Highly Cited Papers in Sport Sciences: Identification and Conceptual Analysis

Highly cited papers reflect the top 1% of field and publication year papers. Highly cited papers are important in terms of the number of citations they receive in their subject area and often attract the attention of most researchers in terms of their high quality. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze highly cited papers in the field of sport sciences from a bibliometric perspective and to identify subject areas that have the potential to be highly cited. This research analyzed highly cited papers in the field of sport sciences published during 2010-2020, indexed in the Web of Science of the Clarivate Analytics. The results show that most of the highly cited papers in sport sciences are in sport medicine and published by prominent and renowned researchers. Moreover, most of these papers were contributed by researchers from the European and American continents. The results also show that the United States of America (USA), McMaster University of Canada, and Professor Lars Engebretsen led in publishing highly cited papers in sport sciences. It can be concluded that five thematic clusters were formed by highly cited papers in sport sciences, most of which were in the subject area of sport injuries and exercise physiology. Only highly cited papers in the field of sport sciences were analyzed, and a thorough analysis of all papers in this field is needed for a definite conclusion. This study identifies that the subject area has a great impact on a paper to be highly cited, and only some subject areas in the discipline of Sport Sciences have the potential to be highly cited.