Study_Protocol

Is artificial intelligence assisting in coping with the complexity of elite sports team performance? A Scoping Review. Study Protocol

Materials and methods

Procedures
A systematic scientific literature search will be conducted for this review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR)(Tricco et al., 2018). 
The screening process, extraction process and critical evaluation will be done independently by two reviewers: AAMM and MJDM. JLSR will supervise all the processes and interfered in disagreements to take the last decisions. 
The same authors will carry out the quality evaluation. 

Querying Technique
The Internet databases: Web of Science, Scopus and Pubmed will be thoroughly searched from October 2019 until October 2023 (last 5 years). 

The basic search string adapted to each database is:
(Elite OR Pro* OR "High Level") (Topic) and ("Team Sports" OR "Team Sport" OR Football OR Soccer OR Basketball OR Handball OR Volleyball OR Rugby OR "Australian Football" OR Baseball OR "American Football" OR "Ice Hockey") (Topic) and ("Artificial Intelligence" OR "Computational Intelligence" OR "Machine Intelligence" OR "Computer Reasoning" OR AI OR "Computer Vision System" OR "Machine Learning" OR "Transfer Learning" OR Complexity OR "Complex Model" OR "Big Data" OR "Data Mining" "Agent-Based Modelling" OR "Systems Thinking" OR "System Theory" OR "System Analyses" OR "Artificial Neural Network" OR Bayes OR "Bayesian Logistic" OR "Bayesian Networks" OR "Decision Tree Classifier" OR "Deep Learning" OR "learning algorithms" OR "Neural Network" OR "Random Forest" OR "Support Vector Machine") (Topic) and (Performance OR Healthcare OR Injury OR "Injury prevention" OR "Injury risk" OR Load OR Control OR "Load control" OR Improvement OR Enhancement OR Management OR Optimize OR Regulation OR Reduction OR Decrease) (Topic) and Article (Document Types) and 2023 or 2022 or 2021 or 2020 or 2019 (Publication Years)

Criteria for Eligibility and the Selection Process 
Two reviewers (AAMM and MJDM) will conduct the screening, extraction, and critical assessment processes independently. 
They will define the inclusion and exclusion criteria and categorised the titles and abstracts in accordance with the subject matter. 
If uncertainty arose, the author JLSR will be involved in the final judgment. The inclusion criteria is as follows:

1.	Papers written in English. 
2.	The work was published as a full-text, original research report in a peer-reviewed journal in the period October 2019 to October 2023 (last 5 years).
3.	The information supplied only applies to team sports participants and not individual sports.
4.	The main topic of the paper was study performance or healthcare.
5.	The research is conducted using elite, professional, or high-level sports teams.
6.	The AI approaches or algorithms must be outlined and described.

The following were the criteria for exclusion:
1.	Studies not involving machine learning-based solutions;
2.	Studies on non-professional and/or underage players; 
3.	Reviews and meta-analyses; 
4.	Study protocols; 
5.	Full-text papers not available; 

Quality Evaluation 
The STROBE checklist (Von Elm et al., 2007) will be employed to assess the quality of the identified research publications and mitigate any biases. 
The studies included will be prospective and retrospective cohort studies, case-and-control and cross-sectional designs or clinical trials.