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Abstract - Olympic combat sports research output in the Web of Science: a sport sciences centered analysis

Background and aim. The Olympic Games are the world’s most important sport competition, and Sport Sciences have been regarded to play an important role for sport success at the Olympics. The combat sports of boxing, fencing, judo, taekwondo and wrestling represent 20-25% of all medals disputed in this competition, and karate will be included Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020. In this context, this study aimed at describing the scenario of scientific research on Olympic combat sports in the Sport Sciences field.
Methodology. Data search was performed in the area of Sport Sciences of the Web of Science core collection database. The variables selected for analysis were total number of publications, h-index, citations analyses and top ten types of documents, countries, research institutions, languages and journals.
Results. A total of 2,752 publications were retrieved, achieving an h-index of 74, 34,255 citations and an average of 12.45 citations per item. The research was mainly published in English (95.35%), in article form (75.14%) and in the United States of America (27.87%), while the University of Sao Paulo (4.69%) and Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (11.56%) were respectively the institution and the source leading their top ten lists.
Conclusion. Combat sports literature indexed in the Web of Science database amounted to nearly 1% of the Sport Sciences research area, showing that this field of study is still starting to consolidate. The connection between sport practice and research, the indexation of more combat sports journals, and the increase in the number and collaborations among researchers are suggested as potential ways to strengthen combat sports research.