Indian Publications on SARS-CoV-2: A Bibliometric Study of WHO COVID-19 Database

Abstract

Nowadays, the whole World is under threat of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many fatalities and forced scientific communities to foster their Research and Development (R & D) activities. As a result, there is an enormous growth of scholarly literature on the subject. In order to combat this novel coronavirus, the open access to scientific literature is essential. On this line, many reputed academic institutions and publication firms have made their literature on COVID-19 accessible to all. By maintaining the database of updated information on global literature on Coronavirus disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) is playing a pivotal role. The present study analyzed 89 Indian publications on SARS-CoV-2 accessible through WHO COVID-19 database. The research data was restricted for the period of 2/3/2020 to 12/5/2020. The analysis was carried out in light of the objectives of the study. The study found the considerable and constant growth of Indian publications on COVID-19 from mid-April. It is interesting to note that the prolific authors belong to either AIIMS or ICMR institutes. Majority of the COVID-19 articles were found to be collaborative publications. The study noticed that no research publications on COVID-19 have appeared from North Eastern region. Regarding the research output on COVID-19, the performance of largest states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar was found to be poor. Delhi state contributed highest publications on COVID-19. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi was the most productive institution in terms of publications. It is also important to note that the central government undertakings like AIIMS and ICMR, New Delhi and its affiliated institutions shared largest proportion of publications on COVID-19. The Indian Journal of Medical Research has emerged as the productive journal contributing highest number of the publications. The highest contribution in COVID-19 research takes the form of journal articles. In terms of research area, the majority of the publications were related to Epidemiology. The study reported covid, coronavirus, India, pandemic, sars etc. as the frequently occurred keywords in the COVID-19 publications. The highly cited publications were of evidenced based studies. It is observed that the studies pertaining to virology, diagnosis and treatment, clinical features etc. have received highest citations than general studies on epidemiology or pandemic

Assessing the Coronavirus Research Output: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…Even Chahrour et al (2020), in this study, concluded that India lags with respect to the number of publications on CoV in terms of their gross domestic product (GDP) and the number of publications per million people. This means that central and state institutes should put intensive efforts in order to produce quality research in relation to the pandemic (Vasantha Raju & Patil, 2020). But at the same time, there have been important attempts by the Indian researchers to study this phenomenon from various aspects (Behl & Mishra, 2020;Sahoo & Ashwani, 2020…”

“…The scientific studies on CoV are vital in preventing this disease in the future. Globally, the researchers have directed their efforts towards discovering the reasons, medical attributes and producing vaccines for CoV (Vasantha Raju & Patil, 2020). This has resulted in a rapid growth in the publications on this particular subject.…”

“…Globally reputed learning institutes and publication groups have not only published plentiful studies on CoV but also provide unrestricted access to such literature. Free access to these studies can help to diagnose, treat and prevent this virus and also create awareness against it (Vasantha Raju & Patil, 2020). With the increasing content and curiosity on COVID-19, a bibliometric study may be helpful to gain a global insight of the present and future research on COVID-19 (Bonilla-Aldana et al, 2020).…”

“…The academic literature on COV based on science is essential for combating the epidemic. The researchers all over the globe are actively occupied in identifying the root cause of the disease, conducting trials and attempting to produce a vaccine to control this disease (Vasantha Raju & Patil, 2020). These attempts by the researchers have produced a lot of research data on this subject.…”

“…Not only researchers but also reputed academic institutes and publishing houses are involved in publishing literature on CoV with free access to the readers. This not only creates public awareness but also helps in finding the possible cure for this disease (Vasantha Raju & Patil, 2020). The research data on CoV has been growing rapidly as the researchers are searching for solutions to this pandemic worldwide, which has given rise to the need for appropriate processing of this growing literature (Bras et al, 2020).…”