SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and now the 2019-novel CoV: Have we investigated enough about coronaviruses? - A bibliometric analysis

Description and Analysis of Research on Death and Dying during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Published in Nursing Journals Indexed in SCOPUS

AIM

To offer an overall picture of the research published regarding the different aspects of death and dying during the COVID-19 pandemic in journals covering the field of nursing in the Scopus database.

DESIGN

bibliometric analysis.

METHODS

The metadata obtained were exported from Scopus for subsequent analysis through Bibliometrix. Using the VOSviewer co-word analysis function, the conceptual and thematic structure of the publications was identified.

RESULTS

A total of 119 papers were retrieved, with the participation of 527 authors. The publications were found in 71 journals covering the nursing area. The main lines of research revolved around the keywords "palliative care" and "end-of-life care" in regard to the ethical, psychological, and organizational challenges faced by the health professionals who cared for these patients.

CONCLUSION

The results obtained offer a range of data and images that characterize the scientific production published on this topic, coming to the conclusion that, due to the multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach to the experience of death, care, and accompaniment in the dying process, bibliometric maps improve the comprehensive understanding of the semantic and conceptual structure of this field of research. This study was retrospectively registered with the OSF Registries on the 14 March 2024.

Opportunities and challenges of computer aided diagnosis in new millennium: A bibliometric analysis from 2000 to 2023

BACKGROUND

After entering the new millennium, computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is rapidly developing as an emerging technology worldwide. Expanding the spectrum of CAD-related diseases is a possible future research trend. Nevertheless, bibliometric studies in this area have not yet been reported. This study aimed to explore the hotspots and frontiers of research on CAD from 2000 to 2023, which may provide a reference for researchers in this field.

METHODS

In this paper, we use bibliometrics to analyze CAD-related literature in the Web of Science database between 2000 and 2023. The scientometric softwares VOSviewer and CiteSpace were used to visually analyze the countries, institutions, authors, journals, references and keywords involved in the literature. Keywords burst analysis were utilized to further explore the current state and development trends of research on CAD.

RESULTS

A total of 13,970 publications were included in this study, with a noticeably rising annual publication trend. China and the United States are major contributors to the publication, with the United States being the dominant position in CAD research. The American research institutions, lead by the University of Chicago, are pioneers of CAD. Acharya UR, Zheng B and Chan HP are the most prolific authors. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Medical Imaging focuses on CAD and publishes the most articles. New computer technologies related to CAD are in the forefront of attention. Currently, CAD is used extensively in breast diseases, pulmonary diseases and brain diseases.

CONCLUSION

Expanding the spectrum of CAD-related diseases is a possible future research trend. How to overcome the lack of large sample datasets and establish a universally accepted standard for the evaluation of CAD system performance are urgent issues for CAD development and validation. In conclusion, this paper provides valuable information on the current state of CAD research and future developments.

Incidence rate drive the multiple wave in the COVID-19 pandemic

The last three years have been the most challenging for humanity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel viral infection has eventually been able to infect most of the human population. It is now considered to be in the endemic stage, meaning it will remain in our world throughout our lifetime. There will be an intermittent outbreak of the COVID infection from time to time. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate a robust Mathematical model to study the dynamics of disease to have a control mechanism in place. In this article, we suggest a modified MSEIR model to explain the dynamics of COVID-19 infection. We assume that a susceptible person contracting the coronavirus develops a transient immunity to the illness. Further, infectives comprise asymptomatic, symptomatic, hospitalized and quarantined individuals. We assume that the incidence rate is of standard type, and susceptible can only become infective if they come in contact with either asymptomatic or symptomatic individuals. This basic and simple model effectively models the various waves every country has seen during the Pandemic. The simple analysis shows that the model could suggest various waves in future if we carefully select the incidence rate for the infection. In summary, we have discussed the following major points in this article. •We have analysed for local behavior infection-free equilibrium solution. Further, a thorough numerical exploration with various parameter settings has been performed to obtain the different cases of infection dynamics of the coronavirus epidemic.•We have found some interesting scenarios which explain the emergence of multiple waves observed in many countries.

Bibliometric Analysis of the Publications on Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Published Between 2012-2022

Objective

This study aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the global scientific output related to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) between 2012 and 2022.

Materials and Methods

The Web of Science database was searched for articles on MERS-CoV published between 2012 and 2022 for bibliometric analysis. The parameters such as publication year, publication type, funding agencies, research institutions, journals, impact factors, language, and citation numbers of articles were analyzed.

Results

We included 1475 articles on MERS-CoV from 86 countries. The United States was the most published country on MERS-CoV, with 487 articles. The Saudi Ministry of Health (7.53%), King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (6.92%), and The Egyptian Knowledge Bank (6.64%) were the most published institutions. The researchers who published the most on MERS-CoV were from Saudi Arabia. One thousand two hundred six funding agencies funded publications on MERS-CoV, most of which were funded by agencies from the United States.

Conclusion

MERS-CoV remains important because no treatment and no vaccine have been found since it was first detected, and accordingly, it continues to affect the world with new outbreaks and high mortality rates. In addition, experiences with MERS-CoV during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have guided new research on COVID-19, so scientific interest in MERS-CoV is still ongoing.

COVID-19 imaging, where do we go from here? Bibliometric analysis of medical imaging in COVID-19

OBJECTIVES

We conducted a systematic and comprehensive bibliometric analysis of COVID-19-related medical imaging to determine the current status and indicate possible future directions.

METHODS

This research provides an analysis of Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) indexed articles on COVID-19 and medical imaging published between 1 January 2020 and 30 June 2022, using the search terms "COVID-19" and medical imaging terms (such as "X-ray" or "CT"). Publications based solely on COVID-19 themes or medical image themes were excluded. CiteSpace was used to identify the predominant topics and generate a visual map of countries, institutions, authors, and keyword networks.

RESULTS

The search included 4444 publications. The journal with the most publications was European Radiology, and the most co-cited journal was Radiology. China was the most frequently cited country in terms of co-authorship, with the Huazhong University of Science and Technology being the institution contributing with the highest number of relevant co-authorships. Research trends and leading topics included: assessment of initial COVID-19-related clinical imaging features, differential diagnosis using artificial intelligence (AI) technology and model interpretability, diagnosis systems construction, COVID-19 vaccination, complications, and predicting prognosis.

CONCLUSIONS

This bibliometric analysis of COVID-19-related medical imaging helps clarify the current research situation and developmental trends. Subsequent trends in COVID-19 imaging are likely to shift from lung structure to function, from lung tissue to other related organs, and from COVID-19 to the impact of COVID-19 on the diagnosis and treatment of other diseases. Key Points • We conducted a systematic and comprehensive bibliometric analysis of COVID-19-related medical imaging from 1 January 2020 to 30 June 2022. • Research trends and leading topics included assessment of initial COVID-19-related clinical imaging features, differential diagnosis using AI technology and model interpretability, diagnosis systems construction, COVID-19 vaccination, complications, and predicting prognosis. • Future trends in COVID-19-related imaging are likely to involve a shift from lung structure to function, from lung tissue to other related organs, and from COVID-19 to the impact of COVID-19 on the diagnosis and treatment of other diseases.

An analysis of COVID-19 and WHO global research roadmap: knowledge mapping and future research agenda

In this study, we review the publications on the COVID-19 pandemic indexed in the Scopus database from 1st January to 15th October 2020, using bibliometric analysis. In essence, we evaluate the publications against the global research roadmap outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO). We find that academic publications are contributed by researchers worldwide, with the USA and China being the top contributors in several parameters. We show that most publications are clustered around the issues related to the outbreak, diagnosis, candidate medicine, and disease treatment by analyzing publication keywords. Besides, considerable importance is given to unravel the connection between the present viral disease with its previous strains and the anxiety and stress-related problems that arise from the COVID-19. We further visualize the knowledge structure of the publication with thematic mapping and illustrate that mental health-related research denotes a specialized research theme besides public health issues being the basic theme. Our findings aid to comprehend how the scholarly publications have developed to address the prioritized research agendas by the WHO. Thus, our study can guide researchers to explore the less studied areas. Consequently, it will assist policymakers and governments in developing integrated and effective policies to fight the pandemic.

CRISPR-Cas-mediated diagnostics

An ideal molecular diagnostic method should be sensitive, specific, low cost, rapid, portable, and easy to operate. Traditional nucleic acid detection methods based mainly on PCR technology have not only high sensitivity and specificity, but also some limitations, such as the need for expensive equipment and skilled technicians, being both time and labor intensive, and difficult to implement in some regions. However, with the continuous development of CRISPR-Cas technology and its application in molecular diagnosis, new approaches have been used for the construction of molecular diagnostic systems. In this review, we discuss recent advances in CRISPR-based molecular diagnostic technologies and highlight the revolution they bring to the field of molecular diagnostics.

C-Reactive Protein-to-Albumin Ratio and Clinical Outcomes in COVID-19 Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

C-reactive protein-to-albumin ratio (CAR) is an independent risk factor in cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and infectious diseases. Through this study, we investigated the CAR values with respect to the severity and mortality of COVID-19 patients. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to retrieve studies that evaluated CAR values upon hospital admission in relation to the severity or mortality of COVID-19 patients. We adopted a random-effect model to calculate the pooled mean difference (MD) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI). Quality assessment was appraised using a Newcastle−Ottawa scale and publication bias was assessed using the Begg-test and funnel plot. We equally performed a subgroup analysis using study location and a sensitivity analysis only with studies with low risk of bias. We analyzed 32 studies (n = 12445). Severe COVID-19 patients had higher on-admission CAR values than non-severe COVID-19 patients (MD: 1.69; 95% CI: 1.35−2.03; p < 0.001; I2 = 89%). Non-survivor patients with COVID-19 had higher CAR values than survivor patients (MD: 2.59; 95% CI: 1.95−3.23; p < 0.001; I2 = 92%). In sensitivity analysis, the relationship remained with a decreasing of heterogeneity for severity (MD: 1.22; 95% CI: 1.03−1.40; p < 0.001; I2 = 13%) and for mortality (MD: 2.99; 95% CI: 2.47−3.51; p < 0.001; I2 = 0%). High CAR values were found in COVID-19 patients who developed severe disease or died.

Global research trends in MERS-CoV: A comprehensive bibliometric analysis from 2012 to 2021

Background

The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. So far, the cases of MERS-CoV have been reported in 27 countries. The virus causes severe health complications, resulting high mortality.

Aim

The current study aimed to evaluate the global research trends and key bibliometric indices in MERS-CoV research from 2012 to 2021.

Methods

A retrospective bibliometric and visualized study was conducted. The Science Citation Index Expanded Edition of Web of Science Core Collection database was utilized to retrieve published scientific literature on MERS-CoV. The retrieved publications were assessed for a number of bibliometric attributes. The data were imported into HistCite^TM and VOSviewer software to calculate the citations count and perform the visualization mapping, respectively. In addition, countries or regions collaboration, keywords analysis, and trend topics in MERS-CoV were assessed using the Bibliometrix: An R-tool.

Results

A total of 1,587 publications, published in 499 journals, authored by 6,506 authors from 88 countries or regions were included in the final analysis. Majority of these publications were published as research article (n = 1,143). Globally, these publications received 70,143 citations. The most frequent year of publication was 2016 (n = 253), while the most cited year was 2014 (11,517 citations). The most prolific author was Memish ZA (n = 94), while the most published journal was Emerging Infectious Diseases (n = 80). The United States of America (USA) (n = 520) and Saudi Arabia (n = 432) were the most influential and largest contributors to the MERS-CoV publications. The extensively studied research area was infectious diseases. The most frequently used author keywords other than search keywords were Saudi Arabia, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, epidemiology, transmission, spike protein, vaccine, outbreak, camel, and pneumonia.

Conclusion

This study provides an insight into MERS-CoV-related research for scientific community (researchers, academicians) to understand and expand the basic knowledge structure, potential collaborations, and research trend topics. This study can also be useful for policy makers. After the emergence of MERS-CoV, a significant increase in scientific production was observed in the next 4 years (2013–2016). In 2021, the trend topics in MERS-CoV-related research were COVID-19, clinical characteristics, and cytokine storm. Saudi Arabia had the strongest collaboration with the USA, while the USA had the highest collaboration with China.

Genetic characteristics of human coronavirus HKU1 in mainland China during 2018

Human coronavirus HKU1 (HCoV-HKU1) is a pathogen that causes acute respiratory tract infections in children and circulates worldwide. To investigate the molecular characteristics and genetic diversity of HCoV-HKU1 in China, a molecular epidemiological analysis based on complete genome sequences was performed. A total of 68 endemic-HCoV-positive samples were identified from 1358 enrolled patients during 2018, including four HCoV-229E, nine HCoV-OC43, 24 HCoV-NL63, and 31 HCoV-HKU1. The detection rate of endemic HCoVs was 5.01% during 2018, while for HCoV-HKU1, it was 2.28%. Eight complete genomic sequences of HCoV-HKU1 were obtained and compared to 41 reference genome sequences corresponding to genotypes A, B, and C, obtained from the GenBank databank. Of the eight HKU1 sequences, four belonged to genotype A and four belonged to genotype B. No genotype C strains were detected in this study. For genotype A, 18 variations in the S protein with respect to the reference sequence were present in more than 5% of the sequences, whereas for genotype B, this number was 25. Most of the amino acid changes occurred in the S1 subunit. No amino acid substitutions were found in the sites that are essential for interaction with neutralizing antibodies, while a 510T amino acid insertion was found in almost one third of genotype B sequences. About 82-83, 85-89, and 88-89 predicted N-glycosylation sites and 7-13, 6-8, and 9 predicted O-glycosylation sites were found among the sequences of genotype A, B, and C, respectively. Six conserved O-glycosylation sites were present in all of the genotype A sequences. Only genotype A and B strains were detected after 2005. The S protein exhibited relatively high diversity, with most of the amino acid changes occurring in the S1 subunit.

Examining the association between reported COVID-19 symptoms and testing for COVID-19 in Canada: a cross-sectional survey

OBJECTIVES

Studies on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic through testing have been conducted in countries that have been hardest hit by this pandemic. Considering the importance of testing in containing the spread of COVID-19, it is useful to have evidence on continuing COVID-19 testing even in countries where the prevalence of COVID-19 is relatively low. We, therefore, examined the association between reported COVID-19 symptoms and testing for COVID-19 in Canada.

DESIGN AND SETTINGS

We conducted an online survey using the SurveyMonkey platform between July and October 2020 across Canada.

PARTICIPANTS

A nationally representative sample size of 2790 adult individuals was used.

RESULTS

Our findings show that respondents who reported that they and/or members of their households had COVID-19 symptoms were more likely to test for COVID-19 (adjusted OR, aOR 1.91; 95% CI 1.32 to 2.76) as compared with those who did not report COVID-19 symptoms. The likelihood of testing for COVID-19 was lower among male respondents compared with females (aOR 0.69; 95% CI 0.49 to 0.96), respondents aged 65-84 compared with those aged 18-44 (aOR 0.62; 95% CI 0.42 to 0.93), and respondents in British Columbia compared with those residing in Quebec. Higher odds of testing for COVID-19 were found among respondents who lived in Alberta compared with those who lived in Quebec (aOR 0.42; 95% CI 0.23 to 0.75) and respondents who had postgraduate education compared with those with high school or less education (aOR 1.84; 95% CI 1.01 to 3.36). The association between reported COVID-19 symptoms and testing for COVID-19 was statistically significant among female respondents (aOR 1.52; 95% CI 1.81 to 3.52) but not among male respondents.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, this study provides evidence in support of the hypothesis that there is significant association between reported COVID-19 symptoms and COVID-19 testing among adult Canadians. The study highlights the need for the Canadian government to prioritise subpopulations (ie, males, those aged 65-85, and those with high school or less education) that have lower likelihood of seeking COVID-19 testing to get tested when they have symptoms.

Bibliometric Analysis and Systematic Review of Global Coronavirus Research Trends Before COVID-19: Prospects and Implications for COVID-19 Research

Coronaviruses (CoV) cause respiratory and intestinal infections. We conducted this bibliometric analysis and systematical review to explore the CoV-related research trends from before COVID-19. We systematically searched the Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, and Web of Science (WOS) databases for published bibliometric analyses of CoV from database inception to January 24, 2021. The WOS Collection was searched from inception to January 31, 2020, to acquire the CoV-related publications before COVID-19. One-Way ANOVA and Bonferroni multiple-comparison tests were used to compare differences. Visualization mapping and keyword cluster graphs were made to illustrate the research topics and hotpots. We included 14,141 CoV-related publications for the bibliometric analysis and 16 (12 articles) CoV-related bibliometric analyses for the systematic review. Both the systematic review and bibliometric analysis showed (1) the number of publications showed two steep upward trajectories in 2003-2004 and in 2012-2014; (2) the research hotpots mainly focused on the mechanism, pathology, epidemiology, clinical diagnosis, and treatment of the coronavirus in MERS-CoV and SARS-Cov; (3) the USA, and China; the University of Hong Kong; and Yuen KY, came from the University of Hong Kong contributed most; (4) the Journal of Virology had the largest number of CoV related studies. More studies should focus on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in the future.

Visibility, collaboration and impact of the Cuban scientific output on COVID-19 in Scopus

INTRODUCTION

COVID-19 is a disease with worldwide impact that has fully caught attention of researchers. The Cuban scientific output, after one year of confronting this pandemic, has not been studied from a bibliometric perspective.

OBJECTIVE

To characterize the output of original scientific articles and review articles on COVID-19 published by Cuban authors in the journals included in the Scopus bibliographic database, the collaborations in these publications and their impact, according to the citation of the research in the world literature.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A cross-sectional, descriptive and observational study was performed, using a bibliometric approach. A search strategy was used to retrieve articles on the subject and bibliometric indicators of output, visibility, leadership, collaboration and impact were studied.

RESULTS

Cuba contributed 2.5% of the Latin American output and 0.2% of the world output. Of the national scientific output (133 articles, 111 original and 22 reviews), 84.2% were authored by a Cuban corresponding author (Cuban leadership). However, the majority (n = 20; 71.4%) of articles with international collaboration (n = 28; 21.1%) had foreign corresponding authors. Of the total, 33.8% (n = 45) corresponded to articles without collaboration. Only 13.5% of the articles (n = 18) were published in journals with high visibility (Q1). Of all the output, 68.4% (n = 91) was in Cuban journals. The output in English represented 29.3% (n = 39) and achieved greater impact than the articles in Spanish in terms of citations. As the visibility of the journals increased according to the quartiles where they are, the percentage of articles published in English and cited articles increased too, but Cuban scientific leadership decreased.

CONCLUSIONS

The greater the leadership in Cuban research, the lower its impact, and the lower the indexes of international collaboration. Cuban researchers are not yet able to systematically generate research that has a significant impact on the international scientific community.

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.

The promising drugs included in WHO's Solidarity Project: a choice based in scientific knowledge and institutional competencies

BACKGROUND

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Solidarity Program, probably the largest global initiative to encourage and support research in four promising drugs, named Remdesivir, Hydroxychloroquine, β Interferon and the combination Lopinavir / Ritonavir, to reduce the mortality of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

OBJECTIVES

Considering the potential impact of Solidarity Program to restrain the current pandemic, the present study aims to investigate whether it was designed upon indicators of scientific productivity, defined as the level of the production of new scientific knowledge and of the institutional capabilities, estimated in terms of scientific publications and technological agreements.

METHODS

The scientific documents on Alphacoronavirus, Betacoronavirus, Gammacoronavirus and Coronavirus were retrieved from Scopus database while the technological agreements on coronavirus were obtained through Cortellis. As for the institutions and countries, we have considered the data on author's affiliations in both set of data. For comparison, we included the analysis of documents related with other drugs or therapies, such as vaccines and antibodies, which were listed in a Clarivate's report on coronaviruses research.

FINDINGS

Most of the analysis refers to documents on Coronavirus, the largest group. The number of documents related to WHO's drugs are almost five times higher than in the other groups. This subset of documents involves the largest and most diverse number of institutions and countries. As for agreements, we observed a smaller number of institutions involved in it, suggesting differences between countries in terms of technical and human capabilities to develop basic and/or clinical research on coronavirus and to develop new forms or products to treat or to prevent the disease.

MAIN CONCLUSIONS

Hence, the results shown in this study illustrate that decisions taken by an international scientific body, as WHO, were mainly based in scientific knowledge and institutional competencies.

Scientists’ response to global public health emergencies: A bibliometrics perspective

The unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak at the end of 2019 has produced a worldwide health crisis. Scientific research, especially international research collaboration, is crucial to deal successfully with the epidemic. This article aims to review the response modes, and especially the international collaboration characteristic, of the academic community to similar public health events in the past. Based on relevant studies of four major public health emergencies in the past, the major public health emergencies were regarded as ‘new knowledge’ in the academic field. By using knowledge diffusion indicators, such as the breadth and speed of diffusion, and combined with the development characteristics of the event, this article explores the diffusion characteristics of the four major public health emergencies in the academic exchange system and then identifies the academic community’s response mode to the outbreaks. In addition, the characteristics of international collaboration in response to the public health events and the impact of international collaboration on the academic community’s response are analysed. Through the analysis of the international collaboration network, the cooperative groups and core countries in the research collaboration network related to the major public health emergencies are obtained. In terms of COVID-19, it is found that the response speed and intensity of scientists have been significantly improved, but more focus should be given to international collaboration. Our findings could be beneficial to both decision-makers and researchers in policy formulation and conducting research, respectively, to optimally deal with COVID-19 and possible outbreaks in the future.

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.

Bibliometric Analysis of SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 Studies from India and Connection to Sustainable Development Goals

India is ranked fifth in the world in terms of COVID-19 publications accounting for 6.7% of the total. About 60% of the COVID-19 publications in the year 2020 are from United States, China, UK, Italy, and India. We present a bibliometric analysis of the publication trends and citation structure along with the identification of major research clusters. By performing network analysis of authors, citations, institutions, keywords, and countries, we explore semantic associations by applying visualization techniques. Our study shows lead taken by the United States, China, UK, Italy, India in COVID-19 research may be attributed to the high prevalence of COVID-19 cases in those countries witnessing the first outbreak and also due to having access to COVID-19 data, access to labs for experimental trials, immediate funding, and overall support from the govt. agencies. A large number of publications and citations from India are due to co-authored publications with countries like the United States, UK, China, and Saudi Arabia. Findings show health sciences have the highest number of publications and citations, while physical sciences and social sciences and humanities counts were low. A large proportion of publications fall into the open-access category. With India as the focus, by comparing three major pandemics—SARS, MERS, COVID-19—from a bibliometrics perspective, we observe much broader involvement of authors from multiple countries for COVID-19 studies when compared to SARS and MERS. Finally, by applying bibliometric indicators, we see an increasing number of sustainable development-related studies from the COVID-19 domain, particularly concerning the topic of good health and well-being. This study allows for a deeper understanding of how the scholarly community from a populous country like India pursued research in the midst of a major pandemic which resulted in the closure of scientific institutions for an extended time.

A critical analysis of COVID-19 research literature: Text mining approach

OBJECTIVE

Among the stakeholders of COVID-19 research, clinicians particularly experience difficulty keeping up with the deluge of SARS-CoV-2 literature while performing their much needed clinical duties. By revealing major topics, this study proposes a text-mining approach as an alternative to navigating large volumes of COVID-19 literature.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We obtained 85,268 references from the NIH COVID-19 Portfolio as of November 21. After the exclusion based on inadequate abstracts, 65,262 articles remained in the final corpus. We utilized natural language processing to curate and generate the term list. We applied topic modeling analyses and multiple correspondence analyses to reveal the major topics and the associations among topics, journal countries, and publication sources.

RESULTS

In our text mining analyses of NIH's COVID-19 Portfolio, we discovered two sets of eleven major research topics by analyzing abstracts and titles of the articles separately. The eleven major areas of COVID-19 research based on abstracts included the following topics: 1) Public Health, 2) Patient Care & Outcomes, 3) Epidemiologic Modeling, 4) Diagnosis and Complications, 5) Mechanism of Disease, 6) Health System Response, 7) Pandemic Control, 8) Protection/Prevention, 9) Mental/Behavioral Health, 10) Detection/Testing, 11) Treatment Options. Further analyses revealed that five (2,3,4,5, and 9) of the eleven abstract-based topics showed a significant correlation (ranked from moderate to weak) with title-based topics.

CONCLUSION

By offering up the more dynamic, scalable, and responsive categorization of published literature, our study provides valuable insights to the stakeholders of COVID-19 research, particularly clinicians.

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) and the teaching of Carlo Urbani in Vietnam: a lesson from history almost 20 years after SARS

Carlo Urbani was an infectious diseases expert for Health Organization (WHO), who in 2003, first identified Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) as a new and highly contagious disease. In February, 2003, an American businessman with an unknown lung disease was admitted to a hospital in Vietnam. Doctor Urbani immediately understood that it was a new virus and right after he alerted the WHO and the Vietnamese government; he involved also foreign doctors in the investigation of this case. He advised the authorities to immediately implement quarantine measures and thanks to his quick and unyielding response, the spread of the virus could be stopped quickly, many patients were identified and early isolated. His early warning to the World Health Organization triggered a swift and global response credited with saving numerous lives. He shortly afterwards himself became infected and died. The shut down of Vietnam’s first outbreak was really a very important step for the whole world community and the Urbani’s quick actions were crucial because ensured an early detection of SARS and an effective response from international community.

Bibliometric analysis of global scientific research on COVID-19

Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a large number of COVID-19-related reports have been published in journals or submitted to preprint platforms. In this study, we search the COVID-19-related literature officially published and included in the Web of Science (WOS) database or submitted to four preprint platforms: bioRxiv, medRxiv, Preprints, and SSRN. Using data on the number of reports, author institution, country, and research category, we analyze global trends in COVID-19 research, including institution distribution and research hotspots. The results show that a large number of COVID-19-related reports have been produced; the United States has contributed the most published literature, followed by China. The United States has published the most reports included in the WOS in the categories of non-pharmaceutical interventions, treatment, and vaccine-related reports, while China has published the most literature in the categories of clinical features and complications, virology and immunology, epidemiology, and detection and diagnosis. Publication countries are concentrated in Asia, North America, and Europe, while South America and Africa have less literature. In conclusion, many scientific research issues related to COVID-19 need to be further clarified and COVID-19 research urgently needs global cooperation.

COVID-19 and diabetes: Analysis of the scientific production indexed in Scopus

BACKGROUND AND AIM

COVID-19 has affected the world population, with a higher impact among at-risk groups, such as diabetic patients. This has led to an exponential increase in the number of studies related to the subject, although their bibliometric characteristics are unknown. This article aims to characterize the world scientific production on COVID-19 and diabetes indexed in Scopus.

METHODS

Articles on the subject were retrieved using a search strategy and bibliometric indicators of production, visibility, collaboration and impact were studied.

RESULTS

The total scientific production was 1956 documents, which have 35086 citations and an h-index of 67. Articles published in Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research and Reviews (n = 127), as well as those by researchers from the United States (n = 498) predominated. Articles by Chinese authors (n = 314) had the highest impact according to the received citations (n = 21757). India, China and Spain are leading countries in terms of the research in which they participate. There is extensive international scientific collaboration led by China, the United States and Italy.

CONCLUSION

The volume of publications on COVID-19 and diabetes and their scientific impact show the incentive that the study of these diseases represents for the scientific community worldwide.

Assessment and management of asymptomatic COVID-19 infection: A systematic review

Background

COVID-19 can be asymptomatic in a substantial proportion of patients. The assessment and management of these patients constitute a key element to stop dissemination.

Aim

To describe the assessment and treatment of asymptomatic infection in patients with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19.

Methods

We searched five databases and search engines for preprints/preproofs, up to August 22, 2020. We included cohort, cross-sectional, and case series studies, reporting the assessment and management of asymptomatic individuals. We extracted data on total discharges with negative PCR, length of hospitalization, treatment, and number of patients who remained asymptomatic. A random-effects model with inverse variance method was used to calculate the pooled prevalence.

Results

41 studies (nine cross-sectional studies, five retrospective studies and 27 reports/case series; 647 asymptomatic individuals), were included, of which 47% were male (233/501). The age of patients was between 1month and 73 years. In patients who became symptomatic, length of hospitalization mean was 13.6 days (SD 6.4). Studies used lopinavir/ritonavir, hydroxychloroquine plus ritonavir/lopinavir, hydroxychloroquine with and without azithromycin, ribavirin plus interferon and interferon alfa. The proportion of individuals who remained asymptomatic was 91% (463/588 patients; 95%CI: 78.3%–98.7%); and asymptomatic individuals discharged with negative PCR was 86% (102/124 individuals; 95%CI: 58.4%–100%).

Conclusions

There is no standard treatment for asymptomatic COVID-19 individuals. There are no studies of adequate design to make this decision. It has been shown that most asymptomatic individuals who were followed have recovered, but this cannot be attributed to standard treatment.

Evidence and speculations: vaccines and therapeutic options for COVID-19 pandemic

A novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) emerged in China, at the end of December 2019 which posed an International Public Health Emergency, and later declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) named it SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2), while the disease was named COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease- 2019). Many questions related to the exact mode of transmission, animal origins, and antiviral therapeutics are not clear yet. Nevertheless, it is required to urgently launch a new protocol to evaluate the side effects of unapproved vaccines and antiviral therapeutics to accelerate the clinical application of new drugs. In this review, we highlight the most salient characteristics and recent findings of COVID-19 disease, molecular virology, interspecies mechanisms, and health consequences related to this disease.

Progressive Renal Impairment in an Older Patient with Coronavirus Disease 2019: A Case Report and Literature Review

Advanced age is a high-risk factor for exacerbation of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which causes a high rate of mortality. Therefore, it is important to strengthen the warning and monitoring of severe patients, and early identify the severe and critically severe types in time in the clinical treatment of COVID-19. Moreover, it is necessary to pay attention to the adverse reactions and damage to vital target organs caused by treatment drugs. This study reports the successful experience of diagnosis and treatment of an older patient with COVID-19 accompanied by progressive renal impairment, and pertinent literature was reviewed to help clinicians raise awareness of the disease.

The psychological impact of COVID-19 and restrictive measures in the world

BACKGROUND

In a short time, the COVID-19 pandemic turned into a global emergency. The fear of becoming infected and the lockdown measures have drastically changed people's daily routine. The aim of this study is to establish the psychological impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is entailing, particularly with regards to levels of stress, anxiety and depression, and to the risks of developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

METHODS

The study, carried out with a sample of 1612 subjects distributed in seven countries (Australia, China, Ecuador, Iran, Italy, Norway and the United States), allowed us to collect information about the psychological impact of COVID-19.

RESULTS

The findings of this study show that the levels of stress, depression and anxiety, as well as the risks of PTSD, are higher than average in over half of the considered sample. The severity of these disorders significantly depends on gender, type of outdoor activities, characteristics of their homes, eventual presence of infected acquaintances, time dedicated to looking for related information (in the news and social networks), type of source information and, in part, to the level of education and income.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that COVID-19 has a very strong psychological impact on the global population. This appears to be linked to the coping strategies adopted, level of mindful awareness, socio-demographic variables, people's habits and the way individuals use means of communication and information.

A Comprehensive Overview of the COVID-19 Literature: Machine Learning-Based Bibliometric Analysis

BACKGROUND

Shortly after the emergence of COVID-19, researchers rapidly mobilized to study numerous aspects of the disease such as its evolution, clinical manifestations, effects, treatments, and vaccinations. This led to a rapid increase in the number of COVID-19-related publications. Identifying trends and areas of interest using traditional review methods (eg, scoping and systematic reviews) for such a large domain area is challenging.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to conduct an extensive bibliometric analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of the COVID-19 literature.

METHODS

We used the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) that consists of a large number of research articles related to all coronaviruses. We used a machine learning-based method to analyze the most relevant COVID-19-related articles and extracted the most prominent topics. Specifically, we used a clustering algorithm to group published articles based on the similarity of their abstracts to identify research hotspots and current research directions. We have made our software accessible to the community via GitHub.

RESULTS

Of the 196,630 publications retrieved from the database, we included 28,904 in our analysis. The mean number of weekly publications was 990 (SD 789.3). The country that published the highest number of COVID-19-related articles was China (2950/17,270, 17.08%). The highest number of articles were published in bioRxiv. Lei Liu affiliated with the Southern University of Science and Technology in China published the highest number of articles (n=46). Based on titles and abstracts alone, we were able to identify 1515 surveys, 733 systematic reviews, 512 cohort studies, 480 meta-analyses, and 362 randomized control trials. We identified 19 different topics covered among the publications reviewed. The most dominant topic was public health response, followed by clinical care practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical characteristics and risk factors, and epidemic models for its spread.

CONCLUSIONS

We provide an overview of the COVID-19 literature and have identified current hotspots and research directions. Our findings can be useful for the research community to help prioritize research needs and recognize leading COVID-19 researchers, institutes, countries, and publishers. Our study shows that an AI-based bibliometric analysis has the potential to rapidly explore a large corpus of academic publications during a public health crisis. We believe that this work can be used to analyze other eHealth-related literature to help clinicians, administrators, and policy makers to obtain a holistic view of the literature and be able to categorize different topics of the existing research for further analyses. It can be further scaled (for instance, in time) to clinical summary documentation. Publishers should avoid noise in the data by developing a way to trace the evolution of individual publications and unique authors.

Managing Lung Cancer during Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization. As this disease continues to spread worldwide, it has posed enormous challenges on the healthcare of several diseases, especially cancer, because hospital facilities have invested health resources for patients with COVID-19. Indeed, patients with lung cancer are particularly vulnerable because of their poor baseline lung function and cancer-related treatment. In addition, once infected, they are at an increased risk of pulmonary complications from COVID-19. Oncologists are thus facing a challenge as how to balance the treatment plans to control the disease while protecting the patients with lung cancer from COVID-19. In fact, it is crucial to provide individualized treatment recommendations to limit the risks during these difficult times. This review highlights the key challenges that oncologists face when diagnosing COVID-19 among patients with lung cancer and examines the current recommendations from available literature, clinical expertise, and expert opinions regarding managing lung cancer in the era of COVID-19. It also explores the treatment approach recommended for patients with lung cancer while avoiding putting them at excessive risk of contracting COVID-19 infection.

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

Infectious diseases remain a complex, recurring, and challenging public health hazard. Coronaviruses have led to multidimensional consequences on health, mobility, and socio-economic conditions. Despite the significance and magnitude of impact from epidemics to the pandemic, literature is sparse on comprehensive coronaviruses related research performance over time. This study aimed at a scientometric evaluation of coronaviruses related literature including COVID-19. Data related to Coronavirus research was extracted from the Web of Science (WoS). All types of publications (28,846) were included and retrieved. To measure the quantity and quality of the publications, "R-Bibliometrix" package was used for detailed analysis exploring a wide range of indicators. Generally, an increasing trend was observed over time led by the USA and China followed by the United Kingdom, Europe, and few other developed countries. The last two decades contributed around 39.5% of documents while only 06 months of 2020 additionally contributed around 46.5% of total documents. Earlier shorter spikes of increased post epidemic publications followed by decreased productivity were detected in the last 2 decades and showed a lack of continuity-'a research epidemic following a disease epidemic'. Articles (53.4%) were the most common publication type. Journal of Virology, British Medical Journal (BMJ), and Virology were leading sources while BMJ, and Lancet showed increased contributions recently. Overall, similar trends of top authors were observed in terms of productivity, impact, collaborations, funding sources, and affiliations with few exceptions mainly from affected regions. Top 20 countries contributed >89% of documents suggesting a lack of global efforts. Networking was found to be mainly among developed nations with limited contributions from resource-limited countries perhaps requiring more cooperation. Recent post-COVID publications rise is highest, unprecedented, and rapidly growing. Authors strongly recommend recent COVID-19 pandemic as a call for continuous, more cooperative, and collective global research.

COVID-19 research progress: Bibliometrics and visualization analysis

Background: Coronavirus primarily targets the human respiratory system, COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) triggered in China in the late 2019. In March 2020, WHO announced the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to analyze and visualize the scientific structure of the COVID-19 publications using co-citation and co-authorship. Methods: This is a scientometric study. Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) was searched for all documents regarding COVID-19, MERS-Cov, and SARS-Cov from the beginning to 2020. An Excel spreadsheet was applied to gather and analyze the data and the CiteSpace was used to visualize and analyze the data. Results: A total of 5159 records were retrieved in WoSCC. The structure of the network indicated that the network mean silhouette was low (0.1444), implying that the network clusters' identity is not identifiable with high confidence. The network modularity was 0.7309. The cluster analysis of the co-citation network on documents from 2003 to 2020 provided 188 clusters. The largest cluster entitled, "the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus" had 255 nodes. The coauthorship network illustrated that the most prolific countries, USA, China, and Saudi Arabia, have focused on a specific field and have formed separate clusters. Conclusion: The present study identified the important topics of research in the field of COVID-19 based on co-citation networks as well as the analysis of clusters of countries' collaborations. Despite the similarities in the production behavior in prolific countries, their thematic focus varies so that a country like China plays a role in "Quantitative Detection" cluster, while USA is the leading country in the "Biological Evaluation" cluster.

Analysis of the scientific production of the effect of COVID-19 on the environment: A bibliometric study

The fight against COVID-19 since January 2020 has become the top priority of more than 200 countries. In order to offer solutions to eradicate this global pandemic, the scientific community has published hundreds of articles covering a wide range of areas of knowledge. With the aim of synthesizing these publications, academics are resorting to bibliometric analyses from the perspectives of the disciplines such as biology, medicine, socioeconomics and tourism. Yet no bibliometric analysis has explored the diffuse and little-known growth of COVID-19 scientific publications in the field of environmental studies. The current study is the first of this type to fill this research gap. It has resorted to SciMAT software to evaluate the main topics, authors and journals of publications on the subject of COVID-19 combined with environmental studies spanning the period between 1 December 2019 and 6 September 2020. The search yielded a collection of 440 articles published in scientific journals indexed on by Web of Science and Scopus databases. These publications can be broken down into six main themes: (i) a sharp reduction in air pollution and an improvement of the level of water pollution; (ii) the relationship of wind speed (positive), ultraviolet radiation (positive) and humidity (negative) with the rate of infections; (iii) the effect of the pandemic on the food supply chain and waste habits; (iv) wastewater monitoring offers a great potential as an early warning sign of COVID-19 transmission; (v) artificial intelligence and smart devices can be of great use in monitoring citizen mobilization; and (vi) the lessons gleaned from the pandemic that help define actions to mitigate climate change. The results of the current study therefore offer an agenda for future research and constitute a starting point for academics in the field of environmental studies to evaluate the effects of COVID-19.

MERS-CoV: epidemiology, molecular dynamics, therapeutics, and future challenges

The Severe Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has gained research attention worldwide, given the current pandemic. Nevertheless, a previous zoonotic and highly pathogenic coronavirus, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), is still causing concern, especially in Saudi Arabia and neighbour countries. The MERS-CoV has been reported from respiratory samples in more than 27 countries, and around 2500 cases have been reported with an approximate fatality rate of 35%. After its emergence in 2012 intermittent, sporadic cases, nosocomial infections and many community clusters of MERS continued to occur in many countries. Human-to-human transmission resulted in the large outbreaks in Saudi Arabia. The inherent genetic variability among various clads of the MERS-CoV might have probably paved the events of cross-species transmission along with changes in the inter-species and intra-species tropism. The current review is drafted using an extensive review of literature on various databases, selecting of publications irrespective of favouring or opposing, assessing the merit of study, the abstraction of data and analysing data. The genome of MERS-CoV contains around thirty thousand nucleotides having seven predicted open reading frames. Spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M), and nucleocapsid (N) proteins are the four main structural proteins. The surface located spike protein (S) of betacoronaviruses has been established to be one of the significant factors in their zoonotic transmission through virus-receptor recognition mediation and subsequent initiation of viral infection. Three regions in Saudi Arabia (KSA), Eastern Province, Riyadh and Makkah were affected severely. The epidemic progression had been the highest in 2014 in Makkah and Riyadh and Eastern Province in 2013. With a lurking epidemic scare, there is a crucial need for effective therapeutic and immunological remedies constructed on sound molecular investigations.

Bibliometric analysis of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) literature published in Web of Science 2019-2020

Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, turned into a pandemic in record time. Communication of disease presentation and mechanism of spread remain keys to getting ahead of the virus and limiting its spread beyond the capacity of management. Owing to huge academic focus and pandemic concern around the globe, this bibliometric analysis investigated research productivity related to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic using the Web of Science database. The relevant data were harvested, and search query was further refined by publication years (2020 OR 2019) and document types (article, book chapter, and proceedings paper). Finally, 6694 records were imported and downloaded in Plaintext and BibTeX formats on August 1, 2020. The data analysis was performed using MS Excel, VOS viewer, and Biblioshiny software. Of the 6694 publications that appeared in that period, the USA and Chinese research institutions topped the numbers. At the same time, the Journal of Medical Virology and CUREUS (Cureus Journal of Medical Science), remained favorite journals for publications. The pattern of multi-author publications has outstripped that of single-authors. Apart from COVID-19 and the novel coronavirus, the important keywords mentioned included pandemic, pneumonia, epidemiology, public health, outbreak, epidemic, China, infection, and treatment. The analysis shows a strong local research response from China, with large teams reporting on the disease outbreak. Subsequent studies will document a global response as the virus spreads worldwide. The initial research related to the current coronavirus outbreak was reported from within China. The data and patterns were supposed to alter as the virus spread globally.

Mental health research in response to the COVID-19, Ebola, and H1N1 outbreaks: A comparative bibliometric analysis

INTRODUCTION

Both the COVID-19 pandemic and its management have had a negative impact on mental health worldwide. There is a growing body of research on mental health as it relates to the pandemic. The objective of this study is to use bibliometric analyses to assess the mental health research output related to the COVID-19 pandemic and compare it to that of the West Africa Ebola and H1N1 outbreaks.

METHODOLOGY

We performed comprehensive searches in Embase, PubMed, and Scopus databases, and included all types of documents related to the three outbreaks published since the respective beginnings up to August 26, 2020.

RESULTS

Despite the shorter time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, relative to Ebola and H1N1, we found a much greater number of mental health documents related to COVID-19 (n = 3070) compared to the two other outbreaks (127 for Ebola and 327 for H1N1). The proportion of documents in the top 10% journals was 31% for COVID-19, 24% for Ebola, and 40% for H1N1. Authors affiliated with institutions located in high-income countries published or contributed to 79% of all documents followed by authors from upper-middle-income countries (23%), lower-middle-income countries (10%), and low-income countries (2%). Approximately 19% of the documents reported receiving funding and 23% were the product of international collaboration.

CONCLUSION

Mental health research output is already greater for COVID-19 compared to Ebola and H1N1 combined. A minority of documents reported funding, was the product of international collaboration, or was published by authors located in low-income countries during the three outbreaks in general, and the COVID-19 pandemic in particular.

Coronavirus: An insight into global research until outbreak of COVID-19 and its implications for the future

Background

The currently prevailing global threat of COVID-19 caused the publication numbers on coronaviruses to explode. The awareness of the scientific and public community is enormous. But what about the sense of all these undertakings and what can be learned about the future for a better understanding? These questions were answered with established bibliometric analyses of the time until the avalanche of publications unfolded.

Methods

Chronological, geographical aspects of publication output on coronavirus were also evaluated under the influence of epidemiological and socio-economic parameters.

Results

The trend in publication and citation numbers shows the strong influence of the past pandemics SARS and MERS with an untypical decline afterward. Research is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary over time. The USA and China, as the countries with the highest number of publications, are being displaced by other countries in the consideration of socio-economic and epidemiological aspects, which shows the effect of regional interest in corona research. A significant correlation was found between the number of SARS cases per country and related publications, while no correlation was found for MERS cases and articles.

Conclusions

The results underline the need for sustainable and forward-looking approaches that should not end with the containment of COVID-19.

Characteristics of academic publications, preprints, and registered clinical trials on the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a deluge of publications. For this cross-sectional study we compared the amount and reporting characteristics of COVID-19-related academic articles and preprints and the number of ongoing clinical trials and systematic reviews. To do this, we searched the PubMed database of citations and abstracts for published life science journals by using appropriate combinations of medical subject headings (MeSH terms), and the COVID-19 section of the MedRxiv and BioRxiv archives up to 20 May 2020 (21 weeks). In addition, we searched Clinicaltrial.gov, Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, EU Clinical Trials Register, and 15 other trial registers, as well as PROSPERO, the international prospective register of systematic reviews. The characteristics of each publication were extracted. Regression analyses and Z tests were used to detect publication trends and their relative proportions. A total of 3635 academic publications and 3805 preprints were retrieved. Only 8.6% (n = 329) of the preprints were already published in indexed journals. The number of academic and preprint publications increased significantly over time (p<0.001). Case reports (6% academic vs 0.9% preprints; p<0.001) and letters (17.4% academic vs 0.5% preprints; p<0.001) accounted for a greater share of academic compared to preprint publications. Differently, randomized controlled trials (0.22% vs 0.63%; p<0.001) and systematic reviews (0.08% vs 5%) made up a greater share of the preprints. The relative proportion of clinical studies registered at Clinicaltrials.gov, Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, and EU Clinical Trials Register was 57.9%, 49.5%, and 98.9%, respectively, most of which were still “recruiting”. PROSPERO listed 962 systematic review protocols. Preprints were slightly more prevalent than academic articles but both were increasing in number. The void left by the lack of primary studies was filled by an outpour of immediate opinions (i.e., letters to the editor) published in PubMed-indexed journals. Summarizing, preprints have gained traction as a publishing response to the demand for prompt access to empirical, albeit not peer-reviewed, findings during the present pandemic.

Coronaviruses in wild birds - A potential and suitable vector for global distribution

The recurrent appearance of novel coronaviruses (CoVs) and the mortality and morbidity caused by their outbreaks aroused a widespread response among the global science community. Wild birds' high biodiversity, perching and migratory activity, ability to travel long distances and possession of a special adaptive immune system may make them alarming sources of zoonotic CoV‐spreading vectors. This review gathers the available evidence on the global spread of CoVs in wild birds to date. The major wild birds associated with different types of CoVs are Anseriformes, Charadriiformes, Columbiformes, Pelecaniformes, Galliformes, Passeriformes, Psittaciformes, Accipitriformes, Ciconiiformes, Gruiformes and so on. However, the main type of CoVs found in wild birds is gammacoronavirus, followed by deltacoronavirus. Consequently, it is imperative to enable thorough research and continuous monitoring to fill the study gap in terms of understanding their role as zoonotic vectors and the frequent appearance of novel CoVs.

Bibliometric and Visualization Analysis of Human Coronaviruses: Prospects and Implications for COVID-19 Research

Human coronaviruses, which can cause a range of infectious diseases, have been studied for nearly 60 years. The field has gained renewed interest from researchers around the world due to the COVID-19 outbreak in late 2019. Despite a large amount of research, little is known about the knowledge structure and developing trends of this topic. Here, we apply bibliometric analysis along with visualization tools to analyze 15,207 publications related to human coronavirus from the Scopus database, using indicators on publication and citation, journal, country or territory, affiliation and international cooperation, author, and keyword co-occurrence cluster. The results show that research on human coronavirus is dominated by SARS-CoV. Although there have been many publications, only 626 publications (4.1% of total) have more than 100 citations. The top 20 journals with most publications account for 20.6% of total publications and 41% of total citations. In addition to the United States and some European countries, many Asian and African countries are involved in this research, with China holding an important position in this area. Leading researchers from various fields of human coronavirus research are listed to facilitate collaboration and promote effective disease prevention and control. The keywords co-occurrence analysis reveals that the research focus on virology, public health, drugs and other hotspot fields, and uncovers changes in the direction of coronavirus research. The research map on human coronavirus obtained by our analysis are expected to help researchers to efficiently and effectively explore COVID-19.

Covid-19 pandemic and the unprecedented mobilisation of scholarly efforts prompted by a health crisis: Scientometric comparisons across SARS, MERS and 2019-nCoV literature

During the current century, each major coronavirus outbreak has triggered a quick and immediate surge of academic publications on its respective topic. The spike in research publications following the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, however, has been like no other. The global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has mobilised scientific efforts at an unprecedented scale. In less than 5 months, more than 12,000 research items and in less than seven months, more than 30,000 items were indexed, while it is projected that the number could exceed 80,000 by the end of 2020, should the current trend continues. With the health crisis affecting all aspects of life, research on Covid-19 seems to have become a focal point of interest across many academic disciplines. Here, scientometric aspects of the Covid-19 literature are analysed and contrasted with those of the two previous major coronavirus diseases, i.e., Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The focus is on the co-occurrence of key-terms, bibliographic coupling and citation relations of journals and collaborations between countries. Interesting recurring patterns across all three literatures were discovered. All three outbreaks have commonly generated three distinct cohorts of studies: (i) studies linked to public health response and epidemic control, (ii) studies on chemical constitution of the virus; and (iii) studies related to treatment, vaccine and clinical care. While studies affiliated with category (i) seem to have been relatively earliest to emerge, they have overall received relatively smaller number of citations compared to publications the two other categories. Covid-19 studies seem to have been disseminated across a broader variety of journals and across a more diverse range of subject areas. Clear links are observed between the geographical origins of each outbreak as well as the local geographical severity of each outbreak and the magnitude of research originated from regions. Covid-19 studies also display the involvement of authors from a broader variety of countries compared to SARS and MERS. Considering the speed at which the Covid-19-related literature is accumulating, an interesting dimension that warrants further exploration could be to assess if the quality and rigour of these publications have been affected.

Coronavirus Disease 2019-COVID-19

SUMMARYIn recent decades, several new diseases have emerged in different geographical areas, with pathogens including Ebola virus, Zika virus, Nipah virus, and coronaviruses (CoVs). Recently, a new type of viral infection emerged in Wuhan City, China, and initial genomic sequencing data of this virus do not match with previously sequenced CoVs, suggesting a novel CoV strain (2019-nCoV), which has now been termed severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is suspected to originate from an animal host (zoonotic origin) followed by human-to-human transmission, the possibility of other routes should not be ruled out. Compared to diseases caused by previously known human CoVs, COVID-19 shows less severe pathogenesis but higher transmission competence, as is evident from the continuously increasing number of confirmed cases globally. Compared to other emerging viruses, such as Ebola virus, avian H7N9, SARS-CoV, and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), SARS-CoV-2 has shown relatively low pathogenicity and moderate transmissibility. Codon usage studies suggest that this novel virus has been transferred from an animal source, such as bats. Early diagnosis by real-time PCR and next-generation sequencing has facilitated the identification of the pathogen at an early stage. Since no antiviral drug or vaccine exists to treat or prevent SARS-CoV-2, potential therapeutic strategies that are currently being evaluated predominantly stem from previous experience with treating SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and other emerging viral diseases. In this review, we address epidemiological, diagnostic, clinical, and therapeutic aspects, including perspectives of vaccines and preventive measures that have already been globally recommended to counter this pandemic virus.

Coronavirus Disease 2019-COVID-19

SUMMARYIn recent decades, several new diseases have emerged in different geographical areas, with pathogens including Ebola virus, Zika virus, Nipah virus, and coronaviruses (CoVs). Recently, a new type of viral infection emerged in Wuhan City, China, and initial genomic sequencing data of this virus do not match with previously sequenced CoVs, suggesting a novel CoV strain (2019-nCoV), which has now been termed severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is suspected to originate from an animal host (zoonotic origin) followed by human-to-human transmission, the possibility of other routes should not be ruled out. Compared to diseases caused by previously known human CoVs, COVID-19 shows less severe pathogenesis but higher transmission competence, as is evident from the continuously increasing number of confirmed cases globally. Compared to other emerging viruses, such as Ebola virus, avian H7N9, SARS-CoV, and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), SARS-CoV-2 has shown relatively low pathogenicity and moderate transmissibility. Codon usage studies suggest that this novel virus has been transferred from an animal source, such as bats. Early diagnosis by real-time PCR and next-generation sequencing has facilitated the identification of the pathogen at an early stage. Since no antiviral drug or vaccine exists to treat or prevent SARS-CoV-2, potential therapeutic strategies that are currently being evaluated predominantly stem from previous experience with treating SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and other emerging viral diseases. In this review, we address epidemiological, diagnostic, clinical, and therapeutic aspects, including perspectives of vaccines and preventive measures that have already been globally recommended to counter this pandemic virus.

Coronavirus Disease 2019-COVID-19

SUMMARYIn recent decades, several new diseases have emerged in different geographical areas, with pathogens including Ebola virus, Zika virus, Nipah virus, and coronaviruses (CoVs). Recently, a new type of viral infection emerged in Wuhan City, China, and initial genomic sequencing data of this virus do not match with previously sequenced CoVs, suggesting a novel CoV strain (2019-nCoV), which has now been termed severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is suspected to originate from an animal host (zoonotic origin) followed by human-to-human transmission, the possibility of other routes should not be ruled out. Compared to diseases caused by previously known human CoVs, COVID-19 shows less severe pathogenesis but higher transmission competence, as is evident from the continuously increasing number of confirmed cases globally. Compared to other emerging viruses, such as Ebola virus, avian H7N9, SARS-CoV, and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), SARS-CoV-2 has shown relatively low pathogenicity and moderate transmissibility. Codon usage studies suggest that this novel virus has been transferred from an animal source, such as bats. Early diagnosis by real-time PCR and next-generation sequencing has facilitated the identification of the pathogen at an early stage. Since no antiviral drug or vaccine exists to treat or prevent SARS-CoV-2, potential therapeutic strategies that are currently being evaluated predominantly stem from previous experience with treating SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and other emerging viral diseases. In this review, we address epidemiological, diagnostic, clinical, and therapeutic aspects, including perspectives of vaccines and preventive measures that have already been globally recommended to counter this pandemic virus.

SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and advances in developing potential therapeutics and vaccines to counter this emerging pandemic

A novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), causing an emerging coronavirus disease (COVID-19), first detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, which has taken a catastrophic turn with high toll rates in China and subsequently spreading across the globe. The rapid spread of this virus to more than 210 countries while affecting more than 25 million people and causing more than 843,000 human deaths, it has resulted in a pandemic situation in the world. The SARS-CoV-2 virus belongs to the genus Betacoronavirus, like MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, all of which originated in bats. It is highly contagious, causing symptoms like fever, dyspnea, asthenia and pneumonia, thrombocytopenia, and the severely infected patients succumb to the disease. Coronaviruses (CoVs) among all known RNA viruses have the largest genomes ranging from 26 to 32 kb in length. Extensive research has been conducted to understand the molecular basis of the SARS-CoV-2 infection and evolution, develop effective therapeutics, antiviral drugs, and vaccines, and to design rapid and confirmatory viral diagnostics as well as adopt appropriate prevention and control strategies. To date, August 30, 2020, no effective, proven therapeutic antibodies or specific drugs, and vaccines have turned up. In this review article, we describe the underlying molecular organization and phylogenetic analysis of the coronaviruses, including the SARS-CoV-2, and recent advances in diagnosis and vaccine development in brief and focusing mainly on developing potential therapeutic options that can be explored to manage this pandemic virus infection, which would help in valid countering of COVID-19.