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A coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) caused by a novel coronavirus has appeared in China by the end of 2019 and later recognized as a global pandemic. This pandemic has evolved as a global public health menace. It has affected every aspect of human life. In line with these concerns, governments and the scientific community react promptly to the outbreak of this pandemic. These efforts are devoted to develop vaccine and curative medicines. Further efforts are dedicated to assessing the impacts of the pandemic in relation to socioeconomic, psychological, and environmental dimensions. In this regard, it is important to follow up developments and research activities on this global issue. The present work intended to tracking the current hotspots and research trends on COVID-19 in environmental fields. Bibliometric analysis and visualization mapping were utilized with the objective of revealing and evaluating the developments in knowledge on COVID-2019 and its impacts based on a collection of environmental sources. A sum of 729 documents were collected from Scopus database limiting to environmental sources only. Of all these publications, 563 (77.2%) were articles, 56 (7.7%) were reviews, and 110 (15.0%) were others. China has the highest share of publications (163; 22.4%). It is followed by the USA (139; 19.15), and Italy (110; 15.1%). Most publications on COVID-19 were in prestigious journals. The most productive institution at global level was Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (24 documents; 3.3%). The most prevalent topics are in relation to impacts of the pandemic on air quality, mental health, psychological, and economic aspects. The development of these topics is based on cross-sectional studies, evidence-based tools, remote sensing, satellite mapping, geographic information systems, market analysis and sampling. The progress of environmental research on COVID-19 will guide the development of global environmental strategies to control future global environmental risks.

BackgroundEnvironmental and health-related effects of solid waste material are considered worldwide problems. The aim of this study was to assess the volume and impact of Arab scientific output published in journals indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) on solid waste.MethodsWe included all the documents within the SCI whose topic was solid waste from all previous years up to 31 December 2012. In this bibliometric analysis we sought to evaluate research that originated from Arab countries in the field of solid waste, as well as its relative growth rate, collaborative measures, productivity at the institutional level, and the most prolific journals.ResultsA total of 382 (2.35 % of the overall global research output in the field of solid waste) documents were retrieved from the Arab countries. The annual number of documents published in the past three decades (1982–2012) indicated that research productivity demonstrated a noticeable rise during the last decade. The highest number of articles associated with solid waste was that of Egypt (22.8 %), followed by Tunisia (19.6), and Jordan (13.4 %). the total number of citations over the analysed years at the date of data collection was 4,097, with an average of 10.7 citations per document. The h-index of the citing articles was 31. Environmental science was the most researched topic, represented by 175 (45.8 %) articles. Waste Management was the top active journal. The study recognized 139 (36.4 %) documents from collaborations with 25 non-Arab countries. Arab authors mainly collaborated with countries in Europe (22.5 %), especially France, followed by countries in the Americas (9.4 %), especially the USA. The most productive institution was the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, with 6.3 % of total publications.ConclusionsDespite the expected increase in solid waste production from Arab world, research activity about solid waste is still low. Governments must invest more in solid waste research to avoid future unexpected problems. Finally, since solid waste is a multidisciplinary science, research teams in engineering, health, toxicology, environment, geology and others must be formulated to produce research in solid waste from different scientific aspects.

This study is intended to afford a comprehensive overview of the implications of COVID-19 on progress toward achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) set out in the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda and the state of related research activities on COVID-19 linked to the SDGs. Bibliometric techniques and visual mapping are proposed as methodological tools to better approach the objectives of the present work. This includes: retrieving related publications from Scopus database, investigating the trends and growth trajectories of research works, and analyzing the scenarios post-COVID-19 either optimistic or pessimistic outlooks. The national and international contributions and collaboration toward this theme of research are further analyzed at countries, institutions, and sources levels. This analysis indicates that research works conducted on the impacts of COVID-19 on the achievement of the SDGs are still in the immaturity level. The global research productivity on this topic was just 160 documents (0.19% of total global research productivity in all fields of science with relevance to COVID-19). The implications of COVID-19 on good health and well-being, SDG-3, have attracted considerable attention. It is followed by SDG-13 that concerned with climate changes. The post-COVID-19 scenarios showed deep and justified worries in relation to achieving the SDGs by 2030. This study figures the major issues debated in the literature with respect to COVID-19 and its implications on the SDGs. The study, furthermore, attempts to assess the required actions to advance the SDGs post-COVID-19.