Jenkins, Anna

Background: Bibliometric citation analyses have been widely used in medicine to help researchers gain foundational knowledge about a topic and identify subtopics of popular interest for further investigations. There is a lack of similar research in collegiate athletics. Purpose: To identify the 100 most-cited research publications related to collegiate athletics. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: The Clarivate Analytics Web of Knowledge database was used to generate a list of articles relating to collegiate athletics on January 24, 2022. Articles were filtered by the total number of citations, and the 100 most-cited articles were selected. For each article, we identified and analyzed the following: author name, publication year, country of origin, journal name, article type, main research topic area, competitive level, sex of study population, and level of evidence. Results: Of the top 100 most-cited articles, 63 were related to medicine. In total, 96% of articles were published in the United States, and 80% were published in the year 2000 or later. Of the top 100 articles, 85 were observational; only 5 were experimental. The sport most represented was soccer, followed by football, baseball, and basketball. Of the top 100 articles, 21 were published in a single journal, the American Journal of Sports Medicine. Ten authors published ≥5 of the top 100 most-cited studies. Conclusion: The majority of top 100 articles were published in the United States after 1999 and primarily focused on medicine-related topics. Soccer was studied by more articles than football, baseball, and basketball. An author’s prestige may have influenced the likelihood of citation. The top 100 most-cited studies provide researchers, medical students, residents, and fellows with a foundational list of the most important and influential academic contributions to the literature on collegiate athletics.

Purpose To describe and compare the epidemiology of lumbar spine injuries (LSIs) in women’s and men’s ice hockey during the 2009‐2010 to 2013‐2014 academic years and to investigate sex‐specific differences, using data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Injury Surveillance Program (ISP) database. Methods The incidence and characteristics of LSIs were identified utilizing the NCAA ISP. Rates of injury were calculated as number of injuries divided by total number of athlete exposures (AEs). AEs were defined as any student participation in one NCAA‐sanctioned practice or competition. Incidence rate ratios (IRRs) were calculated to compare rates of injury between season, event type, mechanism, injury recurrence, and time lost from sport, and injury proportion ratios (IPRs) were calculated to examine the differences in injury rates between men and women. Results There were a total of 165 LSIs from an average of 10 and 19 women’s and men’s teams, respectively, calculated to 1,254 LSIs nationally. Women were 2.48 times more likely to suffer a noncontact injury than men (95% CI: 1.33‐4.61), whereas men were more likely than women to suffer contact LSIs (IPR: .51 [95% CI: .28‐.92]). In Divisions II and III, women were 6.64 (95% CI: 4.14‐10.64) and 1.28 (95% CI: 1.12‐1.46) times more likely to suffer LSIs than men, respectively. Conclusions Women and men were similarly likely to suffer an LSI, but sex‐specific differences existed in a mechanism of injury and likelihood of injury within NCAA Divisions.