A bibliometric analysis of pandemic and epidemic studies in economics: future agenda for COVID-19 research

Global COVID-19 Policy Engagement With Scientific Research Information: Altmetric Data Study

BACKGROUND

Previous studies on COVID-19 scholarly articles have primarily focused on bibliometric characteristics, neglecting the identification of institutional actors that cite recent scientific contributions related to COVID-19 in the policy domain, and their locations.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to assess the online citation network and knowledge structure of COVID-19 research across policy domains over 2 years from January 2020 to January 2022, with a particular emphasis on geographical frequency. Two research questions were addressed. The first question was related to who has been the most active in policy engagement with science and research information sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in terms of countries and organization types. The second question was related to whether there are significant differences in the types of coronavirus research shared among countries and continents.

METHODS

The Altmetric database was used to collect policy report citations of scientific articles for 3 topic terms (COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccine, and COVID-19 variants). Altmetric provides the URLs of policy agencies that have cited COVID-19 research. The scientific articles used for Altmetric citations are extracted from journals indexed by PubMed. The numbers of COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccine, and COVID-19 variant research outputs between January 1, 2020, and January 31, 2022, were 216,787, 16,748, and 2777, respectively. The study examined the frequency of citations based on policy institutional domains, such as intergovernmental organizations, national and domestic governmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (think tanks and academic institutions).

RESULTS

The World Health Organization (WHO) stood out as the most notable institution citing COVID-19-related research outputs. The WHO actively sought and disseminated information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 vaccine citation network exhibited the most extensive connections in terms of degree centrality, 2-local eigenvector centrality, and eigenvector centrality among the 3 key terms. The Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia were the countries that sought and shared the most information on COVID-19 vaccines, likely due to their high numbers of COVID-19 cases. Developing nations, although gaining quicker access to COVID-19 vaccine information, appeared to be relatively isolated from the enriched COVID-19 pandemic content in the global network.

CONCLUSIONS

The global scientific network ecology during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed distinct types of links primarily centered around the WHO. Western countries demonstrated effective networking practices in constructing these networks. The prominent position of the key term "COVID-19 vaccine" demonstrates that nation-states align with global authority regardless of their national contexts. In summary, the citation networking practices of policy agencies have the potential to uncover the global knowledge distribution structure as a proxy for the networking strategy employed during a pandemic.

Olfactory and Gustatory Dysfunction in COVID-19: A Global Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis

OBJECTIVES

Coronavirus illness (COVID-19) has been found to alter infected people's sense of smell and taste. However, the pathobiology of this virus is not yet known. Therefore, it is critical to investigate the influence of COVID-19 infection on olfactory and gustatory processes. Therefore, we use bibliometric analysis on COVID-19 and olfactory and/or gustatory dysfunction publications to provide studies perspective.

METHODS

A bibliometric literature search was performed in the Scopus database. The number and type of publications, countries for publications, institutional sources for publications, journals for publications, citation patterns, and funding agencies were analyzed using Microsoft Excel or VOSviewer. In addition, the VOSviewer 1.6.17 software was used to analyze and visualize hotspots and collaboration patterns between countries.

RESULTS

Scopus has published 187 088 documents for COVID-19 in all study fields at the time of data collection (July 26, 2021). A total of 1740 documents related to olfactory and/or gustatory dysfunction were recovered. The countries most relevant by the number of publications were the United States (n = 362, 20.80%), Italy (n = 255, 14.66%), and the United Kingdom (n = 173, 9.94%). By analyzing the terms in the titles and abstracts, we identified 2 clusters related to olfactory and/or gustatory dysfunction research, which are "diagnosis and test methods" and "prognosis and complications of the disease."

CONCLUSIONS

This is the first bibliometric analysis of publications related to COVID-19 and olfactory and/or gustatory dysfunction. This study provides academics and researchers with useful information on the publishing patterns of the most influential publications on COVID-19 and olfactory and/or gustatory dysfunction. Olfactory and/or gustatory dysfunction as indices of suspicion for the empirical diagnosis of coronavirus infection is a new hotspot in this field.

Assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small and medium-sized enterprises performance

This study has several purposes. First, identify indicators contributing to the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that could be affected by the COVID-19. Second, formulate the framework to measure the level of vulnerability of SMEs. Third, assign the SMEs into several clusters. Data used in this research were collected through web-based closed questionnaires and short telephone interviews. This study used Content Validity Analysis, Analytical Hierarchy Process, Multi-Attribute Value Theory approach, K-means Clustering Analysis, and Discriminant Analysis for data processing. The data processing results indicated that the 44 valid indicators belonging to ten dimensions could be used to measure the level of vulnerability of SMEs whose performance was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The surveyed SMEs can be segmented into four clusters, namely resilient cluster, low vulnerability cluster, moderate vulnerability cluster, and high vulnerability cluster. Most of the surveyed SMEs belong to the moderate and high vulnerability clusters. The differences between the clusters were based on 16 indicators. These indicators include levels of supplier disruption and the SMEs' market in which the SMEs operate or expect to operate. The results of this study help quantify how the pandemic could generate different levels of impact on each indicator that could depend on the business and what policymakers should consider as they contemplate the scale of the required intervention. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on the effects of the pandemic on SMEs by synthesizing the findings of studies on the impact of COVID-19 on SMEs. The study also determined the framework and the equation for measuring the level of SME vulnerability caused by the pandemic.

The influence of Covid-19 on publications in economics: bibliometric evidence from five working paper series

We compare Covid-related working papers in economics to non-Covid-related working papers in four dimensions. Based on five well-known working papers series and data from the RePEc website, we find that Covid papers mainly cover topics in macroeconomics and health, they are written by larger teams than non-Covid papers, are more often downloaded and they receive more citations relative to non-Covid papers.

Social Media Application as a New Paradigm for Business Communication: The Role of COVID-19 Knowledge, Social Distancing, and Preventive Attitudes

Business firms and the public have encountered massive consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has become the most significant challenge and influenced all communities. This research study focuses on exploring the relationship between COVID-19 knowledge, social distancing, individuals' attitudes toward social media use, and practices of using social media amid the COVID-19 crisis. This study examines how attitudes toward social media use mediate the linkage between COVID-19 knowledge, social distancing, and practices for social media use. This survey uses a non-probability convenience sampling approach to collect samples and recruit willing respondents with their consent for data collection. This study recorded the feedback from 348 participants who encountered the indirect/direct effects of nationwide lockdowns, restrictions on social gatherings, and COVID-19 infection. The findings validate the proposed hypotheses for their direct effects and indicate significant β-values, t-statistics, and the p-values at p <0.001. The results validate a relationship between the COVID-19 knowledge of and social distancing practices. Similarly, the results approved a positive link between social distancing and attitudes toward social media use amid COVID-19. The findings validate the relation between social distancing and attitudes toward social media use during COVID-19 challenges (β-value = 0.22 and t-statistics = 3.078). The results show the linkage between attitudes toward social media use and practices of using social media (β-value = 0.41, and t-statistics = 7.175). Individuals' attitude toward social media use during COVID-19 mediates the connection between COVID-19 knowledge and COVID-19 practices of using social media use. The results validate the first mediation at β-value = 0.21 and t-statistic = 5.327. Similarly, the findings approve that attitudes toward social media use in the pandemic have positively mediated the relation between distancing and practices for social media use amid the crisis of COVID-19 (β-value = 0.09 and t-statistic = 2.633). The findings indicate how people have been indulged in social media to pave their business communication needs. The results provide valuable insights for the global business community. This study provides a systematic and holistic research model that helps in exploring the consequences of COVID-19. The generalizability of the findings provides valuable directions for future research related to the current pandemic.