Assessment of terminological density in scientific publications on physical culture

Background and Study Aim. Scientific publications in the field of physical culture demonstrate considerable diversity in terminological usage and structural organization. With increasing standards for the quality of academic writing, the need for an objective and quantitative evaluation of terminological density has become more pressing. The aim of this study was to develop and apply a method for automated assessment of terminological density in scientific articles on physical culture using adapted thematic dictionaries. Material and Methods. The study was based on articles retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database. A total of 16 593 bibliographic records related to physical culture were extracted over the past five years. Two dictionaries were employed for analysis: the official Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in XML format and a thematic dictionary constructed from the WoS document corpus. The analysis included full-text PDF articles from 12 scientific journals, of which 6 were categorized as Q3, 1 as Q4, 3 were indexed in DOAJ, and 2 were not indexed. Terminological density was calculated in Python using the pandas library and evaluated on a scale ranging from very low to high. Results. The assessment covered 12 journals in the field of physical culture. An optimal density level (0.010–0.019) was identified in 2 journals (16.7%), corresponding to a “balanced use of scientific terminology.” Three journals (25.0%) demonstrated low density (<0.01), characterized as “insufficient elaboration of the topic in scientific language.” In 7 journals (58.3%), a higher density (0.020–0.039) was observed, interpreted as either an “attempt to enhance scientific rigor” or an “excessive terminological load.” Conclusions. The evaluation of terminological density provides an objective measure of the scientific style of publications in the field of physical culture. The differences identified across journals highlight variability in approaches to presenting scientific material. The integration of specialized dictionaries and the application of relative indicators offer a robust basis for ongoing monitoring and optimization of scientific discourse.