Mapping football research for sport education
a bibliometric analysis of the Dergipark database
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22633/rpge.v30iesp2.21394Keywords:
Football, Bibliometric analysis, DergiPark, Sport educationAbstract
A corpus of 1,411 articles indexed in DergiPark and published between 1967 and 2025 was compiled through searches using the terms “futbol,” “football,” and “soccer.” The bibliometric analysis combined performance indicators and science mapping. An exponential growth in research output was observed, with 46.92% of the articles published between 2021 and 2025. The studies were distributed across 343 journals and 110 disciplinary categories, highlighting the multidisciplinary nature of football as a research topic. The proportion of articles published in English increased from less than 5% before 2010 to 35.8% between 2021 and 2025, indicating growing internationalization. Sports Medicine predominated (38.31%), although its relative share declined as Sports Training, Sports Activity Management, Exercise Sciences, and Educational Studies expanded. The findings point to the need to broaden methodological approaches, strengthen interdisciplinary research teams, and adopt bilingual publication strategies to enhance the educational and international impact of Turkish research on football.
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