Abstract: This paper based on the Fourth “Face-to-Face: Authors · Reviewers · Editors — Frontiers in Sports Academia Dialogue”, explores the essential characteristics and conceptual boundaries of iconic concepts distinctive to Chinese sports science, analyzes their foundational role in constructing an autonomous knowledge system for the discipline, summarizes the recurrent misconceptions in the current construction of indigenous concepts, and elucidates the underlying construction logic, research orientations, and dissemination norms of iconic concepts characterized by subjectivity, originality, and uniqueness. Furthermore, it examines the disruptive impacts of artificial intelligence on knowledge production, peer review, and publishing in sports science, as well as the salient issues currently facing the field. It reconceptualizes the evolving roles, core responsibilities, and requisite competencies for authors, reviewers, and editors in the AI era, and proposes key directions for AI-related academic ethics, authorship and writing norms, review standards, and publishing governance in sports journals. The paper concludes by articulating a guiding principle for the future development of sports science, encapsulated in the framework of “technology as enabler, scholarship as foundation, rules as precursor, and ecosystem self-governance”.