Publication and citation analysis of articles published in the European Journal for Sport and Society, 2004–2020

Introduction and background

This editorial reports the results of a publication and citation analysis of articles which were published in the European Journal for Sport and Society (EJSS) since its inception in 2004. It looks at all articles published in the journal between 2004 and 2020 and assigns citations at the beginning of 2022. The empirical analysis seeks to identify the characteristics of published articles and the drivers of the number of citations.

The present analysis adds to the body of research conducting bibliometric analyses of articles in academic journals. Within sport sociology, previous research by Seippel (2018) reviewing publications has focussed on the Sociology of Sport Journal (SSJ), the International Review for Sociology of Sport (IRSS), and the Journal of Sport and Social Issues (JSSI). The EJSS has not yet been included in bibliometric analyses.

However, such an analysis is important as learning about the types of publications in EJSS and resulting citations help to understand our discipline. Specifically, understanding the publishing behaviour of the European sport sociological community is critical for self-reflections and for designing evidence-based advice for future publication efforts. Moreover, such an analysis can be informative for the Editor and the Associate Editors of the journal as understanding the characteristics of publication and the drivers of citations can guide editorial decision-making.

Methods

Data collection and sample

All articles published in the journal between 2004 and 2020 were entered into a database (N = 362). These articles include all types of publications, including research articles (92.0%), editorials (6.8%), comments, introduction to special issues, and study reports (all together 1.2%). The latter three article categories have not received any citations and were, therefore, excluded from the analysis. In the early years of the journal, editorials rather focussed on administrative information and had no content-related title, whereas editorials in more recent years included a discussion of actual topics and academic debates, for example on critical questions of Big Data (Spaaij & Thiel, 2017), the role of theory (Thiel et al., 2018), and sport in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic (Evans et al., 2020). Given the aim of collecting citations and examining the role of topics, the present sample only includes research articles and editorials with a title. This means the empirical analysis is based on the subsample of n = 264 publications.

Several characteristics of publications were collected, including the number of co-authors, the share of women co-authors, the number of affiliations involved, and the number of countries of these affiliations. The number of affiliations reflects the number of involved universities, with co-authors from different departments, schools, or faculties within one universities being considered as one affiliation. Moreover, information about the number of article pages, the number in the issue, and the years of publication (i.e. the number of years the article has been published) was obtained. In preparation of the citation analysis, the number of citations of each publication was obtained from Google scholar on 5 January 2022. The citations per year were calculated by dividing the total number of citations by the years of publication.

Empirical analysis

The empirical analysis consists of three main steps. Starting with the publication analysis, the publications were assigned to different topics based on the titles of the articles. The categories of the topics were developed in line with previous research (Seippel, 2018). If the topic was not clear based on the title, the abstract was accessed. Since one publication could speak to several topics, the aggregated percentage points add up to more than 100%. In a second step, a descriptive analysis of the publication characteristics was carried out.

Third, and turning to the citation analysis, the factors affecting the number of citations were analysed using regression analysis. In the regression analysis, the total and yearly number of citations serves as dependent variables. One precondition of regression analysis is the normal distribution of dependent variables (Hair et al., 2010). Figure 1 visualises the distribution of the total number of citations. The figure indicates that the variable is right-skewed (positively skewed), meaning that a high share of publications has received only few citations, whereas only a few publications have received many citations. Therefore, the natural logarithm (LN) of the total number of citations and the yearly citations is used because the logged variables are closer to the normal distribution. Figure 1 visualises the logged citations (total), indicating that this variable is closer to the normal distribution.

Figure 1. Distribution of citations and logged citations of EJSS publications (n = 264), 2004–2020.

Altogether, four regression analyses were estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS), two linear models for the non-logged dependent variables and two log-linear models for LN Citations (Total) and LN Citations (year). The following publication characteristics were entered as independent variables: Topic, number of co-authors, share of women co-authors, number of affiliations, number of countries, years of publication, number of article pages, and number in issue.

Results and discussion

Topics of publications

Figure 2 gives an overview of the topics that were addressed in the articles. All publications could be assigned to 19 different topics. Most articles examined sport participation (45.5%), followed by sport organisations (22.3%), integration (12.1%), social and cultural aspects (12.1%), as well as talent development and coaching (12.1%). Fewer articles examined aspects of sport policy (10.6%) and sport development (9.5%). Altogether, 9.1% of articles employed a gender perspective (9.1%), whereas 8.7% examined sport events and fans, as well as aspects related to different types of media. The remaining percentage points can be obtained from Figure 2. The identified topics are similar to the review of Seippel (2018) who analysed three other sport sociology journals (SSJ, IRSS, JSSI). They are on the one hand indicative of the focus on sport participation and physical activity, but on the other hand also of the variety of topics published in the journal.

Figure 2. Overview of topics published in EJSS (multiple nominations possible), 2004–2020.

Most cited publications

Table 1 summarises the 10 most cited articles (as of January 2022) since the foundation of the journal. Notably, the number of citations might be different from the journal’s website which stem from the publisher. The table shows that the two most cited articles are related to elite sports and talent development: Güllich and Emrich’s (2006) evaluation of the support of young athletes in elite sport gathered 161 citations, whereas Pitsch et al.’s (2007) examination of doping in German elite sports was cited 120 times. Notably, talent development only ranked third in terms of frequently published topics, whereas it ranked first in terms of citations.

Table 1. Ten most cited publications in EJSS (as of 5 January 2022), 2004–2020.

Rank	Author(s)	Type	Title	Year	Citations
1	Arne Güllich & Eike Emrich	Research	Evaluation of the support of young athletes in the elite sports system	2006	161
2	Werner Pitsch, Eike Emrich & Markus Klein	Research	Doping in elite sports in Germany: results of a www survey	2007	120
3	Ilse Hartmann-Tews	Research	Social stratification in sport and sport policy in the European Union	2006	113
4	Gregor Hovemann & Pamela Wicker	Research	Determinants of sport participation in the European Union	2009	113
5	Adam B. Evans et al.	Editorial	Sport in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic: towards an agenda for research in the sociology of sport	2020	108
6	Christoph Breuer & Pamela Wicker	Research	Demographic and economic factors influencing inclusion in the German sport system – a microanalysis of the years 1985 to 2005	2008	101
7	Arne Güllich & Eike Emrich	Research	Individualistic and Collectivistic Approach in Athlete Support Programmes in the German High-Performance Sport System	2012	68
8	Chris Gratton, Nick Rowe & Anthony J. Veal	Research	International Comparisons of Sports participation in European Countries: an Update of the COMPASS Project	2011	66
9	Jan Janssens & Paul Verweel	Research	The significance of sports clubs within multicultural society. On the accumulation of social capital by migrants in culturally ‘mixed’ and ‘separate’ sports clubs	2014	66
10	Siegfried Nagel	Research	Goals of sports clubs	2008	63

Two articles drew 113 citations each: These are Hartmann-Tews' (2006) analysis of the social stratification of sport and sport policy in the European Union and Hovemann and Wicker’s (2009) study of the factors affecting individual sport participation in the member countries of the European Union. These two articles reflect the journal’s topical focus of sport participation. The fifth most cited publication is an editorial from 2020 discussing the role of sport in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and proposing a research agenda for the sociology of sport (Evans et al., 2020). Although the academic community only had about 1.5 years to cite this work, it has already gathered 108 citations.

Turning to the second half of the table, the correlates and patterns of sport participation are the topic of the sixth and eighth most cited articles of Breuer and Wicker (2008) and Gratton et al. (2011), whereas the article ranked seventh focuses again on talent development and elite sport (Güllich & Emrich, 2012). The last two articles on the top ten list relate to the second most frequently published topic of sport clubs (Janssens & Verweel, 2014; Nagel, 2008).

Collectively, at least four observations can be described. First, nine out of the 10 most cited publications are research articles, whereas one publication is an editorial. Second, seven of the 10 most cited articles have been written by German scholars. Third, seven of the most cited publications are about either talent development and elite sports, or about sport participation, indicating that these topics tend to draw comparably more citations than the other topics in Figure 2. Fourth, many of the most cited articles are research articles that were published in the early years of the journal, meaning that the sport sociological community had over a decade to cite these articles in their publications. This observation implies that an early publication year is clearly helpful for collecting many citations, but it is not necessary – as the 5th rank of the Evans et al. (2020) editorial indicates. The latter observation is important given that calculated journal impact factors only include articles published in the last two years.

(Further) Characteristics of publications

Table 2 displays further characteristics of publications in EJSS beyond the article topic. The table includes descriptive statistics for the whole time period (2004-2020) and for the last two years (2019-2020) – the period which is decisive for the calculation of impact factors. Starting with the whole time period, publications have been cited 18.03 times in total and 3.19 times per year on average. When only considering the last two years, total citations drop to 7.93 on average, whereas citations per year increase to 5.98.

Table 2. Characteristics of publications in EJSS.

	2004–2020 (n = 264)		2019–2020 (n = 44)
Characteristic	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Citations (total)	18.03	26.27	7.93	16.01
Citations (year)	3.19	7.31	5.98	15.94
Number of co-authors	2.07	1.69	2.27	1.56
Share of women co-authors (in %)	27.7	37.3	36.0	41.1
Number of affiliations (universities)	1.52	1.02	1.93	1.70
Number of countries	1.24	0.69	1.45	1.04
Years of publication	7.53	4.70	1.50	0.50
Number of pages	16.89	5.88	17.20	5.32
Number in issue	3.79	1.79	3.30	1.67

The table also shows that publications have 2.07 co-authors on average. Publications in the journal are mostly the product of a single author (43.6%), two co-authors (29.2%), and three co-authors (17.4%). These figures appear to be on the lower end of the range of the number of co-authors in journal articles in sports sciences, but also in the social sciences of sport. When only considering publications in 2019 and 2020, the average number of co-authors increases up to 2.27, with 36.4% of publications being written by a single author and another 29.5% by two co-authors.

The average share of women co-authors is 27.7%, with the higher standard deviation of 37.3 already indicating the skewness of the distribution. More than half (57.2%) of all publications have been written without any women co-authors, whereas 15.5% of publications have only women co-authors. Only 11.4% of publications have a gender equal authorship. These figures demonstrate that publications and research in the journal are male-driven, indicating room for improvement in terms of gender diversity. Publications from 2019 and 2020 are characterised by a share of women co-authors of 36.0%. However, still 47.7% of publications have a men-only authorship. Hence, the share of women co-authors has increased over time, but the figures are still indicative of a gender publication gap.

On average, authors come from 1.52 different affiliations that are located in 1.24 countries. Almost two-thirds of publications (65.6%) have been written by scholars from one affiliation, with another quarter (24.6%) being drafted by scholars from two different affiliations. Altogether, in 83.7% of all publications, co-authors stem from the same country. These figures are indicative of scholars mostly writing joint publications with colleagues from their own university or other institutions in the same country. The corresponding numbers for the 2019–2020 publications are 1.93 affiliations and 1.45 countries, suggesting slight increases in both parameters.

Articles in the sample consist of 16.89 pages. This figure is affected by the journal’s formatting requirements and word/page limits which have also changed over the last years. Nevertheless, the 2019 and 2020 publications have a similar average of 17.20 pages. Articles have been published since 7.53 years on average and the average number in the issue is 3.79. The latter figures reflect the increasing size and volume of the journal, with the number of articles per issue increasing over time, whereas the number of book reviews and conference reports has been reduced.

Determinants of citations

Table 3 summarises the results of the regression analyses for the number of total and yearly citations. The table only displays the coefficients of variables that were statistically significant in at least one model. However, all models include the full set of independent variables announced in the empirical analysis section. The regression models explain between 16.2% and 35.1% of the variation in the dependent variable.

Table 3. Determinants of citations of EJSS publications (n = 264), 2004–2020.

	Citations (total)	LN Citations (total)	Citations (year)	LN Citations (year)
Sport events, fans	n.s.	−0.672**	n.s.	−0.531*
Tourism	n.s.	−1.006*	n.s.	−0.982*
Talent development, coaching	n.s.	−0.443**	n.s.	−0.560**
Health	n.s.	−0.673*	5.970***	n.s.
Education system	n.s.	−0.657*	n.s.	n.s.
Number of co-authors	n.s.	n.s.	−0.691**	n.s.
Share of women co-authors	0.077*	n.s.	n.s.	0.003*
Number of affiliations (universities)	n.s.	n.s.	4.406***	0.292***
Years of publication	1.829***	0.094***	n.s.	n.s.
Number of pages	0.927***	0.059***	n.s.	0.056***
Number in issue	−2.005**	−0.082*	n.s.	−0.107***
All other variables	n.s.	n.s.	n.s.	n.s.
R²	0.162	0.220	0.351	0.260
F	1.837**	2.693***	5.395***	3.345***

Note: Displayed are only the significant (unstandardised) coefficients; n.s.: not significant (p > 0.1); *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.

The results reveal that out of the 19 different article topics, only five have a significant association with citations, which is, however, mostly negative in nature. Specifically, the log-linear models indicate that publications on sport events and fans, tourism, as well as talent development and coaching have received significantly fewer total and yearly citations than publications on other topics. Likewise, publications on health and the education system have gathered significantly fewer citations in total (in the log-linear model). The only significant positive effect is evident for non-logged citations per year.

These findings are in part different to the descriptive overview of the most cited publications (Table 1). Although Table 1 only includes the most cited articles, the present analysis includes all articles of the journal and all articles on these topics. This means that only a few select publications on talent development and coaching in elite sport have gathered a relatively high number of citations, whereas publications on this topic are generally cited significantly less. Moreover, although many articles on sport participation were among the ten most cited publications, this topic is neither a significant driver nor constraint of citations. Collectively, the regression results indicate that it is not sufficient to inspect the number of citations descriptively, as more general tendencies can be learned from the drivers of citations when conducting inferential statistical analysis such as regression analyses.

Concerning authorship, the number of co-authors has a significant negative effect on the citations per year. This effect implies that articles with fewer co-authors have received more annual citations. The gender composition of authorship is also relevant as the share of women co-authors has a significant positive association with total citations and logged yearly citations. Hence, the higher the share of women co-authors, the higher the number of citations. The same applies to the number of affiliations: The more affiliations involved, the more citations.

Intuitively, the total number of citations is significantly and positively affected by the years of publication. This means that, in general, the number of citations tends to increase with increasing number of years since the publication in the journal and the assignment to an issues, respectively. Interestingly, the number of pages per article has a significant positive association with the number of citations in three out of four models. This effect implies that longer articles have received more citations. It might be partially reflective of the fact that research articles are longer than editorials, but also raises some questions regarding the journal’s word limit and its reinforcement. Ironically, a core task of journal editors is to reinforce a journal’s word limit, as many authors write (too) long articles and ask for more space when incorporating revisions. The present finding indicates that more flexibility in this respect could benefit citation numbers.

The number in an issue has a significant negative in three out of four models. This effect means that publications published at the beginning of an issue have gathered more citations than those that were assigned to later spots in an issue. This finding is important as it is beyond the control of authors; it is the result of an editorial decision. It means that editors need to carefully consider the order of publications within an issue as publications receiving a more prominent (early) sport in the issue will receive (more reads and) more citations.

Conclusion

The present editorial has conducted a publication and citation analysis of the EJSS including all research articles and editorials with titles from 2004 to 2020. Such an analysis enhances our understanding of the publication behaviour of the European sport sociology community and gives important insights for editors and reviewers of the journal. The publication analysis indicated that publications have been dedicated to 19 different topics, with publications on talent development and elite sport as well as sport participation gathering the most citations over time. Topics that have recently gained importance in society such as health because of the Covid-19 pandemic and environmental sustainability because of the negative impacts of climate change (e.g. extreme weather events like flooding, extreme heat, drought, storms) are less frequently represented in the journal up to now. It is assumed that these topics will draw more publications and citations in the future.

Publications in the journal are characterised by relatively few co-authors that tend to come from the same affiliation or at least from the same country. As women co-authors only make up about one-quarter of all co-authors, research seems to be male-driven. Hence, there is potential for improving gender diversity and national diversity of the journal’s authorship. Increasing diversity could be achieved by encouraging collaborations between scholars beyond gender as well as beyond university and country borders. The annual conference of the European Association for Sociology of Sport (EASS) could be used as a platform to encourage, facilitate, and enhance such collaborations within the European sport sociology community. Other ways of increasing gender diversity among co-authors would be by appointing more women PhD students, employing more women scholars at universities, and providing academic and publishing support for women scholars. Moreover, on the editorial end, an open mindset towards topics typically studied by women scholars such as gender aspects of sport might be another means to enhance gender diversity levels.

Ultimately, increasing gender diversity and the number of different affiliations on publications benefits the citations. The citation analysis revealed that citation levels are hardly driven by article topics, but more so by (higher levels of) gender diversity and affiliation diversity of co-authors. Editorial decisions such as the order of publications in an issue also play a role and need to be considered by editors and publishers.

Since an existing review excluded the EJSS (Seippel, 2018), the present analysis has provided first insights into the patterns of publication and resulting citations in the journal since its foundation. Notwithstanding, the analysis is not without limitations which can provide avenues for future research. One limitation relates to the date and source of gathered citations. Citation numbers are dynamic, meaning that gathering citations at a different point in time might yield different outcomes. Also, using a different source than Google Scholar such as the citation numbers provided by the publisher on the journal’s website might lead to different findings.

Second, the present analysis is limited to data at the publication level. Future research should collect data at the author level to enrich the analysis with author-specific characteristics such as year of PhD, country, H-Index, and ethnicity. The present analysis included the gender of co-authors, as but no measure of ethnicity. An author’s gender can more easily be identified based on the name (for most cases), whereas a photo-based search is necessary for obtaining information on ethnicity. Future research should include authors’ ethnicity and ethnic diversity within a group of co-authors in such analysis.

Another limitation relates to the focus on articles that have already been published in an issue, meaning that online first articles have not been considered. Some of these articles might have been dedicated to health aspects and were written and accepted during the Covid-19 pandemic, but have not yet been assigned to an issue. Future publication and citation analysis of the EJSS should include these articles and examine if the patterns identified at the beginning of 2022 hold.

Acknowledgments

The project on which this report is based was promoted with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the reference number 01FP21009. Responsibility for the contents of this publication lies with the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.