Research trends and prospects of sport-related concussion: A bibliometric study between 2000 to 2021.

BACKGROUND: Research around sport-related concussion (SRC) has made great advances since the 21st century. However, few studies systematically analyzed the publications of the research of SRC.

METHODS: A bibliometric analysis was conducted with articles data from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze publication trends, most productive countries, institutions, authors, journals and research fields and references with highest citation number. VOSviewer software was used to perform network visualization and keywords co-occurrence analysis. CiteSpace software was used to perform reference co-citation analysis.

RESULTS: 1) Publications and citations number of the research of SRC progressively increased between 2000 to 2021; 2) The USA was the leading country in the research of SRC; 3) Extensive cooperation among countries, institutions and authors was prevalent in SRC research; 4) Mccrory P, Mccrea M, Guskiewicz KM were the three most prolific and influential authors; 5) Research of SRC involved multi-disciplinary perspectives and approaches; 6) Research of SRC mainly covered aspects of primary prevention, diagnosis and management, and the latter two gained more attention in recent years; 7) Specific questions about "education", "predictors", "youth", "exercise", "reliability", "validity", and "base-line" were the research frontiers of SRC.

CONCLUSIONS: The attention on research of SRC have been rapidly increased in recent years. Our work depicted a holistic overview that summarizes the hotspots, frontiers and prospects of SRC, thus providing valuable comprehension information and research directions guidance for those who are interested in or are dedicated to the research of SRC.