This dataset includes information regarding participant sex from 6 sport and exercise science journals between the years 2014 and 2020. The dataset includes information on the total number of participants included in each study, the breakdown of participant sex for each article, first author surname, if the article title included the sex of specific cohort (e.g. “Facilitators and barriers to physical activity for teenage girls”), and also captured if the article focuses on a sex-specific health topic, e.g. prostate cancer, pregnancy, menstrual cycle etc. The data also include information on the number reviews and non-human research (e.g. animal or cell studies) conducted in each year for each of the six journals.

Each journal archive was accessed and all articles published from Jan 1st 2014 to Dec 31st 2020 were individually reviewed by the first author. They were included in the analysis if they presented information on the number of participants included and participant sex. If this information was not presented in the abstract, the main text was reviewed. Terms used to capture sex data included "male", "females", "men", "women", "boys" and "girls". The total number of participants, the number of males/females, if sex was identified within the title and the topic of the article were recorded. Excluded articles were categorised as review paper or non-human (e.g. cell studies).