Comparison of Citations Trends between the COVID-19 Pandemic and SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, Ebola, Zika, Avian and Swine Influenza Epidemics

TL;DR

This study compares citation trends of COVID-19 with past epidemics like SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, and influenza, highlighting COVID-19's unprecedented publication surge and rapid citation accumulation within five months.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of citation patterns across major epidemics, emphasizing COVID-19's unique publication acceleration and the impact of open access policies.

Findings

COVID-19 citations correlated strongly with SARS, MERS, and Ebola.

COVID-19 publications accumulated earlier and in larger numbers.

Open access publishing contributed to rapid dissemination of COVID-19 research.

Abstract

Objective: The novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak rapidly evolved into pandemic. Global research efforts focus on this topic and with the collaboration of the scientific journals publication industry produced more than 16,000 related published articles in PubMed within five months from the onset of the outbreak. Herein, a comparison of the COVID-19 citations in PubMed and Web of Science was performed with SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, Ebola, Zika, avian and swine influenza epidemics. Methods: The citations were searched and collected using the disease terms and the date of publication restriction. The total number of PubMed citations and the HIV associated papers during the same chronological periods were examined in parallel. The journal category and country information of the publications were gathered from Web of Science. The collected data were statistically analyzed and compared. Results: Significant correlations were found between COVID-19 and MERS (CC=0.988; p=0.003; q=0.006), Ebola (CC=0.987; p=0.003; q=0.011), and SARS (CC=0.964; p=0.015; q=0.028) epidemics five-month pick of novel citations in PubMed. However, COVID-19 publications were accumulated earlier and in larger numbers than any other 21st century major communicable disease outbreak. Conclusion: The acceleration and the total number of COVID-19 publications represent an unprecedented landmark event in the medical library history. The immediate adoption of the fast-track peer-reviewing and publishing as well as the open access publication policies by the journal publishers are significant contributors to this bibliographic phenomenon.