Aim:

The paper presents a bibliometric analysisis of high-cited papers (HCPs) on Covid-19 published during 2019-2021. The study provides evidence on current research trends in the subject, identifies influential countries, organizations, research papers and journals on Covid-19 research. The study evaluates publication and citation performance of highly-cited papers and maps network interactions amongst the key global players using VOSviewer software.

Materials and Methods:

The data for the study was sourced from Web of Science for the period 2019-2021.

Results:

The USA, China and the UK dominate global Covid-19 research in terms of research productivity. In terms of citation performance China leads the tally with the USA at the second position. The USA, China and the UK account for a 88% share of total HCPs in the subject. The study identified top eleven centers of excellence based on the criteria of most productivity as well as most-cited organizations. New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association, Science and Nature are the most favoured journals for publishing HCPs. The relationship networks of most productive countries, organizations, and keywords are also given in the paper.

Introduction:

The rapid production of a large volume of literature during the last 2-3 phases of the Covid-19 disease outbreak created a substantial burden for clinicians and scientists. Therefore, this paper provides a bibliometric overview on the high-cited papers indexed in the ESI database in the field of Covid-19, during 2020-21, focusing on the research domain and keywords, main actors (countries, organizations and authors) and main sources of publications.

Methods:

The Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database is widely used to assess scientific outputs. ESI include highcited papers that have received enough citations to place them in the top 1% when compared to all other papers published in the same year in the same field. High-cited papers are defined as papers receiving 100 or more citations since their publication. Therefore, high-cited papers included in ESI database are of high-quality in each field and therefore used in this study. A bibliometric analysis based on 848 high-cited papers extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database was carried out to provide insights into performances and research characteristics of Covid-19 literature. Indicators were applied to evaluate the influence of the most productive journals, countries/territories, organizations and authors. Social network analysis was performed to evaluate and visualize the interaction among productive countries/territories, organizations, authors and keywords using VOSviewer software.

Results:

The results showed that the 848 high-cited papers received 244699 citations were from 9734 authors employed at 2607 organizations based in 101 countries/territories. The papers were published in 369 journals in the field. The top 5 core journals ranked based on: (i) total papers were New England Journal of Medicine (37), Science of the Total Environment (35), Science (28), The Lancet (21) and Nature (18) and (ii) total citations were New England Journal of Medicine (28173), Lancet (17128), JAMA-Journal of the American Medical Association (9603), International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (5865) and Nature Medicine (5659). The top 5 organizations ranked on (i) total papers were Huazhong University of Science & Technology (42), Harvard Medical School, USA (41), University of Oxford, U.K. (31), University of Cambridge, U.K. (25) and London Global University (UCL)(25) and (ii) total citations were Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China (32563), University of Hong Kong (17868), Tsinghua University, China (15827), University of Oxford (13802) and Guanzhou Medical University, China (13155). The top 5 authors ranked on: (i) total papers were Y. Zhang (15), Y. Hu (14), L. Liu (14), J,. Wang (14) and Y. Liu (13) and (ii) total citations were Y. Liu (23285), J. Xiang (.20391), Y. Hu (18804) and Y. Zhang (16495). The top five countries ranked on : (I) total papers were USA (336), China (222), U.K. (153), Italy (90) and Germany (74) and (ii) total citations were China (114620), USA (88474), U.K. (46535), Italy (24546) and Germany (24028).Based on network map using VOSviewer, there were micro, meso and macro level collaborations based on common interests in a specific topic. Analysis of all keywords showed that the research was distributed into 6 clusters. Conclusion: Results obtained from this study can provide valuable information for researchers to better identify present and future hotspots in Covid-19-related fields. The most relevant literature on the Covid-19 pandemic will also provide information relevant to the evidence-based decision-making process and future studies are essential to gain precise knowledge on Covid-19 infection across various human organs and various sub-fields and sectors.

Background:

The study analyzed and evaluated the scientific research on “Covid-19 and Aged People” to find out the current status of research and to identify significant players (countries, organizations and authors) and important topics from the 469 high-cited publications receiving 100 and more citations using bibliometric methods.

Methods:

High-cited publications published from December 2019 to June 2021 were identified and analyzed. A list keywords were identified for Covid-19 (“Covid 19” or “2019 novel Coronavirus” or “Coronavirus 2019” or “Coronavirus disease 2019” or “2019-novel CoV” OR “2019 ncov” or “Covid 2019” or “Covid19” or “Corona virus 2019” or “ncov-2019” or “ncov2019” or “nCoV 2019” or “2019-ncov” or “covid-19” or “Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” or “SARS-CoV-2”) and Aged People (“Aged” or “Elderly” or “Old” or “Very Elderly”) and these keywords are used for search on the topic of study (the title, abstract, keywords).

Results:

A total of 469 high-cited publications were obtained on this topic, which registered 449.5 citations per paper and witnessed the participation of 64 countries, with China, USA and U.K. leading in global publication productivity (with 189, 162 and 70 publications each) and China (687.25), Singapore (409.20) and Switzerland (396.41) leading in citation impact per paper. The 2123 organizations and 5896 authors participated in these 469 high-cited publications. Huazong University of Science and Technology, China, Wuhan University, China and University of Oxford, U.K. leads in publications productivity (with 66, 37 and 20 publications each) and Capital Medical University, China, University of Hong Kong (1454.6) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China leads in citations impact per paper. L. Liu, J. Chen and Y. Hu leads in publications productivity (with 16, 13 and 13 publications each) and Y. Liu (17100.5), Y.Hu (15395.5) and L. Zhang (15079.0) leads in citations impact per paper. New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet and JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association leads in both publication productivity and citations impact per paper. The keywords that appeared most were “Covid-19” and “Aged People” which had a strong links with “mortality”, “hospitalization”, “hypertension”, “respiratory failure”, “diabetes mellitus”, “chronic kidney failure”, “anxiety:, “depression” and “mental health”

Conclusion:

The current bibliometric analysis provides information about the quantity and quality of research in this area based on published literature. It provides information on current status of research in this area to decision-makers and practicing scholars and provides important clues about upcoming research topics for future research.

Background:

The global scientific community has been quick to respond to health crisis unleashed by Covid-19 pandemic with intensified investments in R&D and thereby it gave new impetus to Covid-19 research. The world has come to witness unprecedented increase in research publications on control and treatment of Covid-19 pandemic. Like any other region in the world, South Asia too has been the worst-hit region and it too witnessed increase in Covid-related research studies. Systematic reviews of such literature and bibliometric studies are used nowadays as tools to identify and analyze key and significant South Asian contribution to the subject. The present study aims to assess and quantify the contribution and impact of Covid-19 research made by a group of select four South Asian countries.

Methods:

Publications data on Covid 19 covering the period between December 2019 and 8.7.2021 was sourced from the Scopus database. VOSviewer 1.6.14 software was applied to generate network maps, assess hot topics in the area and describe collaboration patterns in research between different countries

Results:

Covid-19 were retrieved from the Scopus database. The publications data of select four South Asian countries - Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka - was also retrieved. Comparatively the data size of select four South Asian countries was small, limited to 4012 documents, and accounting for a 2.15% share of the global research output on Covid-19 virus. Pakistan published the most number of Covid-19 publications (n = 2246, 55.58%), followed by Bangladesh (n = 1203, 29.99%), Nepal (n=512, 12.76%) and Sri Lanka (n=202, 5.03%). The United States as the collaborating partner in most number of publications contributed by South Asian countries (n = 609, 25.41%), followed by the United Kingdom (n = 496, 20.69%), China (n=453, 18.90%), Saudi Arabia (n=441, 18.40%) and India (n=426, 17.77%). Covid-19 treatment type was the most studied topic in the contributions made by South Asian countries accounting for a 16.45% share, followed by epidemiology (15.63%), risk factors (5.835), clinical studies (4.81%), etc.

Conclusion:

This paper finds that the quantity and quality of research pursued by a select group of four South Asian countries in the domain of Covid 19 studies has so far been small and insignificant. There is an urgent need on the part of select group of South Asian counties to improve their productivity and qualitative performance at the national, institutional, and individual author level.

Background:

As a global pandemic, Covid-19 has aroused great concern and garnered research interest world-wide In India a growing number of related researches have been published in the last few months. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis of these publications may provide indication of current status and future research trends in the field.

Methods:

The India’s literature about Covid-19 published during 2019-2021 were searched in the Scopus database using a well- defined search strategy. The following keywords “Covid 19” or “2019 novel coronavirus” or “coronavirus 2019” or “coronavirus disease 2019” or “2019-novel CoV” or “2019 ncov” or covid 2019 or covid19 or “corona virus 2019” or ncov-2019 or ncov2019 or “nCoV 2019” or 2019-ncov or covid-19 or “Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” or “SARS-CoV-2”were used in “Keyord” and “Title” (Title of articles) tags to reach the relevant publications. VOSviewer was applied to perform the bibliometric analysis of these articles.

Results:

The bibliometric analysis of India’s literature on Covid-19 indicates that there were 10,233 indexed publications in Scopus database until April 2021. Of all these publications, 52.87% were original articles and 11.75% (1202) publications received external funding from more than 150 agencies and 27.41% (2805) involve international collaboration with more than 150 countries. USA contributed the largest share (38.47%) in India’s international collaborative papers, followed by U.K. (22.89%), China (11.55%), Saudi Arabia (11.44), Australia (11.23%), etc. In the geographical distribution, Delhi tops the publication list (with 21.86% share), followed by Mumbai (7.30%), Chennai (7.27%), Pune (6.44%) and Kolkata (6.04%). Among population age groups, “Adults” accounts for the largest publication share (9.98%), followed by “Middle Aged” (5.07%), “Children” (3.65%), “Aged” (3.65%) and “Adolescents” (2.82%). “Treatment studies” among prominent topics, account for the largest publication share (34.12% share), followed by “Clinical Studies” (13.13%), “Epidemiology” (10.54%), “Imaging and Diagnostics” (9.64%), “Pathophysiology” (6.27%), and etc. The 1311 organizations and 3413 authors participated in India’s research on Covid-19, of which the top 30 organizations and authors contributed 43.50% and 11.57% national publication share and 45.62% and 32.14% national citation share. AIIMS-New Delhi and PGIMER-Chandigarh were the most productive organizations (with 623 and 468 papers). IVRIBareilly (21.32 and 4.44) and IIT-New Delhi (12.37 and 2.58) were the most impactful organizations. V. Wiwanitkit and K. Dhama were the most productive authors (with 182 and. 107 papers). R. Sah (42.89 and 8.93) and A. Misra (41.93 and 8.74) were the most impactful authors. International Journal of Research in Pharmaceutical Sciences (270 papers) and Indian Journal of Ophthalmology (210 papers) were the most productive journals. Science of the Total Environment (43.98) and Asian Journal of Psychiatry (19.19) were the most impactful journals.

Conclusion:

The paper provides a deeper understanding of the current Covid-19 research milieu in India, by identifying key players (and their collaboration linkages) and key sub-fields, while highlighting potential patterns that could assist future researchers in their scientific pursuits.

The current pandemic situation due to Covid-19 has put every researcher on their toes to discover new methods (whether medicine or tools and techniques) to overcome the menace from the human population. The research focus has given the generation of enormous amount of both published literature and raw research data. The research impact analysis with the help of traditional method is a time-consuming process, resulted in choosing alternative methods of impact measurement - now popularly known as Altmetric. The article analyses social media metrics of Indian publications on Covid-19 through altmetric approaches. The data for the study has been taken from Scopus and Altmetric.com and analysis was carried out for different social media activities to calculate the Altmetric attention score for Indian published literatures. An analysis was also carried out to assess whether the alternative metrics have any correlation with the citation impact. It is found that correlation between some of the social media activities and citations is highly significant.

In this paper, we have collected the data about the 507 high-cited (citations ≥ 25) papers on Covid 19 published by India using Scopus database. Within small span of time many papers have received considerable number of citations. Further we have analyzed in terms of types of papers, major funding agencies, major collaborating countries, prolific authors, productive organizations and cluster analysis of author supplied keywords. Most of the papers were research articles. Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India has funded considerable numbers of papers on Covid 19 and K. Dhama form Indian Veterinary Research Institute has contributed highest numbers papers and USA was major collaborating country and PGIMER-Chandigarh was most contributing organization. This study will be useful to the scientist/researchers to know the characteristics of high cited papers on Covid- 19 from India.

Background:

Animal studies are an indispensable part of fundamental and applied research essential for the advancement of human and veterinary health, including the current global quest for treatments and a vaccine development to combat the infectious diseases. This necessity is now clearly highlighted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic More recently a growing number of studies are published on this theme. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis of research on “Animal models in Covid-19” research is necessary and it is likely to focus on current status of research and indicate future direction in this study.

Materials and Methods:

The India’s originated literature is searched on “ Animal Models in Covid-19” using two set of keywords related to Covid-19 and animals in “Keyword” and “Title” (Title of articles) tags to reach the relevant publications. VOSviewer was applied to perform the bibliometric analysis of these articles. Bibliographical data obtained from above search strategy was analysed by using well-established bibliometric indices.

Results:

The bibliometric analysis of India’s literature on the topic “Animal Models in Covid-19” research indicates that there were 2343 India’s publications indexed in Scopus database during 2020-21. The topic witnessed the uneven participation of more than 160 countries, where 88.63% and more than 100.0% share of the global publications and citations share caming from top 10 countries. USA leads the ranking with global publication share of 28.16% share, followed by China (13.30%, U.K. (10.67%), Italy (9.93%). India’s research output on this topic registered 7.46% share to global output. The 496 organizations and 869 authors participated in India’s research on “Animal Model in Covid-19”, of which the top 25 Indian organizations and 25 authors contributed 46.58% and 22.60% share to India’s national publication output and 61.19% and 48.8% share to India’s citation output respectively. AIIMS - New Delhi , PGIMER- Chandigarh, and IVRI- Bareilly were the most productive organizations (with 118, 115 and 68 publications). IVRIBareilly, PGIMER-Chandigarh and College of Veterinary Science, Mathura were the impactful organizations in terms of citation per paper and relative citation index. K. Dharma, R. Tiwari and Y.S. Malik were the most productive authors (with 63, 35 and 27 papers). H. Harapan, A.K.Singh and A Misra were the most impactful authors (with 90.42, 88.20 and 73.31 CPP).. International Journal of Research in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Indian Journal of Medical Research and Diabetes and Metabolic Syndromes. Clinical Research and Review were the most productive journals (with 72, 56 and 50 papers)

Conclusion:

The paper provides a understanding of the current research on animal models presently used in Covid-19 research in India, identify key players and their collaboration patterns and key sub-fields, which may be useful to practicing scholars and clinicians to advance their future research in a more effective manner and to policymakers in deciding the area of research to be funded in future.

Covid-19 infection, which emerged in late 2019, spread across the world rapidly and was declared as a pandemic on 24th March 2020 by the World Health Organization. Besides other implications, Covid-19 pandemic led to significant mental health issues in the general public, those infected with the virus and the health care workers. Over the period of 15-16 months, a significant amount of literature has emerged on the mental health issues in the context of Covid-19 pandemic. This paper aims to evaluate the research trends in mental health related to Covid-19 infection by using the bibliometric analysis. Using the Scopus database, as on 21st of March 2021, 15,223 records focusing on “Covid-19 and Mental Health” were identified. The research on this theme averaged 8.90 citations per paper with 13.77% publications supported by funding agencies from global research agencies/firms were published. Researchers from 158 countries participated in mental health research on Covid-19, with top 12 countries accounting for 95.91% share of the global output and a major share of global citations in the subject. Although researchers from USA, U.K. and China led the global publication share (ranging from 10.40% to 26.56%), but researchers from China, France and Australia registered higher relative citation index (ranging from 1.19 to 2.31). Researchers from Harvard Medical School, USA, University of Toronto, Canada, and King’s College, London, U.K. were the most productive (with 299, 270 and 222 papers). Researchers from the National University of Singapore (51.84 and 5.83), King’s College, London, U.K. (27.23 and 3.06), Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China (23.65 and 2.66) were most impactful in terms of citation per paper and relative citation index. To conclude, this bibliometric analysis provides an overview of the extent of research activities in Covid-19 and mental health.

Aim:

The paper assesses the India’s research output on “Impact of Covid-19 on Mental Health” indexed in Scopus database.

Materials and Methods:

The Scopus database was used to search for the articles published from India.

Results:

The search showed that since the onset of the pandemic upto 24th of April 2021, 1210 publications emerged from India, amounting to 6.87% share of the global output on the topic and averaged 5.97 citations per paper. India stood at 5th position in terms of number of publications on mental health, with highest number of publications emerging from United States (26.9%), followed by United Kingdom (13.35%), China (9.83%) and Italy (8.27%). About one-third (30.91%) of the publications involved international collaborations, with maximum number of collaborations were with United States, followed by United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Canada, and Brazil. The most common keywords in the research included, ‘mental health’, followed by ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’. The research output came from 478 organizations, with maximum research coming from National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi and Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. About three-fourth (76.85%) of the mental health research emerged from institute other than these 3 institutes. Five out of the 10 most productive authors and 5 out of the most impactful authors were from institutes other than the 3 major institutes.

Conclusion:

To conclude, this bibliometric analysis suggest that, researchers from India contributed to about 7% of the global mental health research on Covid-19 and India stood at 5th position among the various countries in terms of global mental health research on Covid-19.