The status and trends of coronavirus research: A global bibliometric and visualized analysis.

OBJECTIVES

The infectious pneumonia caused by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) occurred in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, from December 2019 and spread the whole country and even other 24 countries. Coronavirus research is of significance to overcome the epidemic. Our study aims to investigate the global status and trends of coronavirus research.

METHOD

Publications related to the studies of coronavirus research from January 1, 2003 to February 6, 2020 were retrieved from the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) of the Web of Science database. A total of 9294 publications were included. The data source was studied and indexed by bibliometric methodology. For visualized study, bibliographic coupling analysis, co-authorship analysis, co-citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis and the analysis of publication trends in coronavirus research were conducted by VOS (visualization of similarities) viewer and GraphPadPrism 6 software.

RESULTS

The number of publications about coronavirus research increased sharply in 2004 for SARS outbreak and increased again in 2012 for MERS outbreak. The USA made the highest contributions to the global research with the most total number of publications, total citation frequency, and the highest H-index, while Netherlands had the highest average citation per item. Journal of Virology had the largest publication numbers. The University of Hong Kong is the most contributive institution with the most publications. The main research orientation and funding agency were virology and United States Department of Health Human Services. Keywords of all related studies could be divided into 4 clusters: "Pathological research," "Epidemiology research," "Clinical research," and "Mechanism research."

CONCLUSIONS

The outbreak of the epidemic could promote coronavirus research, meanwhile, coronavirus research contributes to overcoming the epidemic. Attention should be drawn to the latest popular research, including "Spike protein," "Receptor binding domain," and "Vaccine." Therefore, more and more efforts will be put into mechanism research and vaccine research and development, which can be helpful to deal with the epidemic.