ArticleRoyal Society open science2021
The rapid, massive growth of COVID-19 authors in the scientific literature.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Systematic review of health risk assessment in Africa's bushmeat trade: Are there any risks assessed?PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Pooled it
- Advances in NLRP3 inflammasome research in viral infections: evolution, trends, and future directions.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Pooled it
- Systematic reviews of convalescent plasma in COVID-19 continue to be poorly conducted and reported: a systematic review.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- A Bibliometric Assessment of the Turkish Journal of Orthodontics after WoS Indexing.Turkish journal of orthodontics · 2026Article
- Use of research evidence in U.S. state child abuse and neglect policies: 2019-2024.Child abuse & neglect · 2026Article
- The publish or perish, publish and perish, publish then perish, and now retract and perish cultures in academia.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Resilience and Recalibration of Bibliometric Indicators in Neurosciences and Neuropharmacology Journals After COVID-19: A Longitudinal Rate of Change Analysis Using Mixed-Effects Models.Current neuropharmacology · 2026Article
- Ethical Challenges of the “Publish or Perish” Culture in Clinical Research: Insights from the COVID-19 PandemicBalkan medical journal · 2025Article
- Consequences of the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic on child and adolescent mental, psychosocial, and physical health: A scoping review and interactive evidence map.Journal of child health care : for professionals working with children in the hospital and community · 2025Article
- The pivot penalty in research.Nature · 2025Article
- How COVID-19 affected academic publishing: a 3-year study of 17 million research papers.International journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- The use of SatScan software to map spatiotemporal trends and detect disease clusters: a systematic review.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- The methodological reporting quality in strictly randomized controlled trials for COVID-19 and precise reporting of Chinese herbal medicine formula intervention.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
- The gravity of the status quo: the response of research governance to system-level shocks.Higher education · 2025Article
- Transparency, bias, and reproducibility across science: a meta-research view.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2024Article
- The trend and ripple effects of retractions in primary health care: A bibliometric analysis.Journal of the Chinese Medical Association : JCMA · 2024Article
- Panel stacking is a threat to consensus statement validity.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2024Article
- Publication of observational studies making claims of causation over time.Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2024Article
- Article
- Quantitative LC-MS study of compounds found predictive of COVID-19 severity and outcome.Metabolomics : Official journal of the Metabolomic Society · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We examined the extent to which the scientific workforce in different fields was engaged in publishing COVID-19-related papers. According to Scopus (data cut, 1 August 2021), 210 183 COVID-19-related publications included 720 801 unique authors, of which 360 005 authors had published at least five full papers in their career and 23 520 authors were at the top 2% of their scientific subfield based on a career-long composite citation indicator. The growth of COVID-19 authors was far more rapid and massive compared with cohorts of authors historically publishing on H1N1, Zika, Ebola, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. All 174 scientific subfields had some specialists who had published on COVID-19. In 109 of the 174 subfields of science, at least one in 10 active, influential (top 2% composite citation indicator) authors in the subfield had authored something on COVID-19. Fifty-three hyper-prolific authors had already at least 60 (and up to 227) COVID-19 publications each. Among the 300 authors with the highest composite citation indicator for their COVID-19 publications, most common countries were USA (
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Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.