Introduction: The number of scientific publications has been increasing over the years. An in-depth review of a selected field of research (e.g., making a list of the most productive authors or research topics) is therefore impossible using manual techniques for searching bibliographical databases. Scientometrics offers an alternative. A few scientometric analyses have been carried out in the field of physiotherapy, but their main drawback is that they have either not taken into account all the relevant bibliographical databases or have been very specific in the application of the methods. Purpose: We wanted to perform an in-depth scientometric analysis of scientific publications in the field of physiotherapy. Methods: Bibliographic records in the field of physiotherapy were retrieved from three bibliographical databases: (i) Web of Science, (ii) Scopus and (iii) MEDLINE/PubMed. We compiled a corpus of 18 493 bibliographic records in the field of physiotherapy. Three types of scientometric techniques were used in the analysis: co-authorship, co-citation, and keyword analysis. We constructed networks of collaboration between authors, co-citation of scientific publications and co-occurrence of keywords. Results: The results show an increasing trend in the number of scientific publications in physiotherapy. The highest number of papers in physiotherapy is published by J. Fritz (United States). The most prolific author in terms of the number of collaborations is N. Foster (United Kingdom), with 175 authors. The most frequently cited article is Physiotherapy for tension-type headache: A controlled study by P. Torelli et al (2004). Physical Therapy is the leading journal in terms of the number of publications in the field of physiotherapy. In terms of the number of articles published worldwide, the United States ranks first. The most frequently discussed research topics focus on low back pain, stroke, assessment in physiotherapy, and evidence-based practice. Discussion and conclusion: This work provides a comprehensive insight into the development and current state of research in physiotherapy, which is crucial for further research. Further work should include articles from the PEDro database. According to the available research evidence, the present work is the first comprehensive and methodologically complex bibliometric review of publications in the field of physiotherapy.
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