ANALYSIS OF TOP CITED 100 ARTICLES ABOUT COVID-19

Ali Kemal Erenler^1,*, Mehmet Oğuzhan Ay²

¹Hitit University, School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Çorum, Turkey - ²SBÜ Bursa Yüksek İhtisas Education and Research Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Bursa, Turkey

Introduction: Following a series of pneumonia cases of unknown origin in Wuhan, China on December, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 as “COVID-19” on 11, February. A month later, the WHO declared the pandemic status. Since then, literature on COVID-19 has grown rapidly. In this article, our aim was to provide a scientometric analysis of the most popular publications on COVID-19. 

Materials and Methods: We analysed the top 100 most cited articles by entering the term “COVID-19” to Web of Science© database. The top 100 articles were extracted and investigated according to citation times, number of citations per publication, countries, journals and study fields. Also, top 10 articles are summarized.

Results: All top 100 articles were written in English and published in 2020. Majority of the articles were published in May (n=26). China was the most productive country with 51 publications and a total of 40,973 citations (61.1%). New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) were the most popular journals with a total of 24 articles and 20,463 citations. Lancet had the highest rate with a mean of 1276.7 citations per 7 publications. The most commonly studied field was related to the complications of the disease (n=18, a total of 8472 citations, 470.6 citations per publications). However, the most cited field was clinical findings of the disease (n=14, a total of 18255 citations). Publications regarding clinical findings of the disease also had the highest number of citations per publications (citations per publications=1303.9).

Conclusion: China ranked in the first place according to number of both publications and citations. New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA shared the first place in popularity. Researchers commonly focused on Complications of the disease, treatment methods and clinical findings.