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Publications during COVID-19 times: An unexpected overall increase

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  • Rousseau, Ronald
  • Garcia-Zorita, Carlos
  • Sanz-Casado, Elías

Abstract

The goal of this investigation is to find out the role of external influences, such as COVID-19, on research production. We used the Web of Science to collect data and compared expected data, based on past performance, with actually observed data. We observed that the number of articles and reviews, published in 2021, has increased, even more than we expected. This increase is the largest for the broad category of life sciences and biomedicine. We studied this issue also for the USA and China separately and for the collaboration between these two countries. Here, we observed a huge decline in the collaboration between China and the USA. This observation points to another external influence on research productivity, namely geopolitical tensions that arose between these two research giants. We consider our study as a contribution to the science of science. Major limitations are the facts that we only used one database, restricted ourselves to normal articles and reviews, using whole counting, and studying one particular year.

Suggested Citation

  • Rousseau, Ronald & Garcia-Zorita, Carlos & Sanz-Casado, Elías, 2023. "Publications during COVID-19 times: An unexpected overall increase," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:17:y:2023:i:4:s175115772300086x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2023.101461
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Gabriela F. Nane & Nicolas Robinson-Garcia & François Schalkwyk & Daniel Torres-Salinas, 2023. "COVID-19 and the scientific publishing system: growth, open access and scientific fields," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 345-362, January.
    2. Joel Emanuel Fuchs & Gunnar Sivertsen & Ronald Rousseau, 2021. "Measuring the relative intensity of collaboration within a network," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8673-8682, October.
    3. Constantin Bürgi & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2022. "The influence of Covid-19 on publications in economics: bibliometric evidence from five working paper series," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5175-5189, September.
    4. Tonya Blowers & Erin Johnson & Jennifer Thomson, 2022. "Resilient women scientists and the COVID-19 pandemic: an OWSD analysis," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 39(1), pages 225-248, April.
    5. Shohreh SeyyedHosseini & Reza BasirianJahromi, 2021. "COVID-19 pandemic in the Middle East countries: coronavirus-seeking behavior versus coronavirus-related publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7503-7523, September.
    6. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Ida Mele, 2022. "Impact of Covid-19 on research output by gender across countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 6811-6826, December.
    7. X. Cai & C. V. Fry & C. S. Wagner, 2021. "International collaboration during the COVID-19 crisis: autumn 2020 developments," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3683-3692, April.
    8. Milad Haghani & Michiel C. J. Bliemer, 2020. "Covid-19 pandemic and the unprecedented mobilisation of scholarly efforts prompted by a health crisis: Scientometric comparisons across SARS, MERS and 2019-nCoV literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2695-2726, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Tang, Li, 2024. "Halt the ongoing decoupling and reboot US-China scientific collaboration," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).

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