COVID-19 in Latin America: A Bibliometric Analysis of Scientific Publications in Health

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has become a global health crisis. The scientific community has responded with a sizable level of research and publications, many of which are beginning to be identified and analyzed in systematic reviews of the literature and bibliometric studies. No readily identifiable, comparable study focused on Latin American scientific literature has been undertaken thus far. Therefore, this article analyzes such literature, focused on COVID-19, and one that has been published in the scientific journals of the region. A search with the keyword "COVID-19" in the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) database resulted in the identification of 261 documents. Following PRISMA guidelines, the total number was reduced to 117 for the purpose of the bibliometric analysis (i.e., elimination of preprint duplicates). Such analysis resulted in the following findings: 69 publications were editorial or individual commentaries, and 48 were original articles. The male authors totaled 280, contrasted with 169 female authors. Two Brazilian journals led in the number of publications: Cadernos de Saúde Pública and Clinics. Even though the Latin American scientific productivity regarding COVID-19 is not well represented in the different databases of the region, it is expected that these scientific publications will achieve increased visibility in the coming months. The article emphasizes the importance of systematic and bibliographic reviews of the scientific literature in Latin America in order to evaluate the public health achievements of the region.

The research on COVID-19 and economy from 2019 to 2020: analysis from the perspective of bibliometrics

“…Similarly, some bibliometrics-based studies focus on the publications in some specific time periods, such as the first eight months in 2020 (Furstenau et al, 2021), the early stage of the outbreak (Gong Y. et al, 2020;Zyoud & Al-Jabi, 2020), etc. There are also some bibliometrics analyses that focus on some specific countries or regions (Gallegos et al, 2020;Raju & Patil, 2020) or publication sources (Oh & Kim, 2020). Beyond that, most of the bibliometrics analyses focus on some specific topics or fields, including COVID-19 and environment (Casado-Aranda et al, 2021;, mental health and COVID-19 (Maalouf et al, 2021), COVID-19 and machine learning (Chiroma et al, 2020;De Felice & Polimeni, 2020), COVID-19 and business and management (Rodrigues et al, 2020;Verma & Gustafsson, 2020), etc.…”

Tackling COVID-19 Pandemic through Research in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…Overall, LAC researchers preferred to publish in Travel Medicine Infectious Disease journal as described elsewhere [16]. However, another bibliometric analysis found that Cadernos de Saúde Pública was the most prevalent journal [22], which is not surprising, considering that Brazil is the main producer of the region.…”

Malnutrition Research Output: A Bibliometric Analysis for articles Index in Web of Science between 1900 and 2020

“…Like in review articles [23][24][25], the utilization of Bibliometrics Analysis, a tool and technique widely used by many researchers worldwide [26,27], presents a cumulative understanding of malnutrition eradication effort. The analytical approach of annual trends of publication, institutions, journals, authors, country and international collaboration networks, citations, keywords occurrence, and contributed funding agency can help researchers and decisionmakers gain insight into the research productivity to understand scientific research progress in malnutrition-related publications better.…”