One-year in: COVID-19 research at the international level in CORD-19 data

Abstract

The appearance of a novel coronavirus in late 2019 radically changed the community of researchers working on coronaviruses since the 2002 SARS epidemic. In 2020, coronavirus-related publications grew by 20 times over the previous two years, with 130,000 more researchers publishing on related topics. The United States, the United Kingdom and China led dozens of nations working on coronavirus prior to the pandemic, but leadership consolidated among these three nations in 2020, which collectively accounted for 50% of all papers, garnering well more than 60% of citations. China took an early lead on COVID-19 research, but dropped rapidly in production and international participation through the year. Europe showed an opposite pattern, beginning slowly in publications but growing in contributions during the year. The share of internationally collaborative publications dropped from pre-pandemic rates; single-authored publications grew. For all nations, including China, the number of publications about COVID track closely with the outbreak of COVID-19 cases. Lower-income nations participate very little in COVID-19 research in 2020. Topic maps of internationally collaborative work show the rise of patient care and public health clusters—two topics that were largely absent from coronavirus research in the two years prior to 2020. Findings are consistent with global science as a self-organizing system operating on a reputation-based dynamic.

Pandemics are catalysts of scientific novelty: Evidence from COVID‐19

“…Exploring COVID‐19 related articles and non‐COVID‐19 related articles published in each of the first 6 months of 2016–2020, Aviv‐Reuven and Rosenfeld (2021) found that international collaboration diversity that was measured by the number of collaborating countries was lower than in non‐COVID‐19 papers and than previous years. Similar findings of the shrink of international collaboration and team size were obtained in a few other studies (Homolak et al, 2020; Wagner et al, 2021). The reduction in team size and international collaboration could be due to the declining time to spend on research (Myers et al, 2020), the complexity of conducting international studies (Aviv‐Reuven & Rosenfeld, 2021), physical and political obstacles (Cai et al, 2021), and high costs for searching and coordination (Fry et al, 2020b).…”

“…The lack of time and resources available for effective and timely responses made it difficult to push coronavirus research forward by either individual or intra‐country efforts (Fry et al, 2020b). The sharing of knowledge, data, and other resources became more essential than ever, which required collaboration among scientists, organizations, and countries (Cai et al, 2021; Wagner et al, 2021). Additionally, the information processing model also argues that scientists could access a broader scope of information and diverse ideas by collaborating with others and thus produce more novel ideas (Harrison & Klein, 2007; Lee et al, 2015; Pieterse et al, 2013).…”

“…Facing increasing resources constraints during COVID-19, scientists were involved in teams to complement resources they could access for generating novel solutions (Cai et al, 2021;Fry et al, 2020a;Wagner et al, 2021). The lack of time and resources available for effective and timely responses made it difficult to push coronavirus research forward by either individual or intra-country efforts (Fry et al, 2020b).…”

Compromise in Docking Power of Liganded Crystal Structures of Mpro SARS-CoV-2 Surpasses 90% Success Rate

“…In 2020, more than 130,000 scientific articles concerning the SARS-CoV-2 virus were published, while the number of researchers studying coronaviruses increased by approximately 500% on a year-toyear basis. 2 Although such a surge was necessary given the speed of spread of the COVID-19, the scientific community must maintain scientific standards and research integrity, 3 and the number of published scientific papers raises doubts about their quality. 4 The increase in the number of publications was largely driven by in silico research aimed at drug refurbishment and discovery.…”

“…The scientific community responded in an unprecedented way with a common goal to find an effective form of treatment and prevention against this virus. In 2020, more than 130,000 scientific articles concerning the SARS-CoV-2 virus were published, while the number of researchers studying coronaviruses increased by approximately 500% on a year-to-year basis . Although such a surge was necessary given the speed of spread of the COVID-19, the scientific community must maintain scientific standards and research integrity, and the number of published scientific papers raises doubts about their quality …”