Bibliometric analysis of the scientific evolution of physical activity in preschool children

The aim of this study was to analyse scientific developments in physical activity in preschool children. The publications were collected from the Core Collection of the "Web of Science" platform, which had the words "Preschool or Kindergarten" and "physical activity" in the titles, during the period 2015-2020, obtaining 136 articles. The analysis assessed the annual trend of published articles, distribution of publications by country and first author's institution, first author's origin, the average number of authors and citations per article, leading journals, subject area, sample characteristics, methodologies, and intervention programs. There has been an evolution of scientific production in recent years; English-speaking countries and China have the highest productivity rate; health and education are the most studied subject areas, the main disciplines being physical activity and didactics. More than half of the studies use an intervention program. This type of study provides essential information on future research directions in this area.