Evidence of a Sharp Increase in ScientificProductivity on COVID-19 by Comparing Publicationsof the First Quarter with the First Half of 2020

Abstract

Objective: Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is a highly contagious disease characterized by severe respiratory infectionby SARS-CoV-2 virus. COVID-19 was first appeared in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and then rapidly became a globalpandemic from a local outbreak. The present study aims to present the rapid increase of scientific productivity on COVID-19by comparing publications of the first quarter with the first half of 2020. Materials and Methods: Web of Science (WoS) software was used for the search and the analysis. To compare scientificproductivity of two periods as the first quarter and the first half of the pandemic era, all scientific papers published aboutCOVID-19 included in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) from January 1st to April 5th and from January 1st to July 9th of 2020 were searched using the following terms: “COVID-19”,“2019-n-CoV”,“SARS-CoV-2”,“Coronavirus disease 19”and “2019 novel coronavirus” as nomenclatures of COVID-19. Results: Overall, 337 and 11.704 scientific papers related to COVID-19, indexed by SCI-E, were found in the first quarterand the first half of 2020, respectively. While the biggest contribution for publications was from People’s Republic of China(PRC) in the first quarter and was from the USA in the first half of 2020 for COVID-19. Conclusion: We found a close correlation between the rapid acceleration of scientific papers and turning the disease froma local outbreak to a global pandemic. Since sharing experiences is as important as struggling with these kinds of noveldiseases, we believe that encouraging researchers to make scientific publications for others is more important than ever inthe circumstances like this.