A Bibliometric Analysis of Sports Tourism and Sustainability (2002–2019)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your submission to Sustainability. I believe your efforts have merit in this area of study, I am advising a significant revision of the manuscript. 

First, several recent papers, including those published in this journal, have tackled other areas of Sustainable Tourism. I recommend that you review these papers and similar, as they provide a clearer presentation of the literature.  

Ninerola et al. Tourism research on sustainability. 2019

Linnenluecke et al. Conducting systematic reviews and bibliometrics analyses. 2019. 

Garrigos-Simon et al. Tourism and sustainability. 2018

In general, I'd like to see better organization of the paper starting with this question:

Is your purpose: the methodology of how to analyze this area? The topic of sports tourism and sustainability, or the method to study the topic? If the latter, WHY?

INTRO & METHODS

There's a lot of blending here of the two. As I see it you need to hit the target from the start and the organization should be:

I. Sport tourism, what is it? 

II. Why/how sport tourism got to this point.

III. Despite all the positives of Sport tourism, sustainability is an issue.

IV. Due to the problems, we need answers on tourism and sustainability and that requires research.

V. Methods for researching it; this is where you explain bibliometry vs systematic reviews and meta-analyses. We need this info to understand why bibliometry is the right choice. That's not methods, that's intro/background.

VI. BOOM! Now you hit with your purpose.

METHODS

You've got way too much intro and narrative here. We don't want the story of the methods, we want the clear, concise, replicable methods. You can cut much of what you have and streamline then move to the intro. You want more detail here now. See those other papers on how they present it. You need to show how you searched and why you did it that way. This is your chance to explain to others why this is a good way to go. 

Include your search terms and the specific methods for the SciMAT and the types of analyses/graphs you did. Again, lose the narrative and be concise. As someone not in this area, I should be able to read these methods, then research little and run my own study. Right now, I'm not sure what you did.

RESULTS

Again, you've got way too much narrative story telling here. Results are results; black and white, dry, clear and as brief as possible. We don't want to know any opinions or rational here, that's discussion material. 

I would seriously look at some of the other papers out there and rethink your figures; figure two I'm lost on. Its too hard to follow. Ninerola has a nice Venn diagram, and great options for tables, like major papers (rather than authors). Also, several papers use figures mapping KEY WORD trends, that would be more helpful here. Go back to the drawing board here and redo all this. Tell the story you want in pictures, one building on the next!

DISCUSSION

Most of your conclusions are really just discussion. I think once you redo the results, the discussion will fall in place sequentially. I'm a traditionalist, so I like to see limitations at the end, then even more important, future suggestions. THEN CONCLUDE with a paragraph that hits only the major take home messages.

Once complete, revise the abstract.

It's a lot to do, but its realistic and would make this paper a solid work to guide future researchers.

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to thank the Authors for the opportunity to review their paper focused on a bibliometric study that aims at investigating research trends in the scientific production on sport tourism and sustainability.

I think that this issue is of interest for the readers and the paper offers interesting outcomes and results. Nonetheless, I have some concerns  in the present form.

I would present the sport tourism research in a more specific way in order to give readers a deeper understanding of this avenue of research, improving, at the meantime, the literature review (29 references may be not enough). Lines 202-208 may be placed at the beginning, as well.

Moreover, I would provide a better contextualization of the topic of your study: as you pointed out, sustainability can be considered with different lens - economy, the environment and society. Limiting the research term at “sustain” may be a severe limitation of your results because it may not be able to detect all the papers that discuss the economic and/or social implications of sport tourism or sport events.

In Table 1, for instance, you have listed the most productive journals. It was strange to me not to see “Journal of Sport Tourism” among them. I tried to interrogate the JST database inserting the word Sustainability and I found out 186 articles containing this word in the title, keywords or abstract.

My main suggestion, therefore, is to repeat the analysis in order to be sure of taking into account all the available literature and, in the meantime, to provide a more precise explanation of the different steps you performed for investigating the database.

Other comments

Keywords: I would reconsider them, especially “research topic” and “strategic diagram” and insert a tourism-related keyword.

Lines 41-44: the statement “This form of tourism ….. mountain climbing” needs one or more references.

Paragraph 2.2. Software.

I would delete this paragraph. You may insert a very brief explanation on how SciMAT works at the end of lines 90-91.

Conclusion. Please, consider to add the words selection among the limitations of your paper.

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

The work presented is very clear and well written. In addition, the topic is very interesting and with great implications.

it is recommended to include the following modifications for ease of reading and organization.

- In the last paragraph of the introduction, this sentence is not necessary "This is an original research study: the authors are not aware of any prior bibliometric study on this subject". Because submitting a publication to a scientific journal implies, implicitly, that the study is original.

- It is recommended to replace the name of the results section with results and discussion.

- A conclusions and research agenda section should be included for future research, since it is one of the most important sections in a review. Perhaps the last paragraph of results could be used as an first part.

- If the authors consider it, this is an optional proposal. A graph similar to Figure 2 could be included, but connecting works between authors or institutions, with the size of the spheres depending on the number of works of each author and the thickness of the lines depending on the number of collaborations. It is not necessary to differentiate by periods if you do not see it appropriate. As I said, it is a recommendation based on the interest of the authors.

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your revision of the paper and your efforts in this area.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. We think sincerely that they have substantially improved the final version of the work.

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to thank the Authors for taking into consideration my previous comments and suggestions.

I think that the paper has substantially improved both in presenting the methodology and the limitations of the study.

I would recommend a further effort in detailing sport tourism: there are several papers that can contribute in presenting it and the different typologies of sport events. See for instance:

1. Wilson, R. (2006) The economic impact of local sport events: Significant, limited or otherwise? A case study of four swimming events. Management Leisure, 11, 57–70.
2. Pigeassou, C. (2004) Contribution to the definition of sport tourism. Journal of Sport Tourism, 9, 287–289.
3. Gratton, C.; Dobson, N.; Shibli, S. (2000) The economic importance of major sports events: A case study of six events. Management Leisure, 5, 17–28

Moreover, nostalgia sport tourism type appears form line 300 to line 307. I think that this part can be better placed (and integrated) at the very beginning of your introduction.

Then, I would move figure 2 at the beginning of your “Results and discussion” section, after line 157.

Finally, I would better specify lines 422 and 423 of your “Conclusion”. In which sense has the publication of the 17 SDGs reflected in more publications? Which kind of publication?

I wish you good luck!

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. We think sincerely that they have substantially improved the final version of the work.

* We have included the three articles referred by the reviewer in the introductory section:

1. Wilson, R. (2006) The economic impact of local sport events: Significant, limited or otherwise? A case study of four swimming events. Management Leisure, 11, 57–70.
2. Pigeassou, C. (2004) Contribution to the definition of sport tourism. Journal of Sport Tourism, 9, 287–289.
3. Gratton, C.; Dobson, N.; Shibli, S. (2000) The economic importance of major sports events: A case study of six events. Management Leisure, 5, 17–28

This has contributed to a more complete presentation of sports tourism (lines 32–33 and lines 51–52). We have renumbered and reordered the bibliography again.

*As the reviewer comments, nostalgia sport tourism has been included at the beginning of the introduction (lines 34–37).

*We have moved figure 2 at the beginning of “Results and discussion” section. It is now figure 1 and it has been renumbered.

*As requested by the reviewer, we have specified why the publication by the United Nations of the 17 SDGs has been reflected in an increase in publications, and the kind of publications (lines 425–428).