Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on researcher collaboration in business and economics areas on national level: a scientometric analysis

Abstract

PurposeThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has greatly impacted society and academic life and research practices. This study is an attempt to comprehend whether a global emergency of COVID-19 pandemic has an impact on researcher international collaboration. The authors analyze the research collaboration before and after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to understand how scientists collaborated within their own nation's borders and beyond.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze the research collaboration before and after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to understand how scientists collaborated within their own nation's borders and beyond. The authors collected a dataset of research publications published in journals in the research area of business and economics and indexed in the WoS Core Collection database by researchers from 11 countries (Austria, Denmark, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Korea (South), Mexico, Pakistan, Romania and Vietnam). In total, 14,824 publication records were considered for the literature analysis. This study presented the scientometric analysis of these publications using bibliometric, statistical, factor analysis and network analysis methods. The results are evaluated and interpreted in the context of the Hofstede's model of cultural dimensions. The results of this study provide evidence to research management to properly allocate their efforts to improve the researcher cooperation during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to overcome its negative outcomes in the years to come.FindingsThe results of our study show that uncertainty avoidance as the cultural factor defined by the Hofstede's model has significantly influenced the properties of research collaboration networks in the domain of business and economics. Uncertainty avoidance focuses on how cultures adapt to changes and cope with uncertainty, while the global COVID-19 pandemic introduced a lot of change and uncertainty all levels of society around the world.Research limitations/implicationsThe study exclusively examines 14,824 research outputs which have been indexed in the WoS Core Collection database from 2019 till 15 November 2020 and only covered one research area (business economics). Thus, documents published in any other different channels and sources which are not covered in WoS are excluded from this study. The authors have analyzed the publications from just 11 countries, which represent a small part of the global research output. Also, the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model is not a unique way to study cultural characteristics at the national level.Practical implicationsThe results of this study will provide evidence to research management to properly allocate their efforts to improve the researcher cooperation during the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to overcome its negative outcomes in the years to come.Originality/valueConsidering the global impact and social distress due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, this study is significant in the present scenario for identifying the changes in the characteristics of research collaboration networks of 11 diverse (in terms of geographical distribution and cultural differences in terms of the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model) countries between 2019 (the year before COVID-19) and 2020 (the year of COVID-19), which has not been done before.

Published Research on COVID-19 in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: Bibliometric Analysis

“…Cultural differences could possibly have shaped COVID-19 research collaboration in EMR countries, which can be explained by Hofstede's theory of cultural dimensions [ 62 ]. A recent study analyzing research collaboration in the area of business and economics by 11 countries, including Iran from the EMR, before and after the onset of the pandemic, showed that Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance domain significantly influences the characteristics of research collaboration networks [ 63 ]. Uncertainty avoidance explains how cultures adjust to change and cope with uncertainty [ 62 ], and the pandemic has caused major changes and uncertainties at all levels of society worldwide [ 64 ].…”

Tracking Openness and Topic Evolution of COVID-19 Publications January 2020-March 2021: Comprehensive Bibliometric and Topic Modeling Analysis

“…Bibliometric techniques have been used to present an overview of COVID-19 research. Efforts have been made to analyze the coverage of different data sources of COVID-19 publications [15][16][17], using altmetrics (ie, Wikipedia and Mendeley) [18,19], analyzing the effectiveness and impact of collaboration [20,21],…”

“…Bibliometric techniques have been used to present an overview of COVID-19 research. Efforts have been made to analyze the coverage of different data sources of COVID-19 publications [ 15 - 17 ], using altmetrics (ie, Wikipedia and Mendeley) [ 18 , 19 ], analyzing the effectiveness and impact of collaboration [ 20 , 21 ], gender differences [ 22 ], topic evolution [ 16 , 23 ], scholarly communication flow during this pandemic [ 24 , 25 ], as well as OA of these research outputs[ 5 , 15 ].…”

The Impact of a National Crisis on Research Collaborations: A Scientometric Analysis of Ukrainian Authors 2019–2022

“…It has also caused delays in the completion of research initiatives [1]. Complex changes in research publication patterns and collaboration networking have been reported [2]. Several recent studies have examined the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on research output such as on biomedical publishing patterns noting a significant reduction in international collaboration [3].…”