A bibliometric review of the scientific production in handball

Abstract

© 2015: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia, Murcia (España). The aim of the present study was to provide a bibliometric review of the scientific production in handball. Publications were collected from the Web of Science and MEDLINE databases for the period 1900-2012 and 1950-2012 respectively. The analysis assessed the document types and languages, annual trend of published articles, average number of authors per article, research disciplines and topics, trend of publication in research disciplines, major journals, author productivity, and country distribution of publications. Only the papers focused mainly on handball were considered, for a total of 373 articles under study. There was a significant increase in number of published articles and average number of authors per article in recent years, which allows considering handball an expanding research field both in terms of scientific production and research collaboration. Sports medicine was the most active research discipline, the studies focused on injuries the main topic. In the last two decades there was a remarkable annual growth in the disciplines of sport training theory, anthropometry and biomechanics. European authors participated in 87.94% of the articles, Norwegians the most active, revealing Europe's big dominance in handball research. This study provides baseline information on future research directions for researchers and academic institutions interested in handball.