A bibliometric analysis of COVID -19 research papers indexed in SCOPUS: Comparison of Sri Lankan context with Global context

Abstract

ealth burdens and the socio-economic crisis are the unprecedented global effect of the pandemic caused by novel Coronavirus. As numerous research papers have been published on COVID-19, bibliometric evaluation for valuable information is crucial as it helps to identify suitable researchers and institutions for appropriate consultancy and suitable journals for publication. This study aims to bibliometrically analyse the medical science-related COVID-19 research papers indexed in SCOPUS, and compare the Global and Sri Lankan context. Therefore, highly cited articles, most impactful authors and journals, most prolific and productive country, and co-authorship by country were analysed. The data were mined from the SCOPUS database. SCOPUS analytic was used to analyse initial results and VOSviwer software was used to analyse citation and co-authorship. “Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China” was the most cited article in the global context, and “Enhancing immunity in viral infections with special emphasis on COVID-19: A review” was obtained the highest citation in the Sri Lankan context. Y. Liu, was the most impactful author internationally, whereas Priyanka Ranasinghe was the most impactful author in Sri Lanka. The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine were the most impactful journals globally and locally, respectively. China was the leading country, whereas the United States was the country that had the largest co-authorships link strength and produced the highest number of publications. The Sri Lankan authors highly collaborated with the USA, UK and Australia. Hence China is in the leading position in the case of the researches on COVID-19. In Sri Lanka, review articles with meta-analyses are mainly produced and this type of article receive the highest citations.