Background: The COVID 19 pandemic increased publication productivity enormously with numerous new COVID-19-related articles appearing daily, despite the fact that many health care workers in the partially overburdened national health care systems were faced with major challenges. Methods: In a cross-sectional, observational, retrospective study we compared and correlated 17 epidemiologic, health care system-related and health-economic factors from medical databases and intergovernmental organisations potentially influencing the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 publication productivity between 1 January and 30 April 2020 amongst the 30 countries most severely affected by the pandemic. These factors were additionally correlated with the national pre-COVID-19 publication rate for the same pre-year period to identify potential changes in the general publication behaviour. Findings: COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 publication rates correlated strongest with access to and quality of health care (ρ = 0.80 and 0.87, p < 0.0001), COVID-19 cases per capita (ρ = 0.78 and 0.72, p < 0.0001), GDP per capita (ρ = 0.69 and 0.76, p < 0.0001), health spending per capita (ρ = 0.61 and 0.73, p < 0.0001) and the pre-COVID-19 Hirsch-Index (ρ = 0.61 and 0.62, p = 0.002 and <0.0001). Ratios of publication rates for “Cancer”, “Diabetes” and “Stroke” in 2020 versus the pre-year period were 0.88 ± 0.06, 1.02 ± 0.18 and 0.9 ± 0.20, resulting in a pooled ratio of 0.93 ± 0.06 for non-COVID-19 publications. Interpretation: There are marked geographic and national differences in publication productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both COVID-19- and non-COVID-19 publication productivity correlates with epidemiologic, health care system-related and healtheconomic factors, and pre-COVID publication expertise. Countries with a stable scientific infrastructure appear to maintain non-COVID-19 publication productivity nearly at the pre-year level and at the same time use their resilience to produce COVID-19 publications at high rates.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.