The status and trends of coronavirus research: A global bibliometric and visualized analysis

Tracing the Evolution: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis of Drug Interaction Clinical Studies

This study aims to meticulously map the bibliometric landscape of drug-drug interactions (DDIs) in clinical research. This represents the first use of bibliometric analysis to comprehensively highlight the evolutionary trends and core themes in this critical field of pharmacology. An exhaustive bibliometric search was performed within the Web of Science Core Collection, aiming to comprehensively gather literature on DDIs in clinical settings. A combination of sophisticated analytical tools including DIKW, VOSviewer, and Citespace was utilized for an in-depth exploration of bibliometric patterns and trends. Of the 3421 initially identified articles, 2622 were considered relevant. The analysis revealed a marked escalation in DDIs publications, with a peak observed in 2020. Five principal thematic clusters emerged: Safety and Adverse Reactions, Drug Metabolism and Efficacy, Disease and Drug Treatment, Research Methods and Practices, and Special Populations and Combined Medication. Key insights included the escalating significance of drug metabolism in pharmacokinetics, heightened focus on cardiovascular and antiviral therapeutics, and the advancing frontier of personalized medicine. Additionally, the analysis underscored the necessity for strategic attention to vulnerable populations and innovative methodological approaches. This study calls for the global harmonization of research methods in DDIs clinical investigations, advocating for the integration of personalized medicine paradigms and the implementation of cutting-edge computational analytics. It highlights the imperative for inclusive and collaborative research approaches to adeptly address the intricate challenges of contemporary pharmacotherapy.

Assessment of Hygiene Practices, Awareness, and Water Consumption Regarding Covid-19 Among Children in a Refugee Camp

INTRODUCTION

At the outbreak of infectious diseases, the response of different communities to the disease varies, and children are most affected by the collective anxiety and grief that consequently arises. In this research, the behavior of children and their parents in terms of hygiene and precautions before and during the COVID-19 pandemic was investigated.

METHODOLOGY

The focus of the present research was on sanitation facilities, particularly access to end-use of water for hand washing. The research was conducted in Barika Camp, Kurdistan, Iraq and 311 parents and children were interviewed. A data collection team consisting of two females and one male was responsible for gathering data, primarily from women who served as the main respondents. Questionnaires consisted of three main parts: demography, COVID-19 pandemic effects, and sanitary shelter specifications.

RESULT

The results demonstrated that the behavior of refugees during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the priority of child protection, type of disinfectants, and water consumption has significantly altered. These changes mainly depended on the women's age and education level.

DISCUSSION

Overall results showed that in 61.09% of the participants, the number of hand washes and in 58.58%, the washing time increased, leading to water shortage in the refugee camp.

Mapping scientific knowledge discovery on COVID-19 pandemic and agriculture: a bibliometric analysis and future research directions

This paper aims at analyzing the research productivity and scientific knowledge discovery of the COVID-19 pandemic in agriculture using a bibliometric analysis approach. A total of 1514 research papers indexed in the Scopus database, covering a period of 2020 to 2022, are processed using VOSviewer and R-Studio software. The analysis of research productivity indicates that the number of research publications on COVID-19 and agriculture has exponentially increased globally, and about 80% of the research papers have been published in the top 10 countries led by the USA, India, and China. The countries are increasingly collaborating in undertaking research on COVID-19 and agriculture. Furthermore, major journals and articles with citations have been extracted to analyze the leading publication avenues and focused areas of research. The science mapping is done using co-occurrence and thematic map. With the help of co-occurrence analysis, six clusters are identified depicting major research themes, i.e., COVID-19 and agricultural supply chain disruption, COVID-19 and human health issues and coping strategies, COVID-19 and non-human and animal health, COVID-19 pandemic and environment and pollution, COVID-19 and healthcare and treatment, and COVID-19 and food nutrition from dairy and meat products. The thematic map analysis identifies potential research areas such as mental health, anxiety, and depression in the agricultural system, which may help in setting future research agenda and help devising policy supports for managing the agriculture sector better during crisis. The paper also highlights the theoretical and practical implications.

The status and trends of mitochondrial dynamics research: A global bibliometric and visualized analysis

BACKGROUND

Mitochondria are remarkably dynamic organelles encapsulated by bilayer membranes. The dynamic properties of mitochondria are critical for energy production.

AIMS

The aim of our study is to investigate the global status and trends of mitochondrial dynamics research and predict popular topics and directions in the field.

METHODS

Publications related to the studies of mitochondrial dynamics from 2002 to 2021 were retrieved from Web of Science database. A total of 4,576 publications were included. Bibliometric analysis was conducted by visualization of similarities viewer and GraphPadPrism 5 software.

RESULTS

There is an increasing trend of mitochondrial dynamics research during the last 20 years. The cumulative number of publications about mitochondrial dynamics research followed the logistic growth model [Formula: see text]. The USA made the highest contributions to the global research. The journal Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA)-Molecular Cell Research had the largest publication numbers. Case Western Reserve University is the most contributive institution. The main research orientation and funding agency were cell biology and HHS. All keywords related studies could be divided into three clusters: "Related disease research", "Mechanism research" and "Cell metabolism research".

CONCLUSIONS

Attention should be drawn to the latest popular research and more efforts will be put into mechanistic research, which may inspire new clinical treatments for the associated diseases.

A comparison of 3 productive authors' research domains based on sources from articles, cited references and citing articles using social network analysis

BACKGROUND

An individual's research domain (RD) can be determined from objective publication data (e.g., medical subject headings and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms) by performing social network analysis. Bibliographic coupling (such as cocitation) is a similarity metric that relies on citation analysis to determine the similarity in RD between 2 articles. This study compared RD consistency between articles as well as their cited references and citing articles (ARCs).

METHODS

A total of 1388 abstracts were downloaded from PubMed and authored by 3 productive authors. Based on the top 3 clusters in social network analysis, similarity in RD was observed by comparing their consistency using the major MeSH terms in author articles, cited references and citing articles (ARC). Impact beam plots with La indices were drawn and compared for each of the 3 authors.

RESULTS

Sung-Ho Jang (South Korea), Chia-Hung Kao (Taiwan), and Chin-Hsiao Tseng (Taiwan) published 445, 780, and 163 articles, respectively. Dr Jang's RD is physiology, and Dr Kao and Dr Tseng's RDs are epidemiology. We confirmed the consistency of the RD terms by comparing the major MeSH terms in the ARC. Their La indexes were 5, 5, and 6, where a higher value indicates more extraordinary research achievement.

CONCLUSION

RD consistency was confirmed by comparing the main MeSH terms in ARC. The 3 approaches of RD determination (based on author articles, the La index, and the impact beam plots) were recommended for bibliographical studies in the future.

Emerging trends and focus of giant cell tumor of bone research from 2001-2021: A visualization research

Giant cell tumor of bone is a highly invasive benign tumor with a high postoperative recurrence rate.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to analyze the research hotspots and trends of global research on giant cell tumor of bone in the past 20 years, to provide a reference for relevant personnel in this field to carry out academic research.

METHODS

The literature related to giant cell tumor of bone from 2001 to 2021 was retrieved from the Web of Science. The bibliometrics research method and VOS Viewer were used to extract and analyze the keywords of the journal authors' research institutions, and the research status and development direction in the recent 20 years were visualized.

RESULTS

A total of 2063 articles were included. The number of global publications is increasing every year. The United States contributes the most to global research, with the most citations and the highest H-index. The journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research published the most articles on this issue. "Denosumab" and "h3f3a" will get more attention and be the next popular hotspot in the future.

CONCLUSION

The study of giant cell tumor of bone is a hot spot of continuous development and has an important contribution to human health.

A bibliometric analysis of global research performance on tuberculosis (2011-2020): Time for a global approach to support high-burden countries

BACKGROUND:

Tuberculosis (TB) is a persistent public health issue requiring consistent global effort for its eradication and control. Research on the subject plays a vital role in combatting the disease, giving future directions, and meeting the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study aimed to evaluate the global TB research trends and performance from 2011 to 2020.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

All the data for TB-related research publications from 2011 to 2020 were extracted from the Web of Science database and a comprehensive analysis was performed on the R-bibliometrix package.

RESULTS:

An increasing number of publications with an annual growth rate of 6.32% and a plateau in production from 2015 to 2018 was observed. Of 145 countries, the United States of America (USA), China, India, the United Kingdom, and South Africa led and made up half of the global contribution. Out of 91,862 authors, Zhang Y was the most productive with 205 articles and Barry CE had the highest H-index of 45. Only seven of the top 20 authors were from high-burden countries. The University of Cape Town was the leading institutional affiliation, followed by Stellenbosch University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The most frequent international collaboration was between the USA and South Africa, occurring on 1203 instances. Only five of the top 30 high-burden countries were present in the top 30 collaborations. PLOS ONE, disseminating 2271 articles, was the most productive out of 3500 sources.

CONCLUSION:

The past decade has seen a steady increase in global TB research. Prominent authors, affiliations, and countries showed collaborative trends, but publications were found to be mostly from developed, low-burden countries except China, India, and South Africa. To meet the goals set by the SDGs and the WHO End TB Strategy, high-burden countries need to explore feasible opportunities and global support to enhance their expected TB-related research contributions.

Exploring machine learning: a scientometrics approach using bibliometrix and VOSviewer

Machine Learning has found application in solving complex problems in different fields of human endeavors such as intelligent gaming, automated transportation, cyborg technology, environmental protection, enhanced health care, innovation in banking and home security, and smart homes. This research is motivated by the need to explore the global structure of machine learning to ascertain the level of bibliographic coupling, collaboration among research institutions, co-authorship network of countries, and sources coupling in publications on machine learning techniques. The Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (HDBSCAN) was applied to clustering prediction of authors dominance ranking in this paper. Publications related to machine learning were retrieved and extracted from the Dimensions database with no language restrictions. Bibliometrix was employed in computation and visualization to extract bibliographic information and perform a descriptive analysis. VOSviewer (version 1.6.16) tool was used to construct and visualize structure map of source coupling networks of researchers and co-authorship. About 10,814 research papers on machine learning published from 2010 to 2020 were retrieved for the research. Experimental results showed that the highest degree of betweenness centrality was obtained from cluster 3 with 153.86 from the University of California and Harvard University with 24.70. In cluster 1, the national university of Singapore has the highest degree betweenness of 91.72. Also, in cluster 5, the University of Cambridge (52.24) and imperial college London (4.52) having the highest betweenness centrality manifesting that he could control the collaborative relationship and that they possessed and controlled a large number of research resources. Findings revealed that this work has the potential to provide valuable guidance for new perspectives and future research work in the rapidly developing field of machine learning.

Trends in the Use of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality in Surgical Research: a Global Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis

There have been many major developments in the use of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies in the context of global surgical research, yet few reports on the trends in this field have been published to date. This study was therefore designed to explore these worldwide trends in this clinically important field. Relevant studies published from 1 January 2009 through 13 October 2020 were retrieved from the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) tool of the Web of Science database. Bibliometric techniques were then used to analyze the resultant data, with visual bibliographic coupling, co-authorship, co-citation, co-occurrence, and publication trend analyses subsequently being conducted with GraphPad Prism 8 and with the visualization of similarities (VOS) software tool. There is no patient and public involved. In total, 6221 relevant studies were incorporated into this analysis. At a high level, clear global annual increases in the number of publications in this field were observed. The USA made the greatest contributions to this field over the studied period, with the highest H-index value, the most citations, and the greatest total link strength for analyzed publications. The country with the highest number of average citations per publication was Scotland. The Surgical Endoscopy And Other Interventional Techniques journal contributed the greatest number of publications in this field. The University of London was the institution that produced the greatest volume of research in this field. Overall, studies could be broadly classified into five clusters: Neurological Research, Surgical Techniques, Technological Products, Rehabilitative Medicine, and Clinical Therapy. The trends detected in the present analysis suggest that the number of global publications pertaining to the use of AR, VR, and MR techniques in surgical research is likely to increase in the coming years. Particular attention should be paid to emerging trends in related fields including MR, extended reality, head-mounted displays, navigation, and holographic images.

Bibliometric and Visualized Analyses of Research Studies on Different Analgesics in the Treatment of Orthopedic Postoperative Pain

Background

Pain following orthopedic surgery has always been a critical issue, which caused great distress to the patients. Analgesics in the treatment of postoperative pain following orthopedic surgery have aroused great attention from scholars, and numerous studies have been published in recent years. Bibliometrics could assist scholars in understanding the scope of research topics better, identifying research focuses and key literature, and analyzing the development and trend of analgesics in the treatment of postoperative pain following orthopedic surgery.

Methods

Literature data were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) of Web of Science (WOS) Core collection database. The articles from 1992 to December 2021 on analgesics in the treatment of postoperative pain following orthopedic surgery were recruited. The citation reports including the publication numbers, h-index, total citations, and average citations in terms of authors, organizations, and countries were obtained. Top 20 research directions, funds, and journals with the most publications were charted. The co-authorship relations in the analysis units of authors, organizations, and countries were analyzed by the online bibliometric tool and VOSviewer software. The author's keywords co-occurrence overlay map was visualized by the VOSviewer software.

Results

A total of 406 articles were retrieved from 1992 to December 4th, 2021, with 11,655 times cited, average citations of 28.57 per item, and an h-index of 55. The most high-yield publication year, authors, organizations, countries, research directions, funds, and journals were 2020 (n = 887), Ilfeld BM from University of California San Diego (n = 7), University of California System (n = 21), the USA (n = 178), Anesthesiology (n = 161), National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, and United States Department of Health Human Services (n = 12), and Anesthesia and Analgesia (n = 29), respectively. Similarly, co-authoring analysis of publications regarding on different analgesics showed that the authors and countries with the most co-authorship strength were Carr Daniel B (total link strength = 6) and the USA (total link strength = 30), respectively. The highest occurrence keywords were “postoperative pain” with 135 occurrences (total link strength = 784). The future research hotspots might be “acute pain,” “outcomes,” “oxycodone,” “total hip,” “replacement,” and “United States.”

Conclusion

Analgesics in the treatment of postoperative pain following orthopedic surgery can be observed in this study by employing the online bibliometric tool and VOSviewer software, which established the relationship between the units of analysis. It can provide a meaningful resource with detailed information for orthopedic surgeons who would like to understand the trend in this field better. They can also benefit from the emphasis on citation count to carry out high-level research in the future.

Photothermal inactivation of universal viral particles by localized surface plasmon resonance mediated heating filter membrane

This study introduces localized surface plasmon resonance (L-SPR) mediated heating filter membrane (HFM) for inactivating universal viral particles by using the photothermal effect of plasmonic metal nanoparticles (NPs). Plasmonic metal NPs were coated onto filter membrane via a conventional spray-coating method. The surface temperature of the HFM could be controlled to approximately 40-60 °C at room temperature, owing to the photothermal effect of the gold (Au) NPs coated on them, under irradiation by visible light-emitting diodes. Due to the photothermal effect of the HFMs, the virus titer of H1Npdm09 was reduced by > 99.9%, the full inactivation time being < 10 min, confirming the 50% tissue culture infective dose (TCID50) assay. Crystal violet staining showed that the infectious samples with photothermal inactivation lost their infectivity against Mardin-Darby Canine Kidney cells. Moreover, photothermal inactivation could also be applied to reduce the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, showing reduction rate of 99%. We used quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) techniques to confirm the existence of viral genes on the surface of the HFM. The results of the TCID50 assay, crystal violet staining method, and qRT-PCR showed that the effective and immediate reduction in viral infectivity possibly originated from the denaturation or deformation of membrane proteins and components. This study provides a new, simple, and effective method to inactivate viral infectivity, leading to its potential application in various fields of indoor air quality control and medical science.

Is coronavirus-related research becoming more interdisciplinary? A perspective of co-occurrence analysis and diversity measure of scientific articles

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a significant repercussion on the health, economy, politics and environment, making coronavirus-related issues more complicated and difficult to adequately address by relying on a single field. Interdisciplinary research can provide an effective solution to complex issues in the related field of coronavirus. However, whether coronavirus-related research becomes more interdisciplinary still needs corroboration. In this study, we investigate interdisciplinary status of the coronavirus-related fields via the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19). To this end, we calculate bibliometric indicators of interdisciplinarity and apply a co-occurrence analysis method. The results show that co-occurrence relationships between cited disciplines have evolved dynamically over time. The two types of co-occurrence relationships, Immunology and Microbiology & Medicine and Chemical Engineering & Chemistry, last for a long time in this field during 1990-2020. Moreover, the number of disciplines cited by coronavirus-related research increases, whereas the distribution of disciplines is uneven, and this field tends to focus on several dominant disciplines such as Medicine, Immunology and Microbiology, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology. We also measure the disciplinary diversity of COVID-19 related papers published from January to December 2020; the disciplinary variety shows an upward trend, while the degree of disciplinary balance shows a downward trend. Meanwhile, the comprehensive index ²D^s demonstrates that the degree of interdisciplinarity in coronavirus field decreases between 1990 and 2019, but it increases in 2020. The results help to map the interdisciplinarity of coronavirus-related research, gaining insight into the degree and history of interdisciplinary cooperation.

Global Trends in Atherosclerosis Research in the Epigenetics Field: Bibliometric and Visualization Studies

Atherosclerosis is a pathological vascular state caused by the interaction of environmental and hereditary factors. Epigenetic modifications may be the bridge connecting environmental factors and genetic factors. A search for publications on the Web of Science database in the field of atherosclerosis related to epigenetics was conducted from the earliest mention to 31 December 2020. Data on total and annual publications, citations, impact factors, Hirsch (H)-index, citation times, most prolific authors, and frequently published journals were collected for quantitative and qualitative comparison. A total of 1848 publications related to epigenetics and atherosclerosis were found. The major contributing countries were the China (522, 28.23%), United States (485, 26.23%), and Germany (119, 6.44%). The greatest number of retrieved publications were published in the journal, "Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology" (62, 3.66%). The publication "Oxidative Stress and Diabetic Complications" was cited 2370 times. The most frequent keywords were "DNA methylation" and "LncRNA". Publications on epigenetic research in the atherosclerosis field have increased significantly every year, indicating that the study of epigenetic modifications plays an increasingly important role in understanding the pathology of atherosclerosis.

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.

Is rapid scientific publication also high quality? Bibliometric analysis of highly disseminated COVID-19 research papers

The impact of COVID-19 has underlined the need for reliable information to guide clinical practice and policy. This urgency has to be balanced against disruption to journal handling capacity and the continued need to ensure scientific rigour. We examined the reporting quality of highly disseminated COVID-19 research papers using a bibliometric analysis examining reporting quality and risk of bias (RoB) amongst 250 top scoring Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) COVID-19 research papers between January and April 2020. Method-specific RoB tools were used to assess quality. After exclusions, 84 studies from 44 journals were included. Forty-three (51%) were case series/studies, and only one was an randomized controlled trial. Most authors were from institutions based in China (n = 44, 52%). The median AAS and impact factor was 2015 (interquartile range [IQR] 1,105-4,051.5) and 12.8 (IQR 5-44.2) respectively. Nine studies (11%) utilized a formal reporting framework, 62 (74%) included a funding statement, and 41 (49%) were at high RoB. This review of the most widely disseminated COVID-19 studies highlights a preponderance of low-quality case series with few research papers adhering to good standards of reporting. It emphasizes the need for cautious interpretation of research and the increasingly vital responsibility that journals have in ensuring high-quality publications.

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.

Bibliometric Analysis of Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162B2): A COVID-19 Vaccine

The objective of the study was to perform a bibliometric analysis of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. For this purpose Scopus database was used. As of 13th May 2021, one hundred and seventy-three (n=173) research documents are published about it. We used Vosviewer and Biblioshiny (Bibliometrix) in the present report. In all publications, 1160 authors have significantly contributed. The documents per author was 0.119, while authors per document was 8.41. Collaborative Index (CI) was found to be 9.47. By biblioshiny we also applied Lotka’s law to depict the author’s frequency. 1097 authors were involved in only one (n=1) publication. Based on the Scopus record, the highest documents are published by Dormitzer, P.R. (n=6). In universities and countries categories, Tel Aviv University (n=7) and USA (48) are the most productive. By Vosviewer the collaboration pattern among authors, institutes, and countries is graphically presented. For example, 28 authors, 17 departments and 7 countries directly contributed to one publication. The research documents (133) are published in 102 sources or journals. The highest documents are published in Vaccines (n=8), while the highest citations were recorded for the New England Journal of Medicine (n=838). We also applied co-words analysis to understand the main focus of these publications.

A Global Overview of COVID-19 Research in the Pediatric Field: Bibliometric Review

BACKGROUND

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a great number of papers have been published in the pediatric field.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to assess research around the globe on COVID-19 in the pediatric field by bibliometric analysis, identifying publication trends and topic dissemination and showing the relevance of publishing authors, institutions, and countries.

METHODS

The Scopus database was comprehensively searched for all indexed documents published between January 1, 2020, and June 11, 2020, dealing with COVID-19 in the pediatric population (0-18 years). A machine learning bibliometric methodology was applied to evaluate the total number of papers and citations, journal and publication types, the top productive institutions and countries and their scientific collaboration, and core keywords.

RESULTS

A total of 2301 papers were retrieved, with an average of 4.8 citations per article. Of this, 1078 (46.9%) were research articles, 436 (18.9%) were reviews, 363 (15.8%) were letters, 186 (8.1%) were editorials, 7 (0.3%) were conference papers, and 231 (10%) were categorized as others. The studies were published in 969 different journals, headed by The Lancet. The retrieved papers were published by a total of 12,657 authors from 114 countries. The most productive countries were the United States, China, and Italy. The four main clusters of keywords were pathogenesis and clinical characteristics (keyword occurrences: n=2240), public health issues (n=352), mental health (n=82), and therapeutic aspects (n=70).

CONCLUSIONS

In the pediatric field, a large number of articles were published within a limited period on COVID-19, testifying to the rush to spread new findings on the topic in a timely manner. The leading authors, countries, and institutions evidently belonged to the most impacted geographical areas. A focus on the pediatric population was often included in general articles, and pediatric research about COVID-19 mainly focused on the clinical features, public health issues, and psychological impact of the disease.

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.

A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Literature on the Early Phase of COVID-19 in Italy

Background: Studying the scientific literature about COVID-19 and Italy, one of the first countries to be hit by the pandemic, allows an investigation into how knowledge develops during a public health emergency.

Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify articles published on the topic between January and April 2020. Articles were classified according to type of study. Co-occurrence of terms, and geographic and temporal trends were analyzed.

Results: Of the 238 articles included in the systematic review, the majority (37%) focused on hospital and clinical management of COVID-19, while 23.9% were commentaries. Epidemiological studies constituted 45.5% of the articles published by authors with non-Italian affiliations.

Conclusion: The scientific articles on COVID-19 in Italy were varied in type of study, though with limited international impact. The lockdown and the pressure placed on hospitals during the first wave of the pandemic mainly resulted in publications on disease management and commentaries.

Research trends in rabies vaccine in the last three decades: a bibliometric analysis of global perspective

INTRODUCTION

Rabies is an infectious zoonotic viral disease which mainly occurs in Africa and Asia. Dogs are predominantly responsible for rabies transmission contributing up to 99% of all human rabies cases. Rabies is a vaccine preventable disease in both animals and humans.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to quantify and characterize the scientific literature and identify the top most cited studies in rabies vaccine research (RVR) from 1991 to 2020.

METHODS

The data used in this study were downloaded from Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) database. Network visualization analysis was performed using VOSviewer software.

RESULTS

A total of 1,042 papers (article: n = 986, 94.6%, review: n = 56, 5.4%) were included in this study. These have been cited 17,390 times with an average citation per paper was 16.69 times. The most frequent publication year was 2019 (n = 75, 7.2%). More than 55% studies were published from the United State of America (USA) (n = 380, 36.5%), France (n = 128, 12.3%), and China (n = 97, 9.3%). The most studied Web of Science (WoS) category was immunology (n = 344, 33%). The most prolific author in RVR was Rupprecht CE (n = 55, 5.3%). 'Vaccine' was the leading journal (n = 218, 20.9%). Rabies was the most widely used keyword.

CONCLUSION

Abundant literature has been published on RVR in developed countries. This study might provide a reference to understand the current and future research trends in RVR. In developing countries research collaboration and co-operation among institutes and researchers needs to be strengthened with developed countries.

COVID-19 vaccine research focusses on safety, efficacy, immunoinformatics, and vaccine production and delivery: a bibliometric analysis based on VOSviewer

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), has affected tens of millions of people globally since it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. There is an urgent need for safe and effective preventive vaccines to curb this pandemic. A growing amount of related research has been published. This study aimed to provide the current status of COVID-19 vaccine using bibliometric analysis. We searched Embase.com and MEDLINE comprehensively and included articles, articles in press, reviews, short surveys, conference abstracts and conference papers about COVID-19 vaccine. VOSviewer1.6.11 (Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands) was applied to perform the bibliometric analysis of these papers. A total of 1,312 papers were finally included. The BMJ has been the most popular journal in this field. The United States maintained a top position worldwide and has provided a pivotal influence, followed by China, India and United Kingdom. Among all the institutions, Harvard University was regarded as a leader for research collaboration. We analyzed the keywords and identified seven COVID-19 vaccine research hotspot clusters. COVID-19 vaccine research hotspots focus on clinical trials on vaccine safety and efficacy, research on vaccine immunology and immunoinformatics, and vaccine hesitancy. Our analysis results demonstrated that cooperation between countries, institutions, and authors were insufficient. The results suggested that clinical trials on vaccine safety, efficacy, immunology, immunoinformatics, production and delivery are research hotspots. Furthermore, we can predict that there will be a lot of research focusing on vaccine adverse reactions.

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.

A Novel Partnership Between Physicians and Medical Librarians During the COVID-19 Pandemic

An ongoing collaboration between physicians and librarians provided critical information during the COVID-19 pandemic. A development team, which consisted of the hospital and medical school disaster preparedness medical director, the medical library director, professional librarians, and the Departments of IT and Marketing in a multi-state healthcare system worked together to develop a shared website to distribute and curate timely resources during COVID-19. The initial impacts of this collaboration and the website show the benefits of this novel partnership.

A Bibliometric Network Analysis of Coronavirus during the First Eight Months of COVID-19 in 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of society. Researchers worldwide have been working to provide new solutions to and better understanding of this coronavirus. In this research, our goal was to perform a Bibliometric Network Analysis (BNA) to investigate the strategic themes, thematic evolution structure and trends of coronavirus during the first eight months of COVID-19 in the Web of Science (WoS) database in 2020. To do this, 14,802 articles were analyzed, with the support of the SciMAT software. This analysis highlights 24 themes, of which 11 of the more important ones were discussed in-depth. The thematic evolution structure shows how the themes are evolving over time, and the most developed and future trends of coronavirus with focus on COVID-19 were visually depicted. The results of the strategic diagram highlight 'CHLOROQUINE', 'ANXIETY', 'PREGNANCY' and 'ACUTE-RESPIRATORY-SYNDROME', among others, as the clusters with the highest number of associated citations. The thematic evolution. structure presented two thematic areas: "Damage prevention and containment of COVID-19" and "Comorbidities and diseases caused by COVID-19", which provides new perspectives and futures trends of the field. These results will form the basis for future research and guide decision-making in coronavirus focused on COVID-19 research and treatments.

Coronavirus disease-19 in environmental fields: a bibliometric and visualization mapping analysis

A coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) caused by a novel coronavirus has appeared in China by the end of 2019 and later recognized as a global pandemic. This pandemic has evolved as a global public health menace. It has affected every aspect of human life. In line with these concerns, governments and the scientific community react promptly to the outbreak of this pandemic. These efforts are devoted to develop vaccine and curative medicines. Further efforts are dedicated to assessing the impacts of the pandemic in relation to socioeconomic, psychological, and environmental dimensions. In this regard, it is important to follow up developments and research activities on this global issue. The present work intended to tracking the current hotspots and research trends on COVID-19 in environmental fields. Bibliometric analysis and visualization mapping were utilized with the objective of revealing and evaluating the developments in knowledge on COVID-2019 and its impacts based on a collection of environmental sources. A sum of 729 documents were collected from Scopus database limiting to environmental sources only. Of all these publications, 563 (77.2%) were articles, 56 (7.7%) were reviews, and 110 (15.0%) were others. China has the highest share of publications (163; 22.4%). It is followed by the USA (139; 19.15), and Italy (110; 15.1%). Most publications on COVID-19 were in prestigious journals. The most productive institution at global level was Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (24 documents; 3.3%). The most prevalent topics are in relation to impacts of the pandemic on air quality, mental health, psychological, and economic aspects. The development of these topics is based on cross-sectional studies, evidence-based tools, remote sensing, satellite mapping, geographic information systems, market analysis and sampling. The progress of environmental research on COVID-19 will guide the development of global environmental strategies to control future global environmental risks.

O impacto do acesso aberto na produção e difusão de conhecimento sobre a Covid-19

A corrida científica ocasionada pelo surto do novo coronavírus (SARS-CoV-2) tem posto em evidência a relevância do compartilhamento de dados e resultados de pesquisa de forma mais rápida e aberta do que a do atual sistema de comunicação científica, bem como o papel das mídias sociais nesse contexto. O objetivo deste artigo é analisar o impacto do acesso aberto (open access) na produção e difusão do conhecimento sobre a COVID-19 nos meios tradicionais de comunicação científica e na web social. Via indicadores bibliométricos e altmétricos, analisamos um conjunto de 6.631 artigos e revisões das bases PubMed e Scopus, publicados entre janeiro e abril de 2020. Os resultados evidenciaram que o volume das publicações científicas relacionadas à COVID-19 aumentou a uma taxa média mensal de 166% no período analisado, com destaque às publicações na modalidade acesso aberto. Os países com maior número de publicações são aqueles que tiveram mais casos registrados da COVID-19. No geral, observou-se maior atenção da mídia social e redes de cooperação mais intensas nas publicações científicas de acesso aberto se comparadas às de acesso restrito. Ao combinar indicadores bibliométricos e altmétricos, o artigo permitiu não somente caracterizar a evolução e difusão da produção científica sobre a COVID-19, mas compreender a relação entre a pandemia provocada pelo novo coronavírus e a interação da sociedade em torno dos produtos de pesquisa. Nossos resultados reforçam a importância de se implementar práticas de acesso aberto para criar e/ou fortalecer redes de colaboração de pesquisa e estimular publicações sobre temas emergentes e de interesse mundial

Mitochondria: Potential Targets for Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common and disabling joint disorder that is mainly characterized by cartilage degeneration and narrow joint spaces. The role of mitochondrial dysfunction in promoting the development of OA has gained much attention. Targeting endogenous molecules to improve mitochondrial function is a potential treatment for OA. Moreover, research on exogenous drugs to improve mitochondrial function in OA based on endogenous molecular targets has been accomplished. In addition, stem cells and exosomes have been deeply researched in the context of cartilage regeneration, and these factors both reverse mitochondrial dysfunctions. Thus, we hypothesize that biomedical approaches will be applied to the treatment of OA. Furthermore, we have summarized the global status of mitochondria and osteoarthritis research in the past two decades, which will contribute to the research field and the development of novel treatment strategies for OA.

The COVID-19 research landscape: Measuring topics and collaborations using scientific literature

OBJECTIVES

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused heavy burdens and brought tremendous challenges to global public health. This study aimed to investigate collaboration relationships, research topics, and research trends on COVID-19 using scientific literature.

METHOD

COVID-19-related articles published from January 1 to July 1, 2020 were retrieved from PubMed database. A total of 27,370 articles were included. Excel 2010, Medical Text Indexer (MTI), VOSviewer, and D3.js were used to summarize bibliometric features.

RESULTS

The number of the COVID-19 research publications has been continuously increasing after its break. United States was the most productive and active country for COVID-19 research, with the largest number of publications and collaboration relationships. Huazhong University of Science and Technology from China was the most productive institute on the number of publications, and University of Toronto from Canada ranked as Top 1 institute for global research collaboration. Four key research topics were identified, of which the topic of epidemiology and public health interventions has gathered highest attentions. Topic of virus infection and immunity has been more focused during the early stage of COVID-19 outbreak compared with later stage. The topic popularity of clinical symptoms and diagnosis has been steady.

CONCLUSIONS

Our topic analysis results revealed that the study of drug treatment was insufficient. To achieve critical breakthroughs of this research area, more interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, and global research collaborations are needed.

A Comprehensive Overview of the COVID-19 Literature: Machine Learning–Based Bibliometric Analysis (Preprint).. [DOI: 10.2196/preprints.23703] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0]

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.

Contribution of Iran in COVID-19 studies: a bibliometrics analysis

Background

Iran is fighting heroically against COVID-19. Due to the importance of scientific publications in better dealing with this stubborn virus, this study was conducted aiming at reviewing COVID-19 publications by Iranian scientists.

Methods

We searched for COVID-19 and all its related keywords in the Web of Science (WOS), Scopus and PubMed databases to find documents published by Iranian authors until July 10, 2020. Duplicates documents were excluded, and bibliographic parameters were evaluated. Co-authorship matrix was calculated using Bibexcel, and visualizations were done using VOSviewer.

Results

A total of 849 documents from 3450 Iranian researchers (5.5 authors per document) were retrieved from WOS, PubMed, and Scopus and Iran ranked 12th and 13th in WOS and Scopus in terms of the number of publications. The average citation per document was 2.2 with the h-index of 18. Original articles and letters were the most common formats for Iranian publications. The Journal of Military Medicine has published the highest number of documents. Iranian authors have mostly collaborated with researchers from the United States, Italy, the UK, and Canada, respectively. The co-occurrence network for keywords represented five publication clusters in the collection, and the largest clusters were related to epidemiological studies and public health, followed by clinical studies on COVID-19.

Conclusion

Iranian researchers have had a significant scientific contribution in various areas of the disease. However, the network of studies has not been sufficiently cohesive, and more coherent collaboration between researchers at the national and international levels should be on the agenda of research policymakers in the country.

Mapping the situation of research on coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19): a preliminary bibliometric analysis during the early stage of the outbreak

BACKGROUND

The novel coronavirus, named as 2019-nCoV or coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has recently appeared in China and has spread worldwide, presenting a health threat to the global community. Therefore, it is important to understand the global scientific output of COVID-19 research during the early stage of the outbreak. Thus, to track the current hotspots, and highlight future directions, we performed a bibliometric analysis to obtain an approximate scenario of COVID-19 to date.

METHODS

Relevant studies to COVID-19 were obtained from the Scopus database during the early stage of the outbreak. We then analysed the data by using well-established bibliometric indices: document type, country, collaboration patterns, affiliation, journal name, and citation patterns. VOSviewer was applied to map and determine hot topics in this field.

RESULTS

The bibliometric analysis indicated that there were 19,044 publications on Scopus published on COVID-19 during the early stage of the outbreak (December 2019 up until June 19, 2020). Of all these publications, 9140 (48.0%) were articles; 4192 (22.0%) were letters; 1797 (9.4%) were reviews; 1754 (9.2%) were editorials; 1728 (9.1%) were notes; and 433 (2.3%) were others. The USA published the largest number of publications on COVID-19 (4479; 23.4%), followed by China (3310; 17.4%), Italy, (2314; 12.2%), and the UK (1981; 10.4%). British Medical Journal was the most productive. The Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Tongji Medical, and Harvard Medical School were the institutions that published the largest number of COVID-19 research. The most prevalent topics of research in COVID-19 include "clinical features studies", "pathological findings and therapeutic design", "care facilities preparation and infection control", and "maternal, perinatal and neonatal outcomes".

CONCLUSIONS

This bibliometric study may reflect rapidly emerging topics on COVID-19 research, where substantial research activity has already begun extensively during the early stage of the outbreak. The findings reported here shed new light on the major progress in the near future for hot topics on COVID-19 research including clinical features studies, pathological findings and therapeutic design, care facilities preparation and infection control, and maternal, perinatal and neonatal outcomes.

Preliminary analysis of COVID-19 academic information patterns: a call for open science in the times of closed borders

The Pandemic of COVID-19, an infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 motivated the scientific community to work together in order to gather, organize, process and distribute data on the novel biomedical hazard. Here, we analyzed how the scientific community responded to this challenge by quantifying distribution and availability patterns of the academic information related to COVID-19. The aim of this study was to assess the quality of the information flow and scientific collaboration, two factors we believe to be critical for finding new solutions for the ongoing pandemic. The RISmed R package, and a custom Python script were used to fetch metadata on articles indexed in PubMed and published on Rxiv preprint server. Scopus was manually searched and the metadata was exported in BibTex file. Publication rate and publication status, affiliation and author count per article, and submission-to-publication time were analysed in R. Biblioshiny application was used to create a world collaboration map. Preliminary data suggest that COVID-19 pandemic resulted in generation of a large amount of scientific data, and demonstrates potential problems regarding the information velocity, availability, and scientific collaboration in the early stages of the pandemic. More specifically, the results indicate precarious overload of the standard publication systems, significant problems with data availability and apparent deficient collaboration. In conclusion, we believe the scientific community could have used the data more efficiently in order to create proper foundations for finding new solutions for the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we believe we can learn from this on the go and adopt open science principles and a more mindful approach to COVID-19-related data to accelerate the discovery of more efficient solutions. We take this opportunity to invite our colleagues to contribute to this global scientific collaboration by publishing their findings with maximal transparency.