In collaboration with Payame Noor University and Scientific Association of Sports Management of Iran

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant professor, Department of computer and Information Technology Engineering, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran.

2 PhD student, Department of Information technology engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Scientometrics is one of the most common methods for scientific evaluations. The use of network analysis approach has been proposed in recent years as a suitable method for visualizing the co-word and co-author networks. The purpose of this study was a network-based analysis of a collection of articles published in the Journal of Applied Research in Sports Management since 2012 (384 articles). Published articles were examined from various aspects such as co-authors network, co-word network, and semantic network of articles. In this study, a proposed method for extracting and preprocessing the data required to illustrate different networks of articles and analyze them was proposed. PHP language was used for crawling and data processing and Python language and Gephi 0.9.2 software were used for network analysis and visualization of different networks. The results of co-word analysis show that in published articles, topics such as education, marketing, and organizational issues in the field of sports management are addressed more than other fields. Also, the clustering of the co-author network showed that the authors of the articles were more inclined to form small scientific groups in the form of universities or research institutes of their respective organizations. The presentation of the thematic map of the articles makes the researchers more aware of the status of the researches and also discovers the thematic gaps of the scientific researches.

Keywords