Sports Medicine Specialization Theses: Bibliometric Analysis of the Last 15 Years in Turkey

Abstract

Objective: To conduct bibliometric analysis of the theses completed by sports medicine specialists in the last 15 years and to examine the theses' conversion into articles and their contribution to the literature.
Materials and methods: The theses which were completed between 2002-2017 and accessible by open access were obtained from the digital archive of Database of National Thesis Center of the Turkish Council of Higher Education. The publication of the thesis as an article or not has been examined via Google Scholar.
Result: As a result of digital archive investigation 60 theses was reached. 28.3 % (n = 17) of these were completed by female specialists. Ninety percent (n = 54) of the theses were designed as human studies, 8.3% (n = 5) as animal experiments and 1.7% (n = 1) as field surveys. The topics related with exercise and sports physiology were 35% (n = 21), sports injuries and sportive rehabilitation 35% (n = 21), chronic diseases and exercise 15% (n = 9), sports cardiology 5% (n = 3). There was no difference in bibliometric data (p> 0.05) according to the author's gender and academical degrees of supervisors. 48.3% (n=29) of the theses were published as an article.
Conclusion: The studies about geriatrics and sport, female and sport, disability and sport, team physician, emergencies in sports medicine and organ transplantation have not been selected as a thesis topic yet. There is a need to conduct thesis studies on these topics to produce higher level scientific articles.

Cite this article as: Ercan S. Sports medicine specialization theses: Bibliometric analysis of the last 15 years in Turkey. Turk J Sports Med. 2020;55(1):21-7.