Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Biomedical Publications and Their Citation Frequency

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Abstract

Background

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in enormous related publications. However, the citation frequency of these documents and their influence on the journal impact factor (JIF) are not well examined. We aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on biomedical research publications and their citation frequency.

Methods

We searched publications on biomedical research in the Web of Science using the search terms “COVID-19,” “SARS-Cov-2,” “2019 corona*,” “corona virus disease 2019,” “coronavirus disease 2019,” “novel coronavirus infection” and “2019-ncov.” The top 200 journals were defined as those with a higher number of COVID-19 publications than other journals in 2020. The COVID-19 impact ratio was calculated as the ratio of the average number of citations per item in 2021 to the JIF for 2020.

Results

The average number of citations for the top 200 journals in 2021, per item published in 2020, was 25.7 (range, 0–270). The average COVID-19 impact ratio was 3.84 (range, 0.26–16.58) for 197 journals that recorded the JIF for 2020. The average JIF ratio for the top 197 journals including the JIFs for 2020 and 2021 was 1.77 (range, 0.68–8.89). The COVID-19 impact ratio significantly correlated with the JIF ratio (r = 0.403, P = 0.010). Twenty-five Korean journals with a COVID-19 impact ratio > 1.5 demonstrated a higher JIF ratio (1.31 ± 0.39 vs. 1.01 ± 0.18, P < 0.001) than 33 Korean journals with a lower COVID-19 impact ratio.

Conclusion

COVID-19 pandemic infection has significantly impacted the trends in biomedical research and the citation of related publications.

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

Sa’ed H Zyoud, Samah W. Al-Jabi (2020)

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.

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Scientific quality of COVID-19 and SARS CoV-2 publications in the highest impact medical journals during the early phase of the pandemic: A case control study

Marko Zdravkovic, Joana Berger-Estilita, Bogdan Zdravkovic … (2020)

Background A debate about the scientific quality of COVID-19 themed research has emerged. We explored whether the quality of evidence of COVID-19 publications is lower when compared to nonCOVID-19 publications in the three highest ranked scientific medical journals. Methods We searched the PubMed Database from March 12 to April 12, 2020 and identified 559 publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Lancet which were divided into COVID-19 (cases, n = 204) and nonCOVID-19 (controls, n = 355) associated content. After exclusion of secondary, unauthored, response letters and non-matching article types, 155 COVID-19 publications (including 13 original articles) and 130 nonCOVID-19 publications (including 52 original articles) were included in the comparative analysis. The hierarchical level of evidence was determined for each publication included and compared between cases and controls as the main outcome. A quantitative scoring of quality was carried out for the subgroup of original articles. The numbers of authors and citation rates were also compared between groups. Results The 130 nonCOVID-19 publications were associated with higher levels of evidence on the level of evidence pyramid, with a strong association measure (Cramer’s V: 0.452, P <0.001). The 155 COVID-19 publications were 186-fold more likely to be of lower evidence (95% confidence interval [CI] for odds ratio, 7.0–47; P <0.001). The quantitative quality score (maximum possible score, 28) was significantly different in favor of nonCOVID-19 (mean difference, 11.1; 95% CI, 8.5–13.7; P <0.001). There was a significant difference in the early citation rate of the original articles that favored the COVID-19 original articles (median [interquartile range], 45 [30–244] vs. 2 [1–4] citations; P <0.001). Conclusions We conclude that the quality of COVID-19 publications in the three highest ranked scientific medical journals is below the quality average of these journals. These findings need to be verified at a later stage of the pandemic.

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Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on publication dynamics and non-COVID-19 research production

Marc Raynaud, Valentin Goutaudier, Kevin Louis … (2021)

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected health systems and medical research worldwide but its impact on the global publication dynamics and non-COVID-19 research has not been measured. We hypothesized that the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted the scientific production of non-COVID-19 research. Methods We conducted a comprehensive meta-research on studies (original articles, research letters and case reports) published between 01/01/2019 and 01/01/2021 in 10 high-impact medical and infectious disease journals (New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature Medicine, British Medical Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, Lancet Global Health, Lancet Public Health, Lancet Infectious Disease and Clinical Infectious Disease). For each publication, we recorded publication date, publication type, number of authors, whether the publication was related to COVID-19, whether the publication was based on a case series, and the number of patients included in the study if the publication was based on a case report or a case series. We estimated the publication dynamics with a locally estimated scatterplot smoothing method. A Natural Language Processing algorithm was designed to calculate the number of authors for each publication. We simulated the number of non-COVID-19 studies that could have been published during the pandemic by extrapolating the publication dynamics of 2019 to 2020, and comparing the expected number to the observed number of studies. Results Among the 22,525 studies assessed, 6319 met the inclusion criteria, of which 1022 (16.2%) were related to COVID-19 research. A dramatic increase in the number of publications in general journals was observed from February to April 2020 from a weekly median number of publications of 4.0 (IQR: 2.8–5.5) to 19.5 (IQR: 15.8–24.8) ( p < 0.001), followed afterwards by a pattern of stability with a weekly median number of publications of 10.0 (IQR: 6.0–14.0) until December 2020 ( p = 0.045 in comparison with April). Two prototypical editorial strategies were found: 1) journals that maintained the volume of non-COVID-19 publications while integrating COVID-19 research and thus increased their overall scientific production, and 2) journals that decreased the volume of non-COVID-19 publications while integrating COVID-19 publications. We estimated using simulation models that the COVID pandemic was associated with a 18% decrease in the production of non-COVID-19 research. We also found a significant change of the publication type in COVID-19 research as compared with non-COVID-19 research illustrated by a decrease in the number of original articles, (47.9% in COVID-19 publications vs 71.3% in non-COVID-19 publications, p < 0.001). Last, COVID-19 publications showed a higher number of authors, especially for case reports with a median of 9.0 authors (IQR: 6.0–13.0) in COVID-19 publications, compared to a median of 4.0 authors (IQR: 3.0–6.0) in non-COVID-19 publications ( p < 0.001). Conclusion In this meta-research gathering publications from high-impact medical journals, we have shown that the dramatic rise in COVID-19 publications was accompanied by a substantial decrease of non-COVID-19 research. Meta-research registration https://osf.io/9vtzp/ . Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12874-021-01404-9.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Korean Med Sci

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J Korean Med Sci

Journal ID (publisher-id): JKMS

Title: Journal of Korean Medical Science

Publisher: The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences

ISSN (Print): 1011-8934

ISSN (Electronic): 1598-6357

Publication date Collection: 17 October 2022

Publication date (Electronic): 22 September 2022

Volume: 37

Issue: 40

Electronic Location Identifier: e296

Affiliations

[1 ]Medical Information and Media Services, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.

[2 ]Department of Radiology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

Author notes

Address for Correspondence: Yeon Hyeon Choe, MD, PhD. Department of Radiology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 81 Irwon-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06351, Korea. yhchoe@ 123456skku.edu

Author information

Sooyoung Park https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0817-5932

Hyun Jeong Lim https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9813-0465

Jaero Park https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6903-9283

Yeon Hyeon Choe https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9983-048X

Article

DOI: 10.3346/jkms.2022.37.e296

PMC ID: 9577356

PubMed ID: 36254532

SO-VID: 2048790c-3896-45cd-9d1c-453243f4d3a8

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Biomedical Publications and Their Citation Frequency

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Novel Coronavirus Disease COVID-19

Most cited references 18

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

Scientific quality of COVID-19 and SARS CoV-2 publications in the highest impact medical journals during the early phase of the pandemic: A case control study

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on publication dynamics and non-COVID-19 research production

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