Scientific research on handball has been growing in recent decades, yet existing bibliometric analyses of the field rely on narrower, predominantly English-language data sources. In this master's thesis, I use bibliographic network analysis methods (main path and critical path, S-cores, islands, centrality measures) to analyze 17,816 works on handball from the OpenAlex database. The main path through the citation network reveals a clear thematic shift: from general foundations of sport physiology (1967–1983), through throwing biomechanics, to a predominant focus on sports injury prevention after 2012. For identifying research groups, the combination of S-cores and islands proves particularly informative, as the two methods search for groups on different principles (absolute threshold versus local strength of links) and together reveal eight geographically and thematically distinct groups. Within them, Roland van den Tillaar consistently acts, across several independent networks, as a connecting link between otherwise separate groups. An additional measure of handball-focus (the share of an author's output devoted to handball) shows that high productivity in the field does not necessarily imply thematic focus on it. Analysis of citations between journals reveals, alongside a large international group, also linguistically separate French and Indonesian journal groups. The results largely agree with the smaller, Web of Science-based study by Pardo Ibáñez and colleagues (2020), while the broader, multilingual dataset reveals additional structures that the narrower sample does not detect.
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