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

Abstract

Objectives: The infectious pneumonia caused by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) occurred in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, from December 2019 and spread the whole country and even other 24 countries. Coronavirus research is of significance to overcome the epidemic. Our study aims to investigate the global status and trends of coronavirus research.

Method: Publications related to the studies of coronavirus research from January 1, 2003 to February 6, 2020 were retrieved from the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) of the Web of Science database. A total of 9294 publications were included. The data source was studied and indexed by bibliometric methodology. For visualized study, bibliographic coupling analysis, co-authorship analysis, co-citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis and the analysis of publication trends in coronavirus research were conducted by VOS (visualization of similarities) viewer and GraphPadPrism 6 software.

Results: The number of publications about coronavirus research increased sharply in 2004 for SARS outbreak and increased again in 2012 for MERS outbreak. The USA made the highest contributions to the global research with the most total number of publications, total citation frequency, and the highest H-index, while Netherlands had the highest average citation per item. Journal of Virology had the largest publication numbers. The University of Hong Kong is the most contributive institution with the most publications. The main research orientation and funding agency were virology and United States Department of Health Human Services. Keywords of all related studies could be divided into 4 clusters: "Pathological research," "Epidemiology research," "Clinical research," and "Mechanism research."

Conclusions: The outbreak of the epidemic could promote coronavirus research, meanwhile, coronavirus research contributes to overcoming the epidemic. Attention should be drawn to the latest popular research, including "Spike protein," "Receptor binding domain," and "Vaccine." Therefore, more and more efforts will be put into mechanism research and vaccine research and development, which can be helpful to deal with the epidemic.

Figure 1

Schematic diagram of the coronavirus structure. The main structure includes the single-stranded positive-sense viral RNA, Nucleocapsid protein, Envelope protein, Membrane glycoprotein, and Spike protein.

Figure 2

Global trends coronavirus research. (a) World map showing the distribution of coronavirus research, in which the different color depths represent the different numbers of publications in different countries. (b) The annual number of publications related to coronavirus research from January 1, 2003 to February 6, 2020.

Figure 3

Total number of publications, institutions, research orientations, and funding. (a) The sum of publications related to coronavirus research from 20 countries or regions. (b) The most contributive institution with the most publications in coronavirus research. (c) The most popular orientation about coronavirus research. (d) The major contributive funds for coronavirus research.

Figure 4

Citation frequency and H-index levels of different countries. (a) The total citations for coronavirus research publications from different countries. (b) The average citations per paper for publications from the different countries. (c) The H-index of publications in the different countries.

Figure 5

Bibliographic coupling analysis of global research about coronavirus. (a) Mapping of the 73 identified journals on coronavirus research. (b) Mapping of the 69 institutions on coronavirus research. (c) Mapping of the 78 countries on coronavirus research. The line between two points in the figure represents that two journals/institutions/countries had establish a similarity relationship. The thicker the line, the closer the link between the two journals/institutions/countries.

Figure 6

Co-authorship analysis of global research about coronavirus. (a) Mapping of the 121 authors co-authorship analysis on coronavirus research. (b) Mapping of the 147 institutions co-authorship analysis on coronavirus research. (c) Mapping of the 78 countries co-authorship analysis on coronavirus research. The size of the points represents the co-authorship frequency. The line between two points in the figure represents that two authors/institutions/countries had establish collaboration. The thicker the line, the closer the collaboration between the two authors/institutions/countries.

Figure 7

Co-citation analysis of global research about coronavirus. (a) Mapping of co-cited references related to coronavirus research. (b) Mapping of co-cited journals related to coronavirus research. The points with different colors represent the cited references/journals. The size of the points represents the citation frequency. A line between two points means that both were cited in one paper/journal. A shorter line indicates a closer link between two papers/journals. (c) Mapping of the authors co-citation analysis on coronavirus research. Points in the same color belong to the same research direction.

Figure 8

Co-occurrence analysis of global research about coronavirus. (a) Mapping of keywords in the research on coronavirus. The size of the points represents the frequency, and the keywords are divided into 4 clusters: “Pathological research” (upper in green), “Epidemiology research” (right in blue), “Clinical research” (lower in yellow), and “Mechanism research” (left in red). (b) Distribution of keywords according to the mean frequency of appearance. Keywords in blue appeared earlier than those in yellow and red colored keywords appeared later. (c) Density visualization map: the times of occurrence of a key word was defined as the color of the area and the larger the times, the warmer the color is.