To fully understand the current situation of volleyball sports research, we use software such as SATI3.2, SPSS22.0, UCINET6.0 and EXCEL, and adopt methods of bibliometric analysis, social network analysis, CO word analysis, factor analysis and cluster analysis to make statistical analyses on 1 067 volleyball academic papers of 17 core journals in sports disciplines from 2000 to 2019. We make these analyses from the aspects of annual published papers, paper distribution among the journals, authors' contribution, key authors, authors' cooperation, institutions of the contribution, and high-frequency key words, so as to reveal the current situation, characteristics and hot topics of volleyball sports research in China in the past 20 years, and to provide references and guidelines for volleyball sports research in China.