ABSTRACT
Importance COVID-19 is a major global crisis and the scientific community has been mobilized to deal with this crisis.
Objective To estimate the extent to which the scientific workforce in different fields has been engaged publishing papers relative to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design, setting, and participants We evaluated Scopus (data cut, December 1, 2020) for all indexed published papers and preprints relevant to COVID-19. We mapped this COVID-19 literature in terms of its authors across 174 subfields of science according to the Science Metrix classification. We also evaluated the extent to which the most influential scientists across science (based on a composite citation indicator) had published COVID-19-related research. Finally, we assessed the features of authors who published the highest number of COVID-19 publications and of those with the highest impact in the COVID-19 field based on the composite citation indicator limited to COVID-19 publications.
Main outcomes and measures Publishing scientists (authors) and their published papers and citation impact.
Results 84,180 indexed publications were relevant to COVID-19 including 322,279 unique authors. The highest rates of COVID-19 publications were seen for authors classified in Public Health and in Clinical Medicine, where 11.3% (6,388/56,516) and 11.1% (92,570/833,060) of authors, respectively, had published on COVID-19. Almost all (173/174) subfields (except for Automobile Design & Engineering) had some authors publishing on COVID-19. Among active scientists at the top 2% of citation impact, 15,803 (13.3%) had published on COVID-19 in their publications in the first 11 months of 2020.
The rates were the highest in the fields of Clinical Medicine (27.7%) and Public Health (26.8%). In 83 of the 174 subfields of science, at least one in ten active, influential authors in that field had authored something on COVID-19. 65 authors had already at least 30 (and up to 133) COVID-19 publications each. Among the 300 authors with the highest composite citation indicator for COVID-19 publications, 26 were journalists or editors publishing news stories or editorials in prestigious journals; most common countries for the remaining were China (n=77), USA (n=66), UK (n=27), and Italy (n=20).
Conclusions and relevance The scientific literature and publishing scientists have been rapidly and massively infected by COVID-19 creating opportunities and challenges. There is evidence for hyper-prolific productivity.
Competing Interest Statement
METRICS has been funded by grants from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. METRIC-B has been funded by a visiting Einstein fellowship from the Einstein Foundation and Stiftung Charite to JPAI. JB is an Elsevier employee and Elsevier runs Scopus which is the source of the data.
Footnotes
Funding: none
Data sharing: all the key data are in the manuscript.
Conflicts of interest
METRICS has been funded by grants from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. METRIC-B has been funded by a visiting Einstein fellowship from the Einstein Foundation and Stiftung Charite to JPAI. JB is an Elsevier employee and Elsevier runs Scopus which is the source of the data.
