Background Iran is fighting heroically against COVID-19. Due to the importance of scientific publications in better dealing with this stubborn virus, this study was conducted aiming at reviewing COVID-19 publications by Iranian scientists. Methods We searched for COVID-19 and all its related keywords in the Web of Science (WOS), Scopus and PubMed databases to find documents published by Iranian authors until July 10, 2020. Duplicates documents were excluded, and bibliographic parameters were evaluated. Co-authorship matrix was calculated using Bibexcel, and visualizations were done using VOSviewer. Results A total of 849 documents from 3450 Iranian researchers (5.5 authors per document) were retrieved from WOS, PubMed, and Scopus and Iran ranked 12th and 13th in WOS and Scopus in terms of the number of publications. The average citation per document was 2.2 with the h-index of 18. Original articles and letters were the most common formats for Iranian publications. The Journal of Military Medicine has published the highest number of documents. Iranian authors have mostly collaborated with researchers from the United States, Italy, the UK, and Canada, respectively. The co-occurrence network for keywords represented five publication clusters in the collection, and the largest clusters were related to epidemiological studies and public health, followed by clinical studies on COVID-19. Conclusion Iranian researchers have had a significant scientific contribution in various areas of the disease. However, the network of studies has not been sufficiently cohesive, and more coherent collaboration between researchers at the national and international levels should be on the agenda of research policymakers in the country.

Reprinted) January 7, 2022 2/3 gender disparities among researchers are not easy to overcome, increasing the number of women in prestigious biomedical research positions may boost both their research productivity and their likelihood of publishing highly cited publications.Our study has some limitations. Some fields did not fit precisely or entirely within the category of biomedicine (such as psychology and psychiatry). However, there was no good way to divide these publications. Because the methodology for Clarivate's listing of HCRs has changed since its inception in 2001, only recent HCR lists with the same methodology were used.

The 21 authors of this study, 19 of whom are non-native English speakers, reflect on the barriers to publishing academic journal articles in top international journals. Each author responded to the same set of questions pertaining to educational (PhD) opportunities for emerging scholars, financial conditions for researchers, and challenges in publishing their work. Limited English language skills, lack of research funding, and different research topics were identified as the most significant barriers to publish in the journals. Recruiting volunteers or using electronic translations for accepted articles for journals, reducing software and subscription to academic journals costs, expanding journal scope, and providing guidance and collaboration across borders are possible measures to reduce the negative impact of the barriers.

Objective: This study examines the extent to which retracted articles pertaining to COVID-19 have been shared via social and mass media based on altmetric scores. Methods: Seventy-one retracted articles related to COVID-19 were identified from relevant databases, of which thirty-nine had an Altmetric Attention Score obtained using the Altmetrics Bookmarklet. Data extracted from the articles include overall attention score and demographics of sharers (e.g., geographic location, professional affiliation). Results: Retracted articles related to COVID-19 were shared tens of thousands of times to an audience of potentially hundreds of millions of readers and followers. Twitter was the largest medium for sharing these articles, and the United States was the country with the most sharers. While general members of the public were the largest proportion of sharers, researchers and professionals were not immune to sharing these articles on social media and on websites, blogs, or news media. Conclusions: These findings have potential implications for better understanding the spread of misleading or false information perpetuated in retracted scholarly publications. They emphasize the importance of quality peer review and research ethics among journals and responsibility among individuals who wish to share research findings.

The need to know more about COVID-19 (coronavirus disease-2019) has led to a rapid increase in scientific publications on this virus in a short period of time. Rapidity in publishing can accelerate the achievement of the ultimate goal of answering our questions about COVID-19 but there may be concerns. One of our concerns is the carelessness to research ethics in COVID-19 studies, which may sacrifice research ethics for high-speed publishing. In this article, we address some of the concerns about research ethics in the study of COVID-19.

PurposeIn 2016, Bohannon published an article analyzing the download rate of the top ten countries using the illegal Sci-Hub website. Four years later, this study approaches the search behavior of these ten countries as they query about Sci-Hub in Google's search engine, the world's most widely used search engine. The authors also tracked the possible consequences of using Sci-Hub, such as plagiarism.Design/methodology/approachThe search terms “Sci-Hub”, “Plagiarism” and “Plagiarism Checker” were explored with Google Trends. The queries were performed globally and individually for the ten target countries, all categories and web searches. The time range was limited between 1/1/2016 (after the date of publication of Bohannon's work) and 29/03/2020. Data were extracted from Google Trends and the findings were mapped.FindingsSearching for the word Sci-Hub on Google has increased nearly eightfold worldwide in the last four years, with China, Ethiopia and Tunisia having the most searches. Sci-Hub's search trends increased for most of the T10C, with Brazil and Iran having the highest and lowest average searches, respectively.Originality/valueAccess to the research literature is required to the progress of research, but it should not be obtained illegally. Given the increasing incidence of these problems in countries at any level of development, it is important to pay attention to ethics education in research and establish ethics committees. A comprehensive review of the research process is required to reduce the urge to circumvent copyright laws and includes training and educating research stakeholders in copyright literacy. To address these goals, national and international seriousness and enthusiasm are essential.

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