Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021;126(6):4975-4990.
doi: 10.1007/s11192-021-03971-6. Epub 2021 Apr 26.

The sharing of research data facing the COVID-19 pandemic

Rut Lucas-Dominguez  1   2   3 , Adolfo Alonso-Arroyo  1   2 , Antonio Vidal-Infer  1   2 , Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent  2   4
Affiliations

The sharing of research data facing the COVID-19 pandemic

Rut Lucas-Dominguez et al. Scientometrics. 2021.

Abstract

During the previous Ebola and Zika outbreaks, researchers shared their data, allowing many published epidemiological studies to be produced only from open research data, to speed up investigations and control of these infections. This study aims to evaluate the dissemination of the COVID-19 research data underlying scientific publications. Analysis of COVID-19 publications from December 1, 2019, to April 30, 2020, was conducted through the PubMed Central repository to evaluate the research data available through its publication as supplementary material or deposited in repositories. The PubMed Central search generated 5,905 records, of which 804 papers included complementary research data, especially as supplementary material (77.4%). The most productive journals were The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and The Lancet Infectious Diseases, the most frequent keyword was pneumonia, and the most used repositories were GitHub and GenBank. An expected growth in the number of published articles following the course of the pandemics is confirmed in this work, while the underlying research data are only 13.6%. It can be deduced that data sharing is not a common practice, even in health emergencies, such as the present one. High-impact generalist journals have accounted for a large share of global publishing. The topics most often covered are related to epidemiological and public health concepts, genetics, virology and respiratory diseases, such as pneumonia. However, it is essential to interpret these data with caution following the evolution of publications and their funding in the coming months.

Keywords: COVID-19; Data sharing; PubMed central; Repository; Supplementary material.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interestThe authors report no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Number of articles, funded research, supplementary material and number of cases worldwide
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Bimonthly mean production of articles per journal. Related-samples Wilcoxon signed rank test: p = 0.0001
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
a Evolution of publications per authors’ country of affiliation. b International collaboration network. (The size of the node is proportional to the number of documents generated by each country. The color of the nodes is the same in all countries belonging to the same continent. The width of the lines represents the numbers papers in collaboration between the countries.)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Bimonthly mean production of articles per country. Related-samples Wilcoxon signed rank test: p = 0.0001
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Evolution of collaboration according to the number of authors signing the papers
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aleixandre-Benavent R, Castelló-Cogollos L, Valderrama-Zurián J-C. Information and communication during the early months of Covid-19. Infodemics, misinformation and the role of information professionals. El profesional de la información. 2020 doi: 10.3145/epi.2020.jul.08. - DOI
    1. Aleixandre-Benavent R, Lucas-Domínguez R, Sixto-Costoya A, Vidal-Infer A. The sharing of research data in the cell & tissue engineering area: Is It a common practice? Stem Cells and Development. 2018;27(11):717–722. doi: 10.1089/scd.2018.0036. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alsheikh-Ali AA, Qureshi W, Al-Mallah MH, Ioannidis JPA. Public availability of published research data in high-impact journals. PLoS ONE. 2011;6(9):e24357. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024357. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bertagnolli MM, Sartor O, Chabner BA, Rothenberg ML, Khozin S, Hugh-Jones C, et al. Advantages of a truly open-access data-sharing model. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2017;376(12):1178–1181. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsb1702054. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Calling all coronavirus researchers: keep sharing, stay open. (2020). Nature, 578(7793), 7. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00307-x. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources