution in which publication, education, and ethics are structurally integrated.

In doing so, RPESH redefines what it means to be an academic journal in the fields of physical education, sport, and health. It becomes:

• a space of knowledge dissemination,
• a framework of ethical governance,
• a pedagogical environment for scholarly development, and
• a bridge between diverse academic cultures.

Journal Research in Physical Education, Sport and Health shows that rigor and support are not opposing values, but complementary foundations of responsible academic publishing.
By combining high ethical standards, methodological seriousness, and transparent editorial governance with a deeply author-oriented pedagogical framework, the journal embodies a contemporary scholarly ecosystem in which excellence is cultivated, not presumed. RPESH thus positions itself not only as a venue for disseminating research, but as an institutional space where knowledge, integrity, and academic capacity develop together.