REVIEW article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sports Science, Technology and Engineering
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1609141
Trends and hotspots in running shoe research: A bibliometric study from 2005 to 2024
Provisionally accepted
- 1Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 2Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
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Background: Running shoes can protect the feet, enhance performance and lower the injury risk during running. While extensive research has been investigated on footwear design and innovation in running, the scientific guideline underlying running shoe research remain inadequately explored and established.Purpose: The aims of this study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis of publications in running shoes for identifying research hotspots and future trends. The results from this study can provide valuable references for future studies and contribute to the scientific advancement of running shoe design.Method: Articles on running shoes were collected and screened from the Web of Science Core Collection database covering the years 2005 to 2024. After duplicate and irrelevant articles removed, CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and R-biblioshiny were used to perform visualized analyses of authors, titles, journals, countries, institutions, keywords, research directions, and cited references. Co-citation maps were created to provide a clear representation of research hotspots and knowledge structures.Result: A total of 1,576 articles on running shoes were identified across 394 journals spanned 69 countries and 3,599 institutions, with peak publication volume found in 2022. The United States generated the highest number of publications, followed by China and the United Kingdom. The University of Calgary produced the highest publication output. Gu YD was the top author to produce the most publications, while Lieberman DE was identified as the most influential scholar in the field. The Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise have been the most prominent journals in this field. Trend keywords had centered on running injuries (e.g., "barefoot," "ground reaction force," and "injuries") and performance (e.g., "running economy," "performance," and "metabolic cost"), which have been clustered into eight distinct labels.Conclusion: This is the first study to present bibliometric analysis on running shoes literature over the past 20 years, highlighting the key hotspots and future trends. Overall, the annual publications on running shoes has steadily increased. Current research have focused on the biomechanics and physiological indicators of runners whilst wearing running shoes to explore the associated injury risks and running performance, with particular emphasis on the impact of minimalist shoes.
Keywords: running shoe, Running injuries, Running performance, Bibliometrics, Visualization mapping
Received: 10 Apr 2025; Accepted: 22 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xiao, Lian, Li and Fan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yifang Fan, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.