Open AccessA Bibliometric Analysis of Global COVID-19 Research
Author(s) -
Shaheer Ahmed,
Usama Waqar,
Kantesh Kumar Lohana,
Daniyal Khan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
national journal of health sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2519-7878
pISSN - 2519-7053
DOI - 10.21089/njhs.53.0119
Subject(s) - covid-19 , scopus , china , bibliometrics , citation , coronavirus , geography , web of science , science citation index , pandemic , library science , political science , disease , medline , medicine , infectious disease (medical specialty) , virology , computer science , outbreak , pathology , archaeology , law
Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has influenced all continents, prompting extraordinary efforts on worldwide research and publications to alleviate the crisis. Methods: We conducted a bibliometric review using Scopus to assess its impact on global scientific production. We searched for the following terms in titles, abstracts, and keywords to identify relevant literature published until 9th January 2021: 2019 novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, coronavirus disease-19, coronavirus disease 2019. Results: Our results retrieved 86,624 documents from 159 countries with the USA, China, and UK being the top three contributors. Overall citation count was 769,811 with documents from China being cited most. In terms of h-index, China, USA, and UK ranked highest respectively. Conclusion: Most publications were associated with developed countries that were hit the earliest and/or hardest. This impact on scientific publications was less pronounced in developing countries like Pakistan, highlighting the immediate need to support and facilitate research on COVID-19 in these countries. Keywords: COVID-19, Research, Bibliometric analysis, Publications, SARS-CoV-2, Developing countries, Research and development.