A scientometric overview of CORD-19

PLoS One. 2021 Jan 7;16(1):e0244839. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244839. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, researchers from all disciplines are coming together and contributing their expertise. CORD-19, a dataset of COVID-19 and coronavirus publications, has been made available alongside calls to help mine the information it contains and to create tools to search it more effectively. We analyse the delineation of the publications included in CORD-19 from a scientometric perspective. Based on a comparison to the Web of Science database, we find that CORD-19 provides an almost complete coverage of research on COVID-19 and coronaviruses. CORD-19 contains not only research that deals directly with COVID-19 and coronaviruses, but also research on viruses in general. Publications from CORD-19 focus mostly on a few well-defined research areas, in particular: coronaviruses (primarily SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2); public health and viral epidemics; molecular biology of viruses; influenza and other families of viruses; immunology and antivirals; clinical medicine. CORD-19 publications that appeared in 2020, especially editorials and letters, are disproportionately popular on social media. While we fully endorse the CORD-19 initiative, it is important to be aware that CORD-19 extends beyond research on COVID-19 and coronaviruses.

MeSH terms

  • Biomedical Research
  • COVID-19*
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Coronavirus
  • Coronavirus Infections
  • Datasets as Topic*
  • Humans
  • Models, Statistical
  • Periodicals as Topic
  • Preprints as Topic
  • Publications*
  • Terminology as Topic

Grants and funding

The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.