Bibliometric Networks and financing in Brazilian Physical Education Research

Resumo

In this paper, we looked at citations, major institutions, research themes and funding in physical education and sports studies from Brazilian authors to evaluate their impact and insertion worldwide.  A bibliometric analysis using data from international (Web of Science and Scopus) and national (Sucupira) databases followed by visualization of similarities. Data was downloaded from Scopus and SciVal (Elsevier) and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) databases as well as Sucupira in the area of Physical Education as defined by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior in Brazil. Data were analysed using Visualisation of Similarities (Vosviewer), correlation, regression and variance analyses to examine the relationship between quantity and quality indicators. Major topics researched include obesity, exercise, joints, cartilage, tendons and muscles (ankle, knee, hip, shoulder) as well as factors linked to age (child, adolescent and ageing), in line with those researched worldwide.  The correlation between the number of publications per topic worldwide and in Brazil is 0.79.   There was a concentration of publishing in the area of physical education in Brazil with 80% of papers being published by only 12% of the institutions that publish on this subject.  Brazilian authors in physical education cooperate with, and receive financing from, institutions and funding agencies worldwide, but papers funded by Brazilian agencies have lower impact.   Brazilian researchers are researching similar topics to international researchers, but citation analysis shows relatively closed clusters of researchers with little interaction between them.