Bibliometric analysis of the worldwide scientific production on COVID-19 infection and cerebrovascular disease.

OBJECTIVE

To identify the worldwide bibliometric characteristics of research on SARS-CoV-2 infection and cerebrovascular disease.

METHODS

A retrospective, descriptive, and bibliometric study was performed. We analyzed 1834 publications about COVID-19 and cerebrovascular disease from the Scopus database considering the time since the beginning of the pandemic between 2019 and 2020. Bibliometric indicators were evaluated such as number of citations, citations per publication by authors, countries, journals, and collaborations at national, international, institutional, and impact levels according to Cite Score Quartile and h-index metrics. All analysis was performed using SciVal software.

RESULTS

The highest percentage of articles corresponded to universities in the United States, including Harvard and New York with 59 and 20 publications, respectively, and the University of Toronto in Canada with 22 publications. In relation to citation indicators, journals such as Stroke and Journal Stroke and Cerebrovascular diseases obtained 1971 and 561 citations, respectively. Regarding collaboration indicators, the national collaboration index was 39.4% and the institutional collaboration index was 31.1%. Finally, neurology, cardiovascular medicine, and cardiology and surgery were the subject areas with the highest research results, with 424, 217, and 128 studies, respectively.

CONCLUSION

It was observed that the United States was the country with the highest scientific production on COVID-19 and cerebrovascular disease in the year 2020 in the different health areas; however, more research is still needed worldwide for a better analysis of the bibliometric indicators on the subject.