Physical exercise and COVID-19: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: To carry out a retrospective bibliometric analysis of articles, published since the beginning of the pandemic, which addressed the topic of physical exercise and COVID-19, in order to provide a reference of origin for research on the topic.EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: This is a bibliometric study, which addressed the production / dissemination, through information recorded in the PubMed database, about physical exercise and COVID-19, published since the beginning of the pandemic.EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: 111 publications in total were retrieved from PubMed in the first round of research and 93 publications were identified after reviewing the study titles and abstracts. Eligibility was assessed for these 93 publications throughout the text and 76 were entered after removing duplicates and irrelevant records. According to Bradford’s Law, we identified 76 publications in 53 journals from seven different countries. The countries of the journals that published the most were the United States (20, 37.7%) and the United Kingdom (15, 28.3%). The journals that most published on the subject were: European Journal of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Obesity, Encephale and Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, each with 03 studies. According to Lotka’s Law, the most productive authors: Lavie CJ Smith I, with 4 articles published. When evaluating the word frequencies by Zipf’s Law, it was observed that 16 words had at least 10 occurrences, with the words Covid-19, Exercise and Pandemic with 80, 39 and 38 occurrences respectively.CONCLUSIONS: According to our analysis, this research provides a current scenario of how studies related to physical exercise and COVID-19 are going on in the world, serving as a reference for researchers on this topic.