Abstract
Research Question: Although fitness equipment is recognised worldwide as a tool for physical activities and a sustainable result in optimizing human movements within a wide range of environments, the state of the art and scientific advances have not been analysed from a bibliometric point of view. Research Methods: Using descriptive bibliometric software, this study examined the scientific production, and the most prolific authors, articles, and institutions. Bibliometric maps were used to visualise the content of published articles and to determine the most prolific terms, co-citation, and co-authorship. Results and Findings: A total of 678 original papers were retrieved from 447 journals in Web of Science®. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research had the highest number of articles (25), while the American Journal of Preventive Medicine the highest number of global citations (656). Citation and co-authorship networks were defined. Implications: Research on fitness equipment is still in an early maturation stage with 30 years of scientific development in its timeline. Fitness equipment and its related fields of application could represent a real step into a more sustainable balance between the economic, environmental, and social spheres.
Highlights
Fitness equipment is an important part of a fitness routine and has become an unescapable trend due to the rapid development of electronic and information technologies [1]
The papers for the study were extracted from the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), which were evaluated via Web of Science® (WoS) (Thomson Reuters, New York, USA)
The specific case of ‘exercise equipment’ has been discarded due to the focuses offered by scientific contributions: since the bibliometric analysis has been founded on product life-cycle processes and sustainable ways of development most of these publications embrace topics such as purely medicine-surgery/rehabilitation protocols, or applied sports physiology and overall experiments/tests which could not lead to actual evaluation usefulness
Summary
Fitness equipment is an important part of a fitness routine and has become an unescapable trend due to the rapid development of electronic and information technologies [1]. A fitness brand is the physical or incorporeal product, and the knowledge that the equipment has been well researched by the manufacturers; it is the best option for any group of final users that needs to face with it at any level [2]. Bi-directional cooperation between academic and for-profit corporate settings has barely been practiced, even though it has been proved to work efficiently. This fact is confirmed by the reduced number of scientific contributions in the last 30 years, since the end of the 1980s (formally known as the real starting point of the fitness industry). There is an evident lack of international scientific congresses that could bring together knowledge of this fitness industry sub-field
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