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. 2022 Jul 26:10:937008.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.937008. eCollection 2022.

A bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 publications in neurology by using the visual mapping method

Qian Zhang  1   2   3 , Jian Li  1   4 , Ling Weng  3   5
Affiliations

A bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 publications in neurology by using the visual mapping method

Qian Zhang et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: The characteristic symptom of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is respiratory distress, but neurological symptoms are the most frequent extra-pulmonary symptoms. This study aims to explore the current status and hot topics of neurology-related research on COVID-19 using bibliometric analysis.

Methods: Publications regarding neurology and COVID-19 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) on March 28 2022. The Advanced search was conducted using "TS = ('COVID 19' or 'Novel Coronavirus 2019' or 'Coronavirus disease 2019' or '2019-nCOV' or 'SARS-CoV-2' or 'coronavirus-2') and TS = ('neurology'or 'neurological' or 'nervous system' or 'neurodegenerative disease' or 'brain' or 'cerebra' or 'nerve')". Microsoft Excel 2010 and VOSviewer were used to characterize the largest contributors, including the authors, journals, institutions, and countries. The hot topics and knowledge network were analyzed by CiteSpace and VOSviewer.

Results: A total of 5,329 publications between 2020 and 2022 were retrieved. The United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom were three key contributors to this field. Harvard Medical School, the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, and the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology were the major institutions with the largest publications. Josef Finsterer from the University of São Paulo (Austria) was the most prolific author. Tom Solomon from the University of Liverpool (UK) was the most cited author. Neurological Sciences and Frontiers in Neurology were the first two most productive journals, while Journal of Neurology held the first in terms of total citations and citations per publication. Cerebrovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, encephalitis and encephalopathy, neuroimmune complications, neurological presentation in children, long COVID and mental health, and telemedicine were the central topics regarding the neurology-related research on COVID-19.

Conclusion: Neurology-related research on COVID-19 has attracted considerable attention worldwide. Research topics shifted from "morality, autopsy, and telemedicine" in 2020 to various COVID-19-related neurological symptoms in 2021, such as "stroke," "Alzheimer's disease," "Parkinson's disease," "Guillain-Barre syndrome," "multiple sclerosis," "seizures in children," and "long COVID." "Applications of telemedicine in neurology during COVID-19 pandemic," "COVID-19-related neurological complications and mechanism," and "long COVID" require further study.

Keywords: COVID-19; Citespace; VOSviewer; bibliometric analysis; neurology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart of data screening and bibliometric analysis.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of publications by year (A) and type (B).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Top 10 prolific countries/regions and inter-national collaboration network of neurology-related research on COVID-19. (A) Number of publications and total citations for each country. (B) Collaboration among countries. Node size indicates the number of articles produced. The width of links indicated the cooperation strength.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Inter-institution cooperative network built by VOSviewer (A) and CiteSpace (B). Node size indicates the number of articles produced. The width of links indicates the cooperation strength.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Top 10 most productive authors and collaboration among these authors. (A) Number of publications, total citations, and citations per publication in the top 10 prolific authors. (B) Collaboration among these prolific authors built by VOSviewer. Node size indicates the number of articles. The width of links indicates the cooperation strength.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Analysis of references of neurology-related research on COVID-19. (A) Reference clusters named by CiteSpace (find cluster, keyword, LLR). (B) References citation burst visualized by CiteSpace. The top 24 references with the strongest citation bursts of neurology-related research on COVID-19 from 2019 to 2022. The red segment of the blue line denotes the burst duration of the reference.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Co-occurrence networks of keywords visualized by VOSviewer. The keywords were clustered into six groups according to their color. Large nodes represent keywords with high frequency.
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