Like sports, research can be hyper-competitive. Researchers are increasingly measured in terms of how much they publish, where they publish, citations they receive, and various other metrics. When we compared Olympic medals (
London 2012 Olympics data) to scholarly output (
NSF 2013 data), there appeared significant overlap in terms of overall production and medal awards among the leading countries. Of the top 10 countries producing articles, 6 also have the highest Olympic medal count.