A scientometric analysis on coronaviruses research (1900-2020): Time for a continuous, cooperative and global approach

Citation advantage of COVID-19-related publications

With the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists from various disciplines responded quickly to this historical public health emergency. The sudden boom of COVID-19-related papers in a short period of time may bring unexpected influence to some commonly used bibliometric indicators. By a large-scale investigation using Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, this brief communication confirms the citation advantage of COVID-19-related papers empirically through the lens of Essential Science Indicators’ highly cited paper. More than 8% of COVID-19-related papers published during 2020 and 2021 were selected as Essential Science Indicators highly cited papers, which was much higher than the set global benchmark value of 1%. The citation advantage of COVID-19-related papers for different Web of Science categories/countries/journal impact factor quartiles was also demonstrated. The distortions of COVID-19-related papers’ citation advantage to some bibliometric indicators such as journal impact factor were discussed at the end of this brief communication.

Artificial intelligence centric scientific research on COVID-19: an analysis based on scientometrics data

With the spread of the deadly coronavirus disease throughout the geographies of the globe, expertise from every field has been sought to fight the impact of the virus. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially, has been the center of attention due to its capability to produce trustworthy results in a reasonable time. As a result, AI centric based research on coronavirus (or COVID-19) has been receiving growing attention from different domains ranging from medicine, virology, and psychiatry etc. We present this comprehensive study that closely monitors the impact of the pandemic on global research activities related exclusively to AI. In this article, we produce highly informative insights pertaining to publications, such as the best articles, research areas, most productive and influential journals, authors, and institutions. Studies are made on top 50 most cited articles to identify the most influential AI subcategories. We also study the outcome of research from different geographic areas while identifying the research collaborations that have had an impact. This study also compares the outcome of research from the different countries around the globe and produces insights on the same.

Measuring the research funding landscape: a case study of BRICS nations

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to determine the funding ratio of BRICS nations in various research areas. The leading funding institutions that support research in the developing world have also been researched.

Design/methodology/approach

This study involves the funding acknowledgment analysis of the data retrieved from the “Clarivate Analytics' InCites database” under “22 specific research areas” to determine whether the publication was funded.

Findings

This study shows that China achieves the highest funding ratio of 88.6%, followed by Brazil (73.74%), Russia (72.93%) and South Africa (70.94%). However, India has the lowest funding ratio of 58.2%. For the subject areas, the highest funding ratio is by microbiology in Russia (86.6%), India (84.3%) and China (96.9%) and space science in Brazil (93.7%) and South Africa (94.82%). However, economics and business achieves the lowest funding ratio in Brazil (38.6%), India (20.1%) and South Africa (30.24%). Moreover, the regional funding agencies are the leading research sponsors in the BRICS nations.

Practical implications

This study implies increasing the funding ratio across various research areas, including arts, humanities and social sciences. The nations, particularly India, also need to gear up sponsoring the research to improve the funding ratio for scientific development, bringing overall good.

Originality/value

This study efforts to show the status of countries and research subjects in terms of funding ratio and reveals the prominent funders working toward scientific growth.

A scientometric approach to psychological research during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, modern science demonstrated its ability to respond well to the health crisis by publishing useful and reliable information. This disease has also led to an increase in psychological publications in this field. However, most scientometric studies have focused on medical aspects, and social science research has been neglected. Therefore, to fill this research gap, we analyzed the research on COVID-19 in the field of psychology to provide an insight into the perspective, research fields, and international collaborations. Data were collected from the Web of Science database and analyzed using Citespace and Bibliometrix (Biblioshiny). The overall performance of the documents was described, and then keyword co-occurrence and co-authorship networks were visualized. Fifteen main clusters were formed by drawing document co-citation network. The result indicates that Anxiety, mental health, delirium, loneliness, and suicide were important topics for researchers. Considering the special conditions that COVID-19 created for human societies, perhaps one of the most important subjects in the field of health is psychological studies. Using the results of this study, psychology researchers can identify their potential colleagues and research gaps in the subject of Covid-19.

Spotlight on Early COVID-19 Research Productivity: A 1-Year Bibliometric Analysis

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), one of the most serious public health crises in over a century, has led to an unprecedented surge of publications across all areas of knowledge. This study assessed the early research productivity on COVID-19 in terms of vaccination, diagnosis, treatment, symptoms, risk factors, nutrition, and economy. The Scopus database was searched between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 to initially examine the research productivity on COVID-19, as measured by total publications by the 20 highest-ranked countries according to gross domestic product. The literature search was then refined, and research productivity was assessed across seven major research domains related to COVID-19: vaccination, diagnosis, treatment, symptoms, risk factors, nutrition, and economy. The initial literature search yielded 53,348 publications. Among these, 27,801 publications involved authorship from a single country and 22,119 publications involved authorship from multiple countries. Overall, the United States was the most productive country (n = 13,491), with one and a half times or more publications than any other country, on COVID-19 and the selected domains related to it. However, following adjustment for population size, gross domestic product, and expenditure for research and development, countries of emerging economies such as India along countries of lower population density such as Switzerland, Indonesia, and Turkey exhibited higher research productivity. The surge of COVID-19 publications in such a short period of time underlines the capacity of the scientific community to respond against a global health emergency; however where future research priorities and resource distribution should be placed on the respective thematic fields at an international level, warrants further investigation.

Discovering temporal scientometric knowledge in COVID-19 scholarly production

The mapping and analysis of scientific knowledge makes it possible to identify the dynamics and/or growth of a particular field of research or to support strategic decisions related to different research entities, based on bibliometric and/or scientometric indicators. However, with the exponential growth of scientific production, a systematic and data-oriented approach to the analysis of this large set of productions becomes increasingly essential. Thus, in this work, a data-oriented methodology was proposed, combining Data Analysis, Machine Learning and Complex Network Analysis techniques, and Data Version Control (DVC) tool, for the extraction of implicit knowledge in scientific production bases. In addition, the approach was validated through a case study in a COVID-19 manuscripts dataset, which had 199,895 articles published on arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, PubMed and Scopus databases. The results suggest the feasibility of the proposed methodology, indicating the most active countries and the most explored themes in each period of the pandemic. Therefore, this study has the potential to instrument and expand strategic decisions by the scientific community, aiming at extracting knowledge that supports the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Impact of sewer overflow on public health: A comprehensive scientometric analysis and systematic review

Sewer overflow (SO), which has attracted global attention, poses serious threat to public health and ecosystem. SO impacts public health via consumption of contaminated drinking water, aerosolization of pathogens, food-chain transmission, and direct contact with fecally-polluted rivers and beach sediments during recreation. However, no study has attempted to map the linkage between SO and public health including Covid-19 using scientometric analysis and systematic review of literature. Results showed that only few countries were actively involved in SO research in relation to public health. Furthermore, there are renewed calls to scale up environmental surveillance to safeguard public health. To safeguard public health, it is important for public health authorities to optimize water and wastewater treatment plants and improve building ventilation and plumbing systems to minimize pathogen transmission within buildings and transportation systems. In addition, health authorities should formulate appropriate policies that can enhance environmental surveillance and facilitate real-time monitoring of sewer overflow. Increased public awareness on strict personal hygiene and point-of-use-water-treatment such as boiling drinking water will go a long way to safeguard public health. Ecotoxicological studies and health risk assessment of exposure to pathogens via different transmission routes is also required to appropriately inform the use of lockdowns, minimize their socio-economic impact and guide evidence-based welfare/social policy interventions. Soft infrastructures, optimized sewer maintenance and prescreening of sewer overflow are recommended to reduce stormwater burden on wastewater treatment plant, curtail pathogen transmission and marine plastic pollution. Comprehensive, integrated surveillance and global collaborative efforts are important to curtail on-going Covid-19 pandemic and improve resilience against future pandemics.

Mapping coronavirus research: quantitative and visualization approaches

Purpose

The present study aims to measure the global research landscape on coronavirus indexed in the Web of Science from 1989 to 2020. The study examines growth rates, authorship trends, institutional productivity, collaborative networks and prominent authors, institutions and countries.

Design/methodology/approach

The research literature on coronavirus published globally and indexed in the Web of Science core collection was retrieved using the term “Coronavirus” and its related and synonymous terms (e.g. COVID-19, SARS-COV, SARS-COV-2 and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) as per the Medical List of Subject Headings. A total of 5,625 publications were retrieved; however, the study was restricted to articles only (i.e. 4,471), and other document types were excluded. Quantitative and visualization techniques were used for data analysis and interpretation. VOSViewer software was employed to map collaborative networks of authors, institutions and countries.

Findings

A total of 4,471 articles have been published on coronavirus by 99 countries of the world with the maximum contribution from the USA, followed by the People's Republic of China. The United States, China, Canada, Netherlands and Germany are the front runners in the collaborative network and form strong sub-networks with other countries as well. More than 1,000 institutions collaborate in the field of coronavirus research among 99 contributing countries. The authorship pattern shows that 97.5% of publications are contributed by authors in collaboration in which 77.5% of publications are contributed by four or more than four authors. The range between degree of collaboration (DC) varies from 0.89 in 1993 to 1 in 2000 with an average of 0.96 from 1989 to 2020. The results confirm that the coronavirus research is carried out in teamwork at the individual, institutional and global levels with high magnitude and density of collaboration. The relative growth of the literature has shown inconsistency as a decreasing trend has been observed from 2007 onwards, thereby increasing the doubling time from 4.2 in the first ten years to 17.3 in the last ten years.

Research limitations

The study is limited to the publications indexed in the Web of Science; the findings cannot be generalized across other databases.

Practical implications

The results of the study may help medical scientists to identify the progress in COVID-19 research. Besdies, it will help to identify the prolific authors, institutions and countries in the development of research.

Social implications

The current COVID-19 pandemic poses urgent and prolonged threats to the health and well-being of the population worldwide. It has not only attacked the health of the people but the economy of nations as well. Therefore, it is feasible to know the research landscape of the disease to conquer the problem.

Originality/value

The current COVID-19 pandemic poses urgent and prolonged threats to the health and well-being of the population worldwide. It has not only attacked the health of the people but also the economy of nations as well. Therefore, it is feasible to know the research landscape of the disease to conquer the problem.

Measuring the funding landscape of COVID-19 research

Purpose

The purpose of the study is to map the funding status of COVID-19 research. The various aspects, such as funding ratio, geographical distribution of funded articles, journals publishing funded research and institutions that sponsor the COVID-19 research are studied. To visualize the country collaboration network and research trends/hotspots in the field of COVID-19 funded research, keyword analysis is also performed. The open-access (OA) status of the funded research on COVID-19 is also discussed.

Design/methodology/approach

The leading indexing and abstracting database, i.e. Web of Science (WoS), was used to retrieve the funded articles published on the topic COVID-19. The scientometric approach, more particularly “funding acknowledgment analysis (FAA),” was used to study the research funding.

Findings

A total of 5,546 publications of varied nature have been published on COVID-19, of which 1,760 are funded, thus indicating a funding ratio of 32%. China is the leading producer of funded research (760, 43.182%) on COVID-19 followed by the USA (482, 27.386%), England (179, 10.17%), Italy (119, 6.761%), Germany (107, 6.08%) and Canada (107, 6.08%). China is also in lead in terms of the funding ratio (60.94%). However, the funding ratio of the USA (31.54%) is at 11th rank behind Canada (40.68%), Germany (34.18%) and England (35.87%). The USA occupies a central position in the collaboration network having the highest score of articles with other countries (n = 489), with the USA–China collaboration ranking first (n = 123). National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) is the largest source of funding for COVID-19 research, supporting 342 (19.432%) publications, followed by the United States Department of Health Human Services (DHHS) and National Institute of Health (NIH), USA with 211 (11.989%) and 200 (11.364%) publications, respectively. However, China's National Key Research and Development Program achieves the highest citation impact (80.24) for its funded publications. Journal of Medical Virology, Science of the Total Environment and EuroSurveillance are the three most prolific journals publishing 63 (3.58%), 35 (1.989%) and 32 (1.818%), respectively, of the sponsored research articles on the COVID-19. A total of 3,138 institutions produce funded articles with Huazhong University of Science Technology and Wuhan University from China at the forefront publishing 92 (5.227%) and 83 (4.716%) publications, respectively. The funded research on COVID-19 is largely available in OA mode (1,674, 95.11%) and mainly through the Green and Bronze routes. The keyword clustering reveals that the articles mainly focus on the impact, structure and clinical characteristics of the virus.

Research limitations/implications

The study's main limitation is that the results are based on the publications indexed by WoS, which has limited coverage compared to other databases. Moreover, all the funding agencies do not require or authors miss to acknowledge funding sources in their publications, which ultimately undermines the number of funded publications. The research publications on COVID-19 are also proliferating; thus, the study's findings shall be valid for a minimum period.

Practical implications

The funding of research on the COVID-19 is highly essential to accelerate innovative research and help countries fight against the global pandemic. The study's findings reflect the efforts made by nations and institutions to remove the financial and accessibility hurdles. It not only underscores the lead of the USA in the research on COVID-19, but also shows China as a forerunner in sponsoring the research, thus, helping to know the contribution of nations toward understanding the dynamics of pandemic and controlling it. The study will help healthcare practitioners and policymakers recognize the areas that remain the focus of sponsored research on COVID-19 and other left-out areas that need to be taken up and thus may help in policy formulation. It further highlights the impact of prolific funding agencies so that efforts may be initiated to increase the impact and thereby the returns of investment. The study can help to map the scientific structure of COVID-19 through the lens of funded research and recognize core inclinations of its development. Overall, a comprehensive analysis has been performed to present the detailed characteristics of sponsored research on emerging area of COVID-19, and it is informative, useful and one of its kind on the theme.

Originality/value

The study explores the funding support of research on COVID-19 and its other aspects, along with the mode of availability.

A Review of Global Collaboration on COVID-19 Research during the Pandemic in 2020

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, which has become a severe threat to the health and sustainability of human life, scholars have published numerous research results. Although the importance of international research collaboration has been highlighted as a means of overcoming this global crisis, research on this particular problem has been lacking. Therefore, this study focused on the response of academia to COVID-19 by examining the collaboration between international research, and its impact. This study extracted data from Scopus, sampling articles and reviews published in 2020. By analyzing scenarios by country and international research collaboration based on data on authors’ nationalities and the research areas of documents, this study revealed that the United States and China contributed the most. In all countries, most research was conducted on medicine. European and American countries demonstrated significant interest in the social sciences and Asian countries in the life sciences. Furthermore, some countries, including Belgium and Pakistan, extended their research interests through international research collaboration. The results of this study highlight the importance of international research collaboration across various areas by overcoming the regional imbalance in intercountry collaboration and the concentration on a limited scope of subjects.

Publication patterns' changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal and short-term scientometric analysis

In recent months the COVID-19 (also known as SARS-CoV-2 and Coronavirus) pandemic has spread throughout the world. In parallel, extensive scholarly research regarding various aspects of the pandemic has been published. In this work, we analyse the changes in biomedical publishing patterns due to the pandemic. We study the changes in the volume of publications in both peer reviewed journals and preprint servers, average time to acceptance of papers submitted to biomedical journals, international (co-)authorship of these papers (expressed by diversity and volume), and the possible association between journal metrics and said changes. We study these possible changes using two approaches: a short-term analysis through which changes during the first six months of the outbreak are examined for both COVID-19 related papers and non-COVID-19 related papers; and a longitudinal approach through which changes are examined in comparison to the previous four years. Our results show that the pandemic has so far had a tremendous effect on all examined accounts of scholarly publications: A sharp increase in publication volume has been witnessed and it can be almost entirely attributed to the pandemic; a significantly faster mean time to acceptance for COVID-19 papers is apparent, and it has (partially) come at the expense of non-COVID-19 papers; and a significant reduction in international collaboration for COVID-19 papers has also been identified. As the pandemic continues to spread, these changes may cause a slow down in research in non-COVID-19 biomedical fields and bring about a lower rate of international collaboration.