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National Publication Productivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Preliminary Exploratory Analysis of the 30 Countries Most Affected

Background: The COVID 19 pandemic increased publication productivity enormously with numerous new COVID-19-related articles appearing daily, despite the fact that many health care workers in the partially overburdened national health care systems were faced with major challenges. Methods: In a cross...

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Autores principales: Müller, Simon M., Mueller, Georg F., Navarini, Alexander A., Brandt, Oliver
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7563740/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32899457
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biology9090271
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author Müller, Simon M.
Mueller, Georg F.
Navarini, Alexander A.
Brandt, Oliver
author_facet Müller, Simon M.
Mueller, Georg F.
Navarini, Alexander A.
Brandt, Oliver
author_sort Müller, Simon M.
collection PubMed
description Background: The COVID 19 pandemic increased publication productivity enormously with numerous new COVID-19-related articles appearing daily, despite the fact that many health care workers in the partially overburdened national health care systems were faced with major challenges. Methods: In a cross-sectional, observational, retrospective study we compared and correlated 17 epidemiologic, health care system-related and health-economic factors from medical databases and intergovernmental organisations potentially influencing the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 publication productivity between 1 January and 30 April 2020 amongst the 30 countries most severely affected by the pandemic. These factors were additionally correlated with the national pre-COVID-19 publication rate for the same pre-year period to identify potential changes in the general publication behaviour. Findings: COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 publication rates correlated strongest with access to and quality of health care (ρ = 0.80 and 0.87, p < 0.0001), COVID-19 cases per capita (ρ = 0.78 and 0.72, p < 0.0001), GDP per capita (ρ = 0.69 and 0.76, p < 0.0001), health spending per capita (ρ = 0.61 and 0.73, p < 0.0001) and the pre-COVID-19 Hirsch-Index (ρ = 0.61 and 0.62, p = 0.002 and <0.0001). Ratios of publication rates for “Cancer”, “Diabetes” and “Stroke” in 2020 versus the pre-year period were 0.88 ± 0.06, 1.02 ± 0.18 and 0.9 ± 0.20, resulting in a pooled ratio of 0.93 ± 0.06 for non-COVID-19 publications. Interpretation: There are marked geographic and national differences in publication productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both COVID-19- and non-COVID-19 publication productivity correlates with epidemiologic, health care system-related and healtheconomic factors, and pre-COVID publication expertise. Countries with a stable scientific infrastructure appear to maintain non-COVID-19 publication productivity nearly at the pre-year level and at the same time use their resilience to produce COVID-19 publications at high rates.
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spelling pubmed-75637402020-10-27 National Publication Productivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Preliminary Exploratory Analysis of the 30 Countries Most Affected Müller, Simon M. Mueller, Georg F. Navarini, Alexander A. Brandt, Oliver Biology (Basel) Article Background: The COVID 19 pandemic increased publication productivity enormously with numerous new COVID-19-related articles appearing daily, despite the fact that many health care workers in the partially overburdened national health care systems were faced with major challenges. Methods: In a cross-sectional, observational, retrospective study we compared and correlated 17 epidemiologic, health care system-related and health-economic factors from medical databases and intergovernmental organisations potentially influencing the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 publication productivity between 1 January and 30 April 2020 amongst the 30 countries most severely affected by the pandemic. These factors were additionally correlated with the national pre-COVID-19 publication rate for the same pre-year period to identify potential changes in the general publication behaviour. Findings: COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 publication rates correlated strongest with access to and quality of health care (ρ = 0.80 and 0.87, p < 0.0001), COVID-19 cases per capita (ρ = 0.78 and 0.72, p < 0.0001), GDP per capita (ρ = 0.69 and 0.76, p < 0.0001), health spending per capita (ρ = 0.61 and 0.73, p < 0.0001) and the pre-COVID-19 Hirsch-Index (ρ = 0.61 and 0.62, p = 0.002 and <0.0001). Ratios of publication rates for “Cancer”, “Diabetes” and “Stroke” in 2020 versus the pre-year period were 0.88 ± 0.06, 1.02 ± 0.18 and 0.9 ± 0.20, resulting in a pooled ratio of 0.93 ± 0.06 for non-COVID-19 publications. Interpretation: There are marked geographic and national differences in publication productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both COVID-19- and non-COVID-19 publication productivity correlates with epidemiologic, health care system-related and healtheconomic factors, and pre-COVID publication expertise. Countries with a stable scientific infrastructure appear to maintain non-COVID-19 publication productivity nearly at the pre-year level and at the same time use their resilience to produce COVID-19 publications at high rates. MDPI 2020-09-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7563740/ /pubmed/32899457 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biology9090271 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Müller, Simon M.
Mueller, Georg F.
Navarini, Alexander A.
Brandt, Oliver
National Publication Productivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Preliminary Exploratory Analysis of the 30 Countries Most Affected
title National Publication Productivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Preliminary Exploratory Analysis of the 30 Countries Most Affected
title_full National Publication Productivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Preliminary Exploratory Analysis of the 30 Countries Most Affected
title_fullStr National Publication Productivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Preliminary Exploratory Analysis of the 30 Countries Most Affected
title_full_unstemmed National Publication Productivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Preliminary Exploratory Analysis of the 30 Countries Most Affected
title_short National Publication Productivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Preliminary Exploratory Analysis of the 30 Countries Most Affected
title_sort national publication productivity during the covid-19 pandemic—a preliminary exploratory analysis of the 30 countries most affected
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7563740/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32899457
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biology9090271
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