Bibliometric Overview of Reactivity in Research on Environmental Responses to COVID-19, Environnement, Risques et Santé, Volume 22, Issue 1

Abstract:

COVID-19 has been a worldwide emergency and continues to spread in the environment. Thus, it is crucial to continually follow up on current scientific solutions to this pandemic and discuss future epidemic prevention. Herein, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis was performed to examine different facets of research output on the environmental response to COVID-19. Bibliographic data were queried in the PubMed database for publications from 2020 and most of 2021. Python was used to extract information from the dataset towards the research production in environmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Key points covered in the analysis included contribution of authorship and country to scientific output, strength of research collaboration, and main topics of research. Regarding contributions of countries, the USA was the most productive in terms of publications and authorships, followed by China, UK, Italy and India. Using activity index as a relative indicator for reactivity of research production, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and India, followed by USA and UK, were more reactive than other countries to the environmental and COVID-19 studies. Also, the USA demonstrated the highest level of domestic independence and Saudi Arabia had an extremely high level of international collaborations. Further, the publications can mainly cover 20 topics grouped into four major themes as control and prevention, public healthcare, disease research, and COVID-19 impacts. Overall, this study visualized global research activity and interactive networks in environmental responses to COVID-19 and provided a basis of utilizing Python language in rapid literature review for strategizing scientific solutions to future epidemic prevention.

DOI: 10.1684/ers.2023.1695