Sports science can be defined in a few words as the multidisciplinary study(A) systematized(B) of high performance(C) human physical activity(D). A) Multidisciplinary because it must cover several areas of human knowledge, such as physiology, psychology, biomechanics, and nutrition, among others (1); B) systematized, by definition of what science is; C) high performance, because sport surpasses simple physical activity carried out for leisure or health maintenance (2,3), requiring training and said multidisciplinary assistance and D) human activity, as other living beings do not have the necessary awareness to practice sports - physical activity organized for competitive purposes.

However, even though sport distances itself from simple physical activity, turning into a spectacle, its origins lie precisely in an unpretentious practice that begins with playing. In other words, there will only be high-performance sport if its culture is disseminated in society from an early age, through available means, whether political or educational.

Diffusion has been an incessant provocation for the academic world, not only as a way of displaying the benefits of sport to a wider audience, but even to disseminate knowledge of studies to the actors in the sporting world themselves. And unfortunately, 'knowledge from research evidence is wasted unless it is applied' (4).

'While the scientific evidence base for many sports and exercise medicine and sports physiotherapy interventions is robust, real-world implementation and evolution at scale remains an ongoing challenge...'(4)

Going further, the fact that these studies do not reach the "real world", outside the academy, reflecting the application of new research results in practice, is a direct product of the incipient dissemination or resistance of the actors. A review (4) demonstrated 'that there is a sequence of cognitive and behavioral steps towards changing habits':

'Individuals (e.g., clinicians, trainers) who are initially unaware of an evidence-based intervention must first become aware of it (awareness), then intellectually agree with it (agreement), then decide it is appropriate and feasible to use in their own setting (adoption) and finally execute it as expected (adhesion). Further, it demonstrates that research evidence progressively ‘leaks out’ at each step of awareness, agreement, adoption and adherence. Thus, the progression to adherence may stop at any step for a range of reasons.' (4)

The result is what a study carried out in Germany concluded (5) when observing that physical activity recommendations are achieved only by a small portion of society and the results of research on topics related to public health, such as the promotion of physical activity, are often not translated into practice.

A bibliometric assessment (6) fulfilled before the 2022 Olympics, showed that the body of scientific literature on sport and exercise continues to expand, specifically in the area of Olympic sport, where 'the field of sports science has expanded enormously, as evidenced by the growing number of journals'. Moreover, the subjects covered are of relative importance not only for the academic world, but enormously for the sports world and society as a whole, since sports science seems to encompass the most diverse interests pertinent to human beings, such as biomechanics, physiology, nutrition, injury prevention and rehabilitation, psychology, pedagogy, management and marketing, history, sociology, and many biomedical fields, including preventive medicine and oncology, as well as "new sciences" such as artificial intelligence and robotics.

According to the same study, at the time of the research, there were at least more than a hundred periodicals around the world publishing research on Olympic sports and, regardless of whether these articles favored the most popular sports such as football, cycling, athletics, swimming, running in general, basketball, baseball, tennis and rowing; the issue of dissemination appears problematic because, despite the reasonable number of magazines, the majority belong to groups in the medical field and few focus specifically on Olympic sports, in addition to having very specific or very generic scientific scopes: 'articles focusing on a certain sport in these magazines are, therefore, less frequent' (6). Therefore, the appeal of the Olympic sports modality as a call for dissemination is dimmed. But this invocation should not be despised....

'Sports carry strong cultural and political meanings for their practitioners and spectators and powerfully symbolize identities and communities. It is, therefore – and somewhat comforting in our globalized world – to discover that a local sports culture can impact scientific production' (6)

And when we talk about local sports culture, we are not talking about minorities, but, for example, about large nations such as Russia, China, Japan and South Korea, leaders in the Olympics that are being underrepresented in the set of articles in sports sciences due to one of the barriers that the dissemination of articles faces, that of language.

'In this era of diversity and inclusion, the question of how to extend the focus and reach other countries with different culture, language(s) and socioeconomic status has never been more prominent.' (7)

The language issue leads to a "lose-lose" situation: Non-English-speaking countries may not have taken advantage of opportunities to learn about studies that have not been published in their languages, but, equally, English-speaking nations having missed relevant research initiatives, innovations and results from these other countries that did not publish in English.

But the difficulties in disseminating sports science do not stop there and go against the general problems for disseminating scientific research at a broader level: in addition to language, popularization, accessibility, the constraints of proprietary technologies (identifiers, front-ends), a whole range of discussions, sometimes controversial, plague the process of disseminating relevant scientific studies.

We realize that we are facing a critical issue when entities representing the academic universe themselves begin to worry. In Brazil, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) is concerned with the popularization of scientific knowledge, through actions aimed at disseminating the scientific and technological results of research beyond academia, reaching society through the dissemination of information for a broad audience, with appropriate language aimed at this purpose (8,9). As researcher Luisa Massarani said in a magazine commemorating CNPq's 70th anniversary, 'Scientific dissemination is not a luxury. It is part of the scientific process. It is an accountability to society for public resources invested in science and technology.'(10)

In short, scientific journals are facing a challenge, and they need strategies to overcome this challenge. We will propose hereafter a set of actions as a suggestion to kick-off a true "Olympic marathon".

The prerequisite for adopting our methodological proposal must be the acceptance that we are facing a stimulus, an inspiration, or, for those who are more comfortable, a goad. Facing change requires a certain amount of nonconformity, but isn't that the secret of creative people? The author of the book "Originals: How Nonconformists Change the World" (11) covers a series of studies and stories from the real world involving sports, politics, business and the world of entertainment to show how any of us can improve our creative capacity, and become qualified to identify and defend opinions truly original, fight against conformism and break with outdated traditions.

We condense the entire proposal into five methods of dissemination or favoring the dissemination process: 1) popularization beyond academia; 2) multilingual publication and appreciation of the native language; 3) promotion of accessibility; 4) investment in responsive design and 5) recovery and translation of physical or difficult-to-access material.

It is important to note that we do not limit our proposal to the idea of disseminating it to non-academics, but we focus, mainly on the academic environment itself, which should be favored with widely understandable and quality access to studies from the most different regions and supports. Based on this guidance, it will be the Academic himself, equipped with adequate resources, who will be our greatest disseminator. Another point deals with the relevance of republications. When a scientific article deserves to reach a specific non-English speaking audience or one far from access to major publications, the translation must be tightly considered; and also a republication.

1. Popularization beyond academia

External dissemination: Popularization campaigns aim to democratize knowledge, while dissemination aims to propagate it. We must be very careful about the risk of vulgarization. In the area of sports and physical activity in general, countless studies have shown that regular physical activity and reducing sedentary habits have a positive impact on the physical and mental health of people of all ages. However, the recommendations are only achieved by a small part of the population. The appeal of sporting events and the consequent interest in Olympic sports do not always lead to healthy practices or changes in habits.

The preparation of adequate promotional material aimed at the media or sectors of society, for example, needs to focus on raising awareness of the importance of a certain research 'with appropriate language and directed towards this purpose' (9), so that press releases or campaign material in general are received as something relevant and necessary for society. Going further, external disclosure can even help with obtaining financing for projects that are still ongoing (12).

Internal dissemination: The journal itself must open possibilities for self-disclosure, that is, informing in the form of editorials, supplementary articles addressing other publications or its own materials, thematic editions or even summaries and preprints. Academia needs to accept that we are evolving and 'our transition from the Gutenberg era to the era of electronic publishing brings with it exciting and innovative forms of scientific communication' (13). After all, the purpose of the magazine is not just to be a showroom for displaying articles published by scientists looking for status and citations, but also to be a source of consultation for both researchers and the community as a whole, outside the Academy, 'there are many professionals who do not work in the scientific field and who, however, intend to keep up to date with discoveries and advances in their areas of activity' (14).

2) Multilingual publication and appreciation of the native language

The journal needs to detect and make space for relevant scientific work and produce versions for as many languages as possible, especially for the own journal's native language. The scientific article needs to be read by different groups in our society and language is the greatest facilitator for local dissemination; dissemination that brings educational-cultural returns to the country where the work was published:

• 1. Other researchers;
• 2. Professionals in the field;
• 3. Students;
• 4. Media;
• 5. Society in general.

Scientific publishing must provide a service to society and not just to the academic sector. Its mission is to offer quality material with relevant visual, technical and aesthetic resources for anyone who can read the local language and not exclusively for proficient polyglots. It must take on the challenge of demystifying the image of a closed vehicle for select groups of doctors. After all, a quality scientific text is par excellence one that should be as well formatted and intelligible as possible; and thus accessible to the largest and most diverse group of people, allowing - in fact - a true educational-cultural revolution through science.

It is not up to us to consider the issue of the researcher's low proficiency in english language, but rather to allow broad access to international studies, therefore publishing versions of the same article in different languages. A report on linguistic diversity in academia shows that more than 8 in 10 Ibero-American researchers write in the Anglo-Saxon language and not in their mother tongues. English is considered the lingua franca of world science and even though it may sound somewhat unfair to authors and readers from countries whose native language is not English, it is extremely convenient as it allows researchers from all over the world to communicate, cooperate with each other and share knowledge, (15) 'the problem is not that science is published in English, but that it is not published in other languages' (16). In other words, it is a two-way street. The researcher must publish in English, but he also deserves to have international articles published in his native language, since the percentage of English speakers is low, as shown in Table 1.

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Table 1. Percentage of English speakers in countries prominent in Olympic sports (except USA and UK) /PROFICIENCY INDEX

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3) Promotion of accessibility

Through several different functionalities available in the area of technological development of websites and applications, including the use of artificial intelligence, the scientific journal needs to make the content of articles accessible to millions of users with disabilities or internet navigation difficulties (21).

According to data from the CDC - Center for Disease Control in the USA ((22), Table 2), one in four Americans lives with a disability, that is, 25% of the population! - https://www.cdc.gov/index. htm)

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Table 2. Adults in the U.S. live with disabilities.

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4) Investment in responsive design

The fourth item of the proposal is in line with the third, it also deals with the issue of favoring the dissemination process. To disseminate, it is necessary to make it viewable by as many people as possible with different means of access, be they computers, tablets, cell phones, or PDAs. The electronic medium is undoubtedly the new way of publishing, but to what extent have scientific journals actually adopted the computer age?

There should be no resistance, after all the idea is not new:

'The idea of electronic journals is not as new as it seems to us. In 1977, to the astonishment of some, Frederik Lancaster already predicted that the scientific community would create, transmit and receive information through terminals; scientists would have instruments for communication without geographical borders, with the dissemination of articles by electronic means’ (23).

Since then, the revolution in the information age has taken over the academic world and, in fact, the electronic scientific journal is today the main form of dissemination of scientific research worldwide, however, there are still traces of physical support, because most journals do not explore available technological resources as they could; and they insist on reproducing the language of the physical world in the virtual universe. Publishing in PDF, for example, nullifies most of the advantages of HTML, such as readability ('One of the main disadvantages of PDF is that the presentation of the content is not adaptable to the screen used, that is, when zooming out on the document it is likely that the text will become impossible to read' (24), more attractive and lightweight visual formatting, especially tables and graphs, text words placed in an index accessible to search engines, ease of accessing external links, implementation of accessibility features; furthermore, PDF is proprietary technology, which requires extra financial costs to be used to its full potential.

Publishing in HTML language should be, therefore, a sine qua non rule in periodical publishers. To recap, in 1971, Project Gutenberg was created by Michael Hart (by some, considered the inventor of the digital book), which is accredited the oldest digital library in the world, and its texts are available in HTML formats or derivatives of it, such as ePub ; Mobi; Plaint Text UTF–8, and:

'The philosophy of Project Gutenberg is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public so that the vast majority of computers, programs and people can easily read, use, cite and search' (25) .

5) Recovery and translation of physical or difficult-to-access material

Although it may seem strange to the general norms of publication in scientific journals, republication should not be ruled out when talking about the dissemination of science. Republishing articles originally published on difficult-to-access physical media should aim to disseminate relevant research. The mass of knowledge available to humanity depends on the source of learning resources, which can range from old printed documents to presentable electronic material. Converting material available in traditional libraries to digital form requires a significant amount of work. Most printed documents not only contain characters and their formatting, but also some associated non-textual objects, such as tables, graphs, and visual objects. It is challenging to detect them and focus on preserving the content format while playing them. To help resolve this issue in academia, it is worth seeking important printed material to reformat for publication in digital format. In short, our fifth objective goes beyond dissemination and seeks to preserve sports culture, through the recovery of material that could be lost while remaining in printed format. After all, preservation ends up resulting in disclosure:

'the importance of creating digital archives, libraries and museums, (…) represent a form of preservation against factors to which cultural heritage in its physical state is subject and, on the other hand, it is fundamental in the development of dissemination, as it allows viewing content in an interactive, innovative and personalized way...'. (26)

Disseminating sports science means making it reach the academic world in an accessible way and the non-academic world in a popular way. Sports in themselves carry relevant symbology and their imagery and sensorial power, must be considered in scientific dissemination planning. Sport and physical activity are intertwined in all fields of knowledge and in this era of polarization, but also integration, we need to broaden the focus and reach countries with cultures, language(s) and socioeconomic status different from ours. We are facing a call to accept the new and see new possibilities that lead science and invisible scientists (third worldist, women, scholars from areas viewed with disdain by the scientific community, researchers in the area of Physical Education - seen as a sub-area of Health - etc.) (26,27,28) to exchange in an uncomplicated, understandable and coherent globalization.