A Scientometric Analysis of Iranian Research on Sports Medicine in Islamic World Science Citation Center

Applying bibliometric indicators, this study aims at investigating the status of Persian sports medicine research based on the records in the Islamic World Science Citation Database (ISC).

Material and Methods: 

This was a scientometric applied study in which the bibliometric techniques and social network analysis were used in conducting the investigations. The study population consisted of 1566 Persian articles published in the field of sports medicine indexed in ISC database until 2018. BibExcel, UCINet, Netdraw, and VOSviewer were among the software that were used for analyzing data and drawing maps in the study.

Initial analysis of the data showed that 1566 articles under study received a total of 266 citations, with an average of 0.17 citations per article, which is a very low level. “Sadeghi H”, “Alizadeh M”, and “Rajabi R” were considered to be the Iranian top researchers in the field of sports medicine in terms of the number of articles. “Ebrahimi Takamjani E” owned the best position in the network. Finally, the results uncovered that 8 thematic clusters were formed in sports medicine research.

The results showed a relatively steady growth in the number of sports medicine articles indexed in ISC in 2010s. Moreover, according to the authorship patterns, it seems that sports medicine researchers are very interested in participatory activities. Moreover, given the subject clusters of co-word analysis, research in this field seems to cover a wide range of topics.