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
Review
. 2021 Dec;41(12):2091-2103.
doi: 10.1007/s00296-021-04987-0. Epub 2021 Oct 1.

COVID-19 from a rheumatology perspective: bibliometric and altmetric analysis

Bohdana Doskaliuk  1 , Roman Yatsyshyn  2 , Iryna Klishch  3 , Olena Zimba  4
Affiliations
Review

COVID-19 from a rheumatology perspective: bibliometric and altmetric analysis

Bohdana Doskaliuk et al. Rheumatol Int. 2021 Dec.

Abstract

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak turned out the greatest pandemic for decades. It challenged enormously the global health system, forcing it to adjust to the new realities. We aimed to analyze articles covering COVID-19 papers in the rheumatological field and outline emerging topics raising within this frame. We applied the bibliometric database Scopus for our literature search and conducted it on the 5th of June using the following keywords: "rheumatic" OR "rheumatology" OR "rheumatoid arthritis" OR "systemic lupus erythematosus" OR "myositis" OR "systemic sclerosis" OR "vasculitis" OR "arthritis" OR "ankylosing spondylitis" AND "COVID-19". We analyzed all selected articles according to various aspects: type of document, authorship, journal, citations score, rheumatology field, country of origin, language, and keywords. With the help of the software tool VOSviewer version 1.6.15, we have built the visualizing network of authors and keywords co-occurrence. The measurement of the social impact of articles was made using Altmetric data. This study included 1430 retrieved articles with open access mostly. The top five journals in this field were Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (n = 65), Rheumatology International (n = 51), Clinical Rheumatology (n = 50), Lancet Rheumatology (n = 50), and Frontiers In Immunology (n = 33). Most studies originate from countries with a high incidence of COVID-19 among the general population (the USA-387; Italy-268; UK-184; France-114; Germany-110; India-98 and Spain-96, China-94, Canada-73 Turkey-66). Original Articles (42.1%) were the most common articles' type, following by Letters (24.4%), Reviews (21.7%), Notes (6%), Editorials (4.8%), Erratum (1%). According to the citations scores, articles dedicated to the clinical course of COVID-19 in patients with rheumatic diseases were of the highest importance for the scientific rheumatologic community. Rheumatoid arthritis (n = 527), systemic lupus erythematosus (n = 393), vasculitis (n = 267), myositis (n = 71), systemic sclerosis (n = 68), and psoriatic arthritis (n = 68) were the most widely discussed rheumatic diseases in the view of COVID-19. The analysis of Altmetric and citations scores revealed a moderate correlation between them. This article provides a comprehensive bibliometric and altmetric analysis of COVID-19 related articles in the rheumatology field and summarizes data about features of rheumatology service in the time of the pandemic.

Keywords: Altmetric; Bibliometric analysis; COVID-19; Rheumatology; Scopus.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
a The visualizing authors’ network. b The visualizing keywords network
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The top five rheumatological journals according to the number of published COVID-19 related articles
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The top 10 countries of origin of scientific publications on COVID-19 from a rheumatological perspective
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
a Structure of publications by their type. b The 5 most represented rheumatologic disorders considering COVID-19 topic. c The most frequently mentioned rheumatologic drugs in COVID-19 related articles. d The authors with the most significant contribution to the field
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Pfefferbaum B, North CS. Mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic. N Engl J Med. 2020;383(6):510–512. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp2008017. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Gupta L, Gasparyan AY, Misra DP, Agarwal V, Zimba O, Yessirkepov M. Information and misinformation on COVID-19: a cross-sectional survey study. J Korean Med Sci. 2020;35(27):e256. doi: 10.3346/jkms.2020.35.e256. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Akyol A, Kocyigit BF. Publication activity in the field of Sjögren’s syndrome: a ten-year Web of Science-based analysis. Rheumatol Int. 2021;41(4):763–769. doi: 10.1007/s00296-020-04714-1. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Akyol A, Kocyigit BF. Ankylosing spondylitis rehabilitation publications and the global productivity: a Web of Science-based bibliometric analysis (2000–2019) Rheumatol Int. 2021 doi: 10.1007/s00296-021-04836-0. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ren W, Liao Y. Visualization analysis of traumatic osteoarthritis research hotspots and content based on CiteSpace. Chin J Tissue Eng Res. 2021;25(21):3374.