COVID-19 vaccine research focusses on safety, efficacy, immunoinformatics, and vaccine production and delivery: a bibliometric analysis based on VOSviewer

Abstract

Coronavirus Disease 2019 , caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), has affected tens of millions of people globally since it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. There is an urgent need for safe and effective preventive vaccines to curb this pandemic. A growing amount of related research has been published. This study aimed to provide the current status of COVID-19 vaccine using bibliometric analysis. We searched Embase.com and MEDLINE comprehensively and included articles, articles in press, reviews, short surveys, conference abstracts and conference papers about COVID-19 vaccine. VOSviewer1.6.11 (Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands) was applied to perform the bibliometric analysis of these papers. A total of 1,312 papers were finally included. The BMJ has been the most popular journal in this field. The United States maintained a top position worldwide and has provided a pivotal influence, followed by China, India and United Kingdom. Among all the institutions, Harvard University was regarded as a leader for research collaboration. We analyzed the keywords and identified seven COVID-19 vaccine research hotspot clusters. COVID-19 vaccine research hotspots focus on clinical trials on vaccine safety and efficacy, research on vaccine immunology and immunoinformatics, and vaccine hesitancy. Our analysis results demonstrated that cooperation between countries, institutions, and authors were insufficient. The results suggested that clinical trials on vaccine safety, efficacy, immunology, immunoinformatics, production and delivery are research hotspots. Furthermore, we can predict that there will be a lot of research focusing on vaccine adverse reactions.

Attitudes to Being Vaccinated Against COVID-19: A Survey of People With Epilepsy in China

“…This study had some limitations. Although this study is an anonymous survey, there is still a gap between it and the fact that vaccination is under real conditions ( 31 , 32 ). The subjects of this study were mainly from east China and are not representative of the country as a whole.…”

COVID-19 Pandemic Related Research in Africa: Bibliometric Analysis of Scholarly Output, Collaborations and Scientific Leadership

“…Bibliometric and scientometric analyses have been conducted to explore the emerging research focuses related to COVID-19. Such research focuses identified by researchers in mid-high-income countries include available treatment options, such as approved drugs or vaccines, or candidate management strategies [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. While some bibliometric papers focus on summarizing research foci, other scientometric publications have assessed the scholarly output of researchers mainly from countries in Asia, America or Europe [ 12 , 13 , 14 ].…”

A hybrid approach based on ELECTRE III‐genetic algorithm and TOPSIS method for selection of optimal COVID‐19 vaccines

“…Their analysis recoursed to immunoinformatics and advocated a sequence analysis of the pathogenic strains of SARS‐CoV‐2 to design vaccine candidates. These vaccine candidates may provide meaningful, timely directives for an effective vaccine against SARS‐CoV‐2 (Chen et al, 2021 ; Kumar et al, 2021 ; Oyarzun et al, 2021 ). Moreover, SARS‐CoV‐2 spike glycoprotein followed by epitopes' use in constructing a multi‐epitope peptide vaccine construct (MEPVC) is also an attractive candidate for a vaccine, antibodies, and inhibitor development because of the many roles it plays in attachment, fusion, and entry into the host cell.…”