A bibliometric analysis of rheumatology and COVID-19 researches

OBJECTIVE: COVID-19 has had a substantial impact on rheumatology. There were many studies about rheumatology and COVID-19. But there is no study about bibliometric analysis of these studies. This study provides a general overview of studies on rheumatology and COVID-19. METHODS: Data were taken from the Web of Science (WoS) website. Analysis and network visualization mapping processes were carried out using VOSviewer. We used the following keywords: “COVID-19” and “Rheumatology”; “Coronavirus” and “Rheumatology”; “2019-nCoV” and “Rheumatology”; “SARS-CoV-2” and “Rheumatology”; “COVID-19” and “Rheumatic Disease”; “Coronavirus” and “Rheumatic Disease”; “2019-nCoV” and “Rheumatic Disease”; “SARS-CoV-2” and “Rheumatic Disease”; “COVID-19” and “Rheumatism”; “Coronavirus” and “Rheumatism”; “2019-nCoV” and “Rheumatism”; and “SARS-CoV-2” and “Rheumatism.” A total of 234 publications were analyzed, and the correlations between citation numbers and reference counts, usage counts, and page numbers were analyzed with Spearman correlation coefficients. RESULTS: The average number of citations per item was 6.03. The studies were cited 1411 times in total, and 1121 times without self-citations. The countries with the highest number of publications on rheumatology and COVID-19 were the USA and England; the countries with the highest number of citations were Italy and the USA, and Jinoos Yazdany was the most cited author. The Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases was the most cited journal, whereas the highest number of articles on rheumatology and COVID-19 were published in Arthritis and Rheumatology. CONCLUSIONS: Bibliometric analysis of rheumatology and COVID-19 can be useful to future studies because it provides a general perspective on the studies. This study provides an insight into the development of publications on rheumatology during the COVID-19 pandemic.