A bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 across science and social science research landscape

Aristovnik, Aleksander (author), Ravšelj, Dejan (author), Umek, Lan (author)

The lack of knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged extensive research in the academic sphere, reflected in the exponentially growing scientific literature. While the state of COVID-19 research reveals it is currently in an early stage of developing knowledge, a comprehensive and in-depth overview is still missing. Accordingly, the paper’s main aim is to provide an extensive bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 research across the science and social science research landscape, using innovative bibliometric approaches (e.g., Venn diagram, Biblioshiny descriptive statistics, VOSviewer co-occurrence network analysis, Jaccard distance cluster analysis, text mining based on binary logistic regression). The bibliometric analysis considers the Scopus database, including all relevant information on COVID-19 related publications (n = 16,866) available in the first half of 2020. The empirical results indicate the domination of health sciences in terms of number of relevant publications and total citations, while physical sciences and social sciences and humanities lag behind significantly. Nevertheless, there is an evidence of COVID-19 research collaboration within and between different subject area classifications with a gradual increase in importance of non-health scientific disciplines. The findings emphasize the great need for a comprehensive and in-depth approach that considers various scientific disciplines in COVID-19 research so as to benefit not only the scientific community but evidence-based policymaking as part of efforts to properly respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Language: English
• Keywords: COVID-19, coronavirus, pandemic, science, social science, bibliometric analysis, Jaccard distance, text mining
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FU - Faculty of Administration
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2020
• Number of pages: 30 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 12, iss. 21, art. 9132
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-134443
• UDC: 3:004
• ISSN on article: 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su12219132
• COBISS.SI-ID: 35473155
• Publication date in RUL: 14.01.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Sustainability
• Shortened title: Sustainability
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2071-1050
• COBISS.SI-ID: 5324897

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 03.11.2020

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: COVID-19, koronavirus, pandemija, znanost, družbene vede, bibliometrična analiza, Jaccardova razdalja, tekstovno rudarjenje

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: P5-0093
• Name: Razvoj sistema učinkovite in uspešne javne uprave