SARS-CoV-2 in the Field of Radiology: A Bibliometric Study of the Novel Coronavirus Disease

Author(s): Emre Pakdemirli, Urszula Wegner, Sherif Monib

To the best of our knowledge, there are few publications regarding bibliometric analyses of SARSCoV-2 in English and this is one of the most comprehensive studies in the field of clinical imaging set in database coverage. The initial, underestimated, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 of the genus Betacoronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic remains an ongoing major health crisis and a challenge to public healthcare systems worldwide. Subsequently, there have been rapidly increasing numbers of scientific publications about this emerging area of research. The aim of this study was to analyze research trends and explore the influence of scientific publications on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in terms of publication type, language, country of origin, publication citation, and journal medical field. A bibliometric study with high emphasis on publications retrieved from the Web of Science database from January to July 2020 was conducted. Data were extracted using the following keywords: 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV-2, Radiology, COVID-19, Radiology, COVID-19 and X-Ray, COVID-19 and Ultrasound, COVID-19 and CT, COVID-19, and MRI. The majority of extracted scientific publications were free full-text articles in English. Interestingly, no published books and only a few randomized controlled trials were found. China and the United States of America contributed the most highly cited scientific papers in the academic literature. Institutional ethical approval to conduct our study was not necessary, as all data were available in electronic versions online and in libraries. Statistical evaluation of publications on COVID-19 is crucial to measure the impact of research outputs in the scientific community and is important for future quality planning of management and protective strategies.