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Review
. 2020 Oct 13:13:1178633720962935.
doi: 10.1177/1178633720962935. eCollection 2020.

Bibliometric Analysis of Early COVID-19 Research: The Top 50 Cited Papers

Hassan ElHawary  1 , Ali Salimi  2 , Nermin Diab  3 , Lee Smith  4
Affiliations
Review

Bibliometric Analysis of Early COVID-19 Research: The Top 50 Cited Papers

Hassan ElHawary et al. Infect Dis (Auckl). .

Abstract

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly evolving with the number of cases exponentially rising. The research scientific community has reacted promptly as evidenced by an outstanding number of COVID-19 related publications. As the number of scientific publications rapidly rises, there is a need to dissect the factors that lead to highly impactful publications. To that end, the present paper summarizes the characteristics of the top 50 cited COVID-19-related publications that emerged early during the pandemic.

Methods: A systematic search of the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar was performed, using keywords related to COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-19. Two independent authors reviewed all the search results, screening for the top 50 cited COVID-19-related articles. Inclusion criteria comprised any publication on COVID-19 or the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Data extracted included the type of study, journal, number of citations, number of authors, country of publication, and study content.

Results: As of May 29th, the top 50 cited articles were cited 63849 times during the last 4 months. On average, 14 authors contributed to each publication. Over half of the identified articles were published in only 3 journals. Furthermore, 42% and 26% of the identified articles were retrospective case series and correspondence/viewpoints, respectively, while only 1 article was a randomized controlled trial. In terms of content, almost half (48%) of the identified publications reported clinical/radiological findings while only 7 out of the 50 articles investigated potential treatments.

Conclusion: By highlighting the characteristics of the top 50 cited COVID-19-related articles, the authors hope to disseminate information that could assist researchers to identify the important topics, study characteristics, and gaps in the literature.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; COVID-19; Evidence-based research.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interest:The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Top 50 cited COVID-19 related articles’ country of origin.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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