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Bibliometrics of Latin American research on COVID-19

in the first year of the pandemic: the main trends

Wen-Ta Chiu1; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0749-1087

Yuh-Shan Ho1,2*; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2557-8736

1. AHMC Health System, 500 East Main Street, Alhambra, California 91801, United States of America;

wtchiu.tmu@gmail.com

2. Trend Research Centre, Asia University, No. 500, Lioufeng Road, Wufeng, Taichung 41354, Taiwan;

ysho@asia.edu.tw (Correspondence*)

Received 24-VIII-2021. Corrected 02-XI-2021. Accepted 09-XII-2021.

ABSTRACT

Introduction: An outbreak of the COVID-19 was appended in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December

2019. Lots of related papers were published in the world since then.

Objective: This study aimed to identify and analyze the characteristics of COVID-19 publications in the Science

Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) published by Latin Americans in 2020.

Methods: Documents including searching keywords in their title, abstract, or author keywords from SCI-

EXPANDED were assessed. The analyzed aspects covered characteristics of document types, languages, Web

of Science categories, and journals. Publication performances of countries and institutions were evaluated by six

publication indicators and two citation indicators.

Results: A lower percentage of articles and a higher percentage of Spanish language were found. Web of Science

category of general and internal medicine published the most articles. The Clinics was the most popular journal.

The Cadernos de Saude Publica and Revista da Associacao Medica Brasileira published the most publications

and reviews, respectively. Brazil took a leading position in the six publication indicators. The University of São

Paulo in Brazil was the most productive institution. Based on the number of citations from the Web of Science

Core Collection since publication to the end of 2020, 10 most frequently cited publications were presented. In

addition, the analysis of words in publication titles, author keywords, and KeyWords Plus was performed to find

the main research focuses.

Conclusions: In 2020, a total of 3 056 COVID-19 documents in SCI-EXPANDED were published by Latin

Americans mainly in the Web of Science categories of ‘general and internal medicine’ and ‘public, environ-

mental and occupational health’. More letters and editorial materials and fewer articles were published in the

first year of its outbreak. A higher percentage of Spanish and Portuguese publications was found. Brazil domi-

nated the six publication indicators. The University of São Paulo in Brazil ranked top in all the six publication

indicators while the Technological University of Pereira in Colombia had a higher impact for their first- and

corresponding-author publications. Health and infection were the main research focuses.

Key words: SARS-CoV-2; front page; coronavirus; pandemic; research trends.

Chiu, W. T., & Ho, Y. S. (2021). Bibliometrics of Latin American

research on COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic:

the main trends. Revista de Biología Tropical, 69(4), 1306-

1321. https://doi.org/10.15517/rbt.v69i4.48189

https://doi.org/10.15517/rbt.v69i4.48189

BIOMEDICINA

Well-known coronavirus-related infectious

diseases such as the Severe Acute Respira-

tory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 (Ksiazek et

al., 2003), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2013 (Cau-

chemez et al., 2013), and novel coronavirus

(COVID-19) in 2019 that was appended in the

central Chinese city of Wuhan in December

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2019 (Hui et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2020).

COVID-19 is not only a recently emerged

disease but also a new research topic. The

Web of Science has been used for bibliometric

study on COVID-19 in the Annals of Transla-

tional Medicine (Yu et al., 2020), the Journal

of Family and Community Medicine (Farooq

et al., 2021), the Sao Paulo Medical Journal

(de Oliveira et al., 2021), the Profesional de la

Informacion (Herrera-Viedma et al., 2020), the

Pharmacological Research (Su et al., 2021), and

the high impact factor journals (López-López

et al., 2020). COVID-19 and the emerging

research in fields, for example, ophthalmology

(Kalra et al., 2021), business and management

(Verma & Gustafsson, 2020), environmental

studies (Usman & Ho, 2021), endocrinol-

ogy (Atlasi et al., 2021), and the nursing (Oh

& Kim, 2020) was concerned. Other related

research was presented on the topic of cancer

research in the era of COVID-19 (Van Hemel-

rijck et al., 2021), the effect of COVID-19 on

the environment (Casado-Aranda et al., 2021),

the application of artificial intelligence in the

COVID-19 pandemic (Islam et al., 2021), the

coronavirus during the first eight months of

COVID-19 in 2020 (Furstenau et al., 2021), the

human mobility behavior in COVID-19 (Ben-

ita, 2021), the machine learning approaches in

controlling COVID-19 outbreaks (Chiroma et

al., 2020), and the co-occurrence of COVID-19

publications (Al-Zaman, 2021). It was reported

that a higher percentage of document types

of editorial materials were published when

SARS suddenly happened (Chiu et al., 2004).

COVID-19 editorial materials in the beginning

stage of the pandemic were analyzed (López-

López et al., 2021). The patterns of interna-

tional collaboration on COVID-19 (Duan &

Xia, 2021; Grammes et al., 2020) were stud-

ies. COVID-19 pandemic-related research in

Africa (Fonkou et al., 2021), in Iran (Shamsi et

al., 2020), and in the Latin American contribu-

tions (Gregorio-Chaviano et al., 2020) were

also reported. Gregorio-Chaviano et al. (2020)

concluded that the results of regional participa-

tion in COVID-19 research are not only related

to the number and exponential growth but also

related to quality and excellence.

Due to the Web of Science being updated

from time to time, the bibliometric study results

cannot be repeated. We collected data from

the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-

EXPANDED) for publications in 2020 after

the Journal Citation Report (JCR) reported the

journal impact factors. This study aimed to

use bibliometric analysis to study COVID-19

related publications in the SCI-EXPANDED in

2020. Six publication indicators and two cita-

tion indicators were applied to evaluate publi-

cation performances of countries and institutes.

Word analysis was used to find the research’s

main focuses.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Data used in this study were retrieved

from the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science,

the online version of the Science Citation

Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) on 25

July 2021. The 2020 journal Impact Factor

(IF2020) was reported in the Journal Citation

Report (JCR) on June 30, 2021. According to

the definition of journal impact factor, it is best

to search documents published in 2020 from

SCI-EXPANDED after IF2020 were presented.

It is reported that SCI-EXPANDED is mainly

designed for researchers to find literature and

is not used for bibliometric research (Ho, 2018;

Ho, 2021a). Thus, it is always necessary to

perform data processing, but directly obtain

data from SCI-EXPANDED for bibliometric

research. Recently, in extensive bibliometric

research, by using the ‘front page’ (including

the paper title, abstract, and author keywords in

the paper) (Fu et al., 2012) as a filter resulted

in a big difference in bibliometric studies (Ho,

2019a; Ho, 2020). KeyWords Plus provides

additional search terms, which are extracted

from paper titles cited by authors in their bibli-

ography and footnotes in the ISI (now Clarivate

Analytics) database, and greatly enhance the

title terms and author author-keyword indexing

(Garfield, 1990). It has been pointed out that

documents that can only be searched through

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KeyWords Plus (KP) have nothing to do with

the search subject (Fu & Ho, 2015).

Only documents published in 2020 were

collected. The search strategies including

Latin American countries: “Antigua & Barbu”,

Argentina, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize,

Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, “Costa Rica”,

Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, “Dominican Rep”,

“French Guiana”, Ecuador, “El Salvador”, Gre-

nada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti,

Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Mont-

serrat, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru,

“Puerto Rico”, “St Kitts & Nevi”, “St Vincent”,

Grenadines, Suriname, “Trinidad Tobago”,

Uruguay, and Venezuela and search keywords:

“COVID-19”, “SARS-CoV-2”, “coronavirus

disease 2019”, “severe acute respiratory syn-

drome coronavirus 2”, “2019-nCoV”, “2019

novel coronavirus”, “COVID19”, “novel coro-

navirus 2019”, “corona virus disease 2019”,

“COVID-2019”, “COVD-19”, and “novel

coronavirus disease-19” were searched in terms

of the country (CU) as well as title (TI),

abstract (AB), and author keywords (AK).

A total of 3 056 documents were searched

out as COVID-19 related publications by the

Latin Americans after its outbreak for a year.

These records were checked and downloaded

into spreadsheet software, and additional cod-

ing was manually performed using Microsoft

Excel 2016 for calculation (Li & Ho, 2008;

Ho, 2021b).

In the SCI-EXPANDED, the correspond-

ing author is labeled as reprint author, but in

this study, we used the term corresponding

author (Ho, 2012). In a single-institute publica-

tion where the corresponding author institution

is unspecified, the single institute is classified

as the first and the corresponding author institu-

tion (Ho, 2014). In a single-author publication

with multiple affiliations, only the affiliation in

the Latin Americans was considered. In mul-

tiple corresponding-authors publications, the

Latin American corresponding author, institute,

and the country as the corresponding author

information first and then the last correspond-

ing author, institute, and country being desig-

nated as the corresponding author information

(Ho, 2019b). To have accuracy analysis results,

affiliations originating from England, Scotland,

Northern Ireland, Wales, Anguilla, and British

Virgin Isl (British Virgin Islands) were reclas-

sified as being from the UK (United Kingdom)

(Chiu & Ho, 2005). Affiliations from Curacao

and French Guiana were reclassified as being

from Netherlands and France, respectively.

Two citation indicators such as the total

number of citations from Web of Science Core

Collection in 2020 (TC2020) (Chuang et al.,

2011; Wang et al., 2011) and the total number

of citations per publication (CPP2020 = TC2020/

TP) (Ho, 2012) were used to characterize

the publications.

RESULTS

Document types and languages: In recent

years, the number of authors per publication

(APP), citations per publication (CPPyear), and

the number of publications (TP) were proposed

to compare characteristics of document types

(Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017). Using the cita-

tion indicator of CPPyear gives values more

accurate (Ho & Ho, 2015; Monge-Nájera &

Ho, 2015). In 2020, 3 056 COVID-19 related

documents by the Latin Americans were found

in SCI-EXPANDED within 11 document types

indexed in the Web of Science. Table 1 shows

that the most common document type was

the articles (46 % of the 3 056 documents).

Document type of data papers with three

documents had the highest CPP2020 of 20 fol-

lowed by proceedings papers with CPP2020 of

17 respectively. The data papers also had the

highest APP of 50. A total of 580 letters were

published in 260 different journals. The Travel

Medicine and Infectious Disease with IF2020 of

6.211 published the most of 26 letters (4.5 %

of the 580 letters) with a CPP2020 of 7.9 and an

APP of 6.3; followed by the Lancet with IF2020

of 79.321 (18 letters; 3.1 % of the 580 letters)

with a CPP2020 of 8.9 and an APP of 4.0; the

World Neurosurgery with IF2020 of 2.104 (18;

3.1 %) with a CPP2020 of 0.39 and an APP of

4.4; the Revista Médica de Chile with IF2020 of

0.553 (17; 2.9 %) with a CPP2020 of 0.18 and

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an APP of 2.5; and the Arquivos Brasileiros de

Cardiologia with IF2020 of 2.000 (15; 2.6 %)

with a CPP2020 of 0.20 and an APP of 7.5. A

total of 501 editorial materials were published

in 238 different journals, mainly in the Clinics

with IF2020 of 2.365 (47 editorial materials;

9.4 % of the 501 editorial materials) with a

CPP2020 of 1.1 and an APP of 5.8; the Arquivos

Brasileiros de Cardiologia with IF2020 of 2.000

(23; 4.6 %) with a CPP2020 of 1.3 and an APP

of 4.0; and the Revista Médica de Chile with

IF2020 of 0.553 (17; 3.4 %) with a CPP2020 of

0.24 and an APP of 5.2. A total of 480 reviews

were published in 274 different journals. Nine-

teen percent of the 480 reviews were published

in the top three productive journals: the Revista

da Associação Médica Brasileira with IF2020 of

1.209 (23 reviews; 4.8 % of the 480 reviews)

with a CPP2020 of 0.70 and an APP of 5.2; the

Clinics with IF2020 of 2.365 (19; 4.0 %) with

a CPP2020 of 2.9 and an APP of 7.4; and the

Frontiers in Immunology with IF2020 of 7.561

(12; 2.5 %) with a CPP2020 of 4.7 and an

APP of 5.9.

There were seven languages in use. Eng-

lish, as the most popular language, comprised

92 % of the 3 056 COVID-19 related docu-

ments by the Latin Americans were found in

SCI-EXPANDED, followed by Spanish (196

documents; 6.4 % of 3 056 documents) and

Portuguese (47 documents), Other languages

that were less used as follows, French (2 docu-

ments), and one in German, Polish, and Rus-

sian, respectively.

Web of Science Category and Journal:

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) indexed 9 531

journals with citation references across 178

Web of Science categories in SCI-EXPANDED

in 2020. The 3 056 COVID-19 related docu-

ments by the Latin Americans were published

by 949 journals among the 138 Web of Sci-

ence categories in SCI-EXPANDED. All 3 056

COVID-19 related publications by Latin Amer-

icans were analyzed for further study.

The top three productive categories were:

including general and internal medicine (473

documents; 15 %) with an APP of 7.4 and a

CPP2020 of 7.5; public, environmental, and

occupational health (380; 12 %) with an APP

of 7.0 and a CPP2020 of 4.9; and infectious

diseases (232; 7.6 %) with an APP of 7.3

and a CPP2020 of 8.0. Other categories pub-

lished more than 100 documents were: tropical

medicine (147; 4.8 %), clinical neurology (135;

4.4 %), immunology (129; 4.2 %), surgery

(127; 4.2 %), environmental sciences (123; 4.0

%), multidisciplinary sciences (119; 3.9 %),

TABLE 1

Characteristics of document type

Document type TP % AU APP TC2020 CPP2020

Article 1397 46 13850 9.9 7613 5.4

Letter 580 19 2876 5.0 2386 4.1

Editorial material 501 16 2900 5.8 3229 6.4

Review 480 16 4086 8.5 3028 6.3

Meeting abstract 81 2.7 1033 13 0 0

Correction 12 0.39 174 15 0 0

Data paper 3 0.10 151 50 59 20

News item 3 0.10 4 1.3 1 0.33

Proceedings paper 2 0.065 15 7.5 34 17

Book review 1 0.033 1 1.0 0 0

Reprint 1 0.033 1 1.0 0 0

TP: number of publications; AU: number of authors; APP (AU/TP): number of authors (AU) per publication (TP); TC2020:

the total number of citations from Web of Science Core Collection since publication to the end of 2020; CPP2020: number

of citations (TC2020) per publication (TP).

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research and experimental medicine (110; 3.6

%), cardiac and cardiovascular systems (101;

3.3 %), and psychiatry (101; 3.3 %). One docu-

ment published in categories of soil science and

electrochemistry had the highest APP of 26 and

CPP2020 of 30, respectively.

The top ten productive journals published

in 40 or more documents were listed in Table

2. Total number of documents, percentages

of articles, letters and editorial materials, and

reviews, journal impact factor in 2020 (IF2020),

number of authors per publication (APP), and

citations per publication (CPP2020) were also

compared. Clinics with IF2020 of 2.365 (75

documents; 2.5 % of 3 056 documents) pub-

lished the most documents including 9.3 %

articles, 64 % of letters and editorial materials,

and 25 % reviews. Compared to the top ten

productive journals, documents published in

PLoS One had the highest APP of 10 while

documents published in Travel Medicine and

Infectious Disease had the highest CPP2020

of 25 (Table 2). The journal with the highest

IF2020 of 91.245 was New England Journal of

Medicine with eight documents including four

articles, three letters, and one editorial mate-

rial, with an APP of 20, and a CPP2020 of 167,

followed by Lancet (IF2020 = 79.321) with 29

documents including 18 letters, seven editorial

materials, and four articles, with an APP of

8.0, and a CPP2020 of 21, and JAMA-Journal

of the American Medical Association (IF2020 =

56.272) with two articles with an APP of 36,

and a CPP2020 of 64. These journals are the

top three journals with IF2020 in the category of

general and internal medicine.

Publication Performances: Countries:

A total of 3 056 COVID-19 related publica-

tions by the 34 Latin American countries were

found in SCI-EXPANDED, 1 685 publications

(55 % of 3 056 publications) were single-

country publications from 23 Latin American

countries and 1 371 (45 %) were internation-

ally collaborative publications from 33 Latin

American countries and other 121 countries in

the world. Eleven of the 34 countries had no

single-country publications. Only Belize had

no internationally collaborative publication.

Six, seven, and twenty countries had no first

author, corresponding author, and first-author

publications, respectively. The top 14 produc-

tive countries with 20 publications or more are

listed in Table 3 with six publication indicators

(Ho & Kahn, 2014). Others were Honduras

(18 publications), Guatemala (16), Dominican

Republic (14), French Guiana (12), Barbados

(11), Trinidad and Tobago (9), Jamaica (8),

TABLE 2

Top ten productive journals (TP ≥ 40)

Journal TP (%) % A% L&E% R IF2020 APP CPP2020 Country

Clinics 75 (2.5) 9.3 64 25 2.365 6.8 1.6 Brazil

Cadernos de Saude Publica 71 (2.3) 82 15 1.4 1.632 4.7 2.3 Brazil

Revista da Associacao Medica Brasileira 68 (2.2) 24 43 34 1.209 5.5 0.43 Brazil

Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de

Medicina Tropical

52 (1.7) 60 31 10 1.581 5.8 1.5 Brazil

Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia 50 (1.6) 16 76 8.0 2.000 7.2 1.0 Brazil

PLoS One 50 (1.6) 86 N/A 14 3.24 10 1.5 USA

Medicina-Buenos Aires 49 (1.6) 55 29 16 0.653 8.4 0.55 Argentina

Revista Medica de Chile 44 (1.4) 45 45 9.1 0.553 4.4 0.18 Chile

International Journal of Environmental

Research and Public Health

42 (1.4) 86 2.4 12 3.39 9.0 1.9 Switzerland

Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease 40 (1.3) 7.5 80 13 6.211 7.3 25 the UK

TP (%): total number of publications and percentage of total 3 056 publications; % A: percentage of articles in a journal; %

L&E: percentage of letters and editorial materials in a journal; % R: percentage of reviews in a journal; IF2020: journal impact

factor in 2020; APP: number of authors per publication; CPP2020: citations per publication (TC2020/TP).

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TABLE 3

The top 14 productive countries in Covid-19 in 2020

Country TP TP rank (%) SP rank (%) NCP rank (%) ICP rank (%) FP rank (%) FP CPP2020 RP rank (%) RP CPP2020 SAP rank (%)

Brazil 1 698 1 (56) 1 (62) 1 (63) 1 (48) 1 (42) 3.5 1 (42) 3.2 1 (46)

Mexico 437 2 (14) 2 (12) 2 (12) 2 (17) 2 (9.1) 3.2 2 (10) 3.4 2 (15)

Argentina 292 3 (10) 3 (6.9) 3 (6.3) 4 (13) 3 (5.2) 3.9 4 (4.9) 1.5 3 (10)

Colombia 289 4 (9.5) 5 (5.5) 5 (5.6) 3 (14) 5 (4.6) 7.6 3 (5.4) 9.2 3 (10)

Chile 275 5 (9.0) 4 (6.2) 4 (5.9) 5 (12) 4 (4.9) 1.9 5 (4.9) 2.1 5 (9.3)

Peru 154 6 (5.0) 6 (2.7) 6 (3.2) 6 (7.9) 6 (2.3) 3.5 6 (2.5) 3.2 6 (2.6)

Ecuador 90 7 (2.9) 8 (1.0) 7 (1.1) 7 (5.3) 7 (1.1) 5.4 7 (1.2) 4.6 N/A

Uruguay 40 8 (1.3) 9 (0.36) 11 (0.28) 9 (2.5) 9 (0.33) 2.9 9 (0.4) 2.5 11 (0.52)

Venezuela 40 8 (1.3) 10 (0.3) 9 (0.37) 8 (2.6) 9 (0.33) 1.0 9 (0.40) 8.8 7 (1.0)

Cuba 32 10 (1.0) 7 (1.1) 8 (0.74) 16 (1.0) 8 (0.82) 0.52 8 (0.77) 0.39 7 (1.0)

Bolivia 30 11 (1.0) N/A N/A 10 (2.2) 18 (0.13) 6.8 16 (0.13) 9.0 N/A

Panama 27 12 (0.88) 11 (0.24) 9 (0.37) 11 (1.7) 11 (0.26) 0.75 11 (0.30) 0.33 N/A

Costa Rica 23 13 (0.75) 18 (0.059) N/A 12 (1.6) 12 (0.20) 0.67 14 (0.17) 0.80 11 (0.52)

Paraguay 21 14 (0.69) 15 (0.12) 13 (0.092) 13 (1.4) 13 (0.16) 1.0 12 (0.27) 1.3 N/A

TP: total number of publications; TPR (%): rank of the total number of publications and percentage; SPR (%): rank of single-country publications and percentage in all single-country

publications; NCPR (%): rank of nationally collaborative publications and percentage in all nationally collaborative publications; ICPR (%): rank of internationally collaborative

publications and percentage in all internationally collaborative publications; FPR (%): rank of first-author publications and percentage in all first-author publications; RPR (%):

rank of corresponding-author publications and percentage in all corresponding-author publications; SAPR (%): rank of single-author publications and percentage in all single-author

publications; CPP2020: citations per publication (TC2020/TP); N/A: not available.

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El Salvador (7), Nicaragua (7), Haiti (5), Saint

Kitts and Nevis (5), Bahamas (4), Grenada

(3), Antigua and Barbuda (2), Dominica (2),

and one for each of Aruba, Belize, Curacao,

Guyana, and Suriname. Brazil dominated in the

seven publication indicators with a TP of 1 698

publications (56 % of 3 056 publications), an

IP of 1 044 publications (62 % of 1 685 single-

country publications), an NCP of 687 publica-

tions (63 % of 1 083 nationally collaborative

publications), an ICP of 654 publications (48

% of 1 371 internationally collaborative publi-

cations), an FP of 1 294 publications (42 % of

3 056 first-author publications), an RP of 1 268

publications (42 % of 2 993 corresponding-

author publications), and an SP of 89 publica-

tions (46 % of 194 single-author publications).

Publication Performances: Institutions:

A total of 602 Covid-19 publications by the

Latin Americans (20 % of 3 056 publications)

were single-institute publications (SP) and 2

454 (80 %) were inter-institutionally collab-

orative publications (CP) including 1 083 (44

% of 2 454 inter-institutionally collaborative

publications) nationally collaborative publica-

tions (NCP) and 1 371 (56 %) internationally

collaborative publications (ICP). Table 4 shows

the 10 most productive Latin American institu-

tions with 55 or more publications with seven

publication indicators (Ho & Fu, 2016) and

citation indicator, CPP2020 of first-author and

corresponding-author publications, respective-

ly. Among these 10 institutions, seven institu-

tions were located in Brazil and one in Chile,

Colombia, and Mexico, respectively. The Uni-

versity of São Paulo (Brazil) dominated top

in the seven publication indicators with total

publications (TP) of 409 (13 % of 3 056 TP),

single-institute publications (SP) of 107 (18

% of 602 SP), nationally collaborative publi-

cations (NCP) of 160 (15 % of 1 083 NCP),

inter-institutionally collaborative publications

(ICP) of 142 (10 % of 1 371 ICP), first-author

publications (FP) of 207 (6.8 % of 3 056 FP),

corresponding-author publications (RP) of 205

(6.8 % of 2 993 RP), and singly-author publica-

tions (SAP) of nine (4.6 % of 194 of SAP).

Publication Performances: Authors:

Publication indicators: total number of publi-

cations (TP), number of first-author publica-

tions (FP), number of corresponding-author

publications (RP), and number of single-author

publications (SAP) as well as citation indica-

tors: citations per publication for first-author

publications (FP CPP2020) and corresponding-

author publications (RP CPP2020) were pro-

posed to compare publication performance of

authors in a research topic (Giannoudis et al.,

2021). Table 5 listed the top 16 most productive

authors with 10 or more Covid-19 publications

with the four publication indicators and the tow

citation indicators. A. J. Rodriguez-Morales

at the Technological University of Pereira in

Colombia published the most Covid-19 pub-

lications in 2020, followed distantly by other

Latin America authors.

The 10 most frequently cited Covid-19

publications in the Latin Americans: Table

6 lists the 10 most frequently cited Covid-

19 publications in 2020 by the Latin Ameri-

cans in SCI-EXPANDED with the citation

indicator TC2020. All the top ten publications

including four articles, three editorial materi-

als, two reviews, and one letter were an inter-

national collaboration by 172 institutions from

37 countries.

Research Focuses: A total of 331 pub-

lications (11 % of 3 056 publications), 122

publications (6.9 % of 1 781 publications with

author keyword information), and 94 publica-

tions (6.3 % of 1 484 publications with Key-

Words Plus information) included ‘patients’,

‘coronavirus infections’, and ‘infection’,

respectively. The results showed that ‘health’

including, for example, public health, men-

tal health, telehealth, health care, and health

policy and ‘infection’ including, for example,

infections, co-infection, and infection control

were the research focuses by the Latin Ameri-

cans after COVID-19 outbreak for a year.

Furthermore, ‘pandemic’ and ‘Brazil’ ranked

not only in the top 20 words in publication

title but also in the top 20 author keywords.

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TABLE 4

The top ten Latin Americans institutes for Covid-19 related publications in SCI-EXPANDED

Institute TP TPR (%) SPR (%) NCPR (%) ICPR (%) FPR (%) FP CPP2020 RPR (%) RP CPP2020 SAPR (%)

University of São Paulo, Brazil 409 1 (13) 1 (18) 1 (15) 1 (10) 1 (6.8) 3.8 1 (6.8) 3.4 1 (4.6)

Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil 124 2 (4.1) 5 (1.7) 2 (5.7) 2 (3.8) 2 (1.3) 5.4 2 (1.6) 2.7 5 (2.1)

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 110 3 (3.6) 12 (1.2) 3 (5.6) 4 (3.1) 4 (1.1) 5.7 3 (1.2) 5.7 3 (2.6)

Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil 91 4 (3.0) 8 (1.5) 4 (4.2) 5 (2.6) 6 (0.88) 2.2 4 (1.0) 1.7 11 (1.0)

National Autonomous University of Mexico,

Mexico

75 5 (2.5) 2 (2.2) 6 (2.7) 9 (2.4) 3 (1.2) 3.9 5 (0.9) 2.4 2 (3.1)

Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil 73 6 (2.4) 16 (0.83) 5 (3.0) 6 (2.6) 7 (0.82) 6.6 10 (0.74) 1.5 5 (2.1)

University of Campinas, Brazil 64 7 (2.1) 3 (1.8) 8 (2.5) 11 (1.9) 5 (0.95) 4.7 6 (0.87) 1.8 11 (1.0)

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile 63 8 (2.1) 5 (1.7) 18 (1.7) 6 (2.6) 8 (0.75) 1.4 11 (0.67) 2.2 11 (1.0)

Technological University of Pereira,

Colombia

57 9 (1.9) N/A 56 (0.65) 3 (3.6) 37 (0.23) 85 9 (0.77) 35 N/A

Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, Brazil 55 10 (1.8) 11 (1.3) 9 (2.4) 14 (1.5) 13 (0.56) 2.0 21 (0.40) 2.8 N/A

TP: total number of publications; TPR (%): rank of the total number of publications and percentage; SPR (%): rank of single-institute publications and percentage in all single-

institute publications; NCPR (%): rank of nationally collaborative publications and percentage in all nationally collaborative publications; ICPR (%): rank of internationally

collaborative publications and percentage in all internationally collaborative publications; FPR (%): rank of first-author publications and percentage in all first-author publications;

RPR (%): rank of corresponding-author publications and percentage in all corresponding-author publications; SAPR (%): rank of single-author publications and percentage in all

single-author publications; CPP2020: citations per publication (TC2020/TP); N/A: not available.

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‘Mortality’, ‘ACE2’, and ‘pneumonia’ were

the top 20 most used author keywords and

KeyWords Plus, respectively.

DISCUSSION

In 2020, 3 056 COVID-19 publications

in SCI-EXPANDED by Latin Americans were

found in eleven document types. The COVID-

19 publication pattern in the first year of its

outbreak suggests that more letters and editorial

materials and fewer articles were published. It

has been reported that document types of news,

editorial materials, and letters were published

more when SARS suddenly happened (Chiu et

al., 2004). A higher percentage of Spanish pub-

lications was found. The Portuguese language

was also used clearly. Three articles entitled

“Protocol for a partially nested randomized

controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of

the scleroderma patient-centered intervention

network COVID-19 home-isolation activities

together (SPIN-CHAT) program to reduce

anxiety among at-risk scleroderma patients”

(Thombs et al., 2020a); “Inborn errors of type

I IFN immunity in patients with life-threat-

ening COVID-19” (Zhang et al., 2020); and

“Changes in mental health symptoms from pre-

COVID-19 to COVID-19 among participants

with systemic sclerosis from four countries:

A Scleroderma Patient-centered Intervention

Network (SPIN) Cohort study” (Thombs et

al., 2020b) were published by more than 100

authors with 139, 129, and 101 respectively. An

editorial material entitled “Fair allocation of

scarce medical resources in the time of Covid-

19” (Emanuel et al., 2020) was published in

May by Emanuel et al. from the USA, Canada,

Brazil, the UK with the highest TC2020 of 561.

A review entitled “Clinical, laboratory and

imaging features of COVID-19: A systematic

review and meta-analysis” (Rodriguez-Morales

TABLE 5

The top 16 Latin Americans productive authors for Covid-19 in 2020

Author rank (TP)rank (FP)FP CPP2020 rank (RP)RP CPP2020 rank (SAP)

A.J. Rodriguez-Morales 1 (57) 3 (5) 135 1 (40) 27 N/A

D.K. Bonilla-Aldana 2 (22) 212 (1) 5.0 250 (1) 56 N/A

M. Giovanetti 3 (16) 48 (2) 58 N/A N/A N/A

C.D.F. de Souza 4 (15) 1 (13) 1.0 2 (13) 0.62 2 (3)

P.R.M. Rocco 4 (15) N/A N/A 28 (3) 6.7 N/A

W.B. de Carvalho 6 (14) 8 (4) 1.8 11 (5) 3.8 N/A

L.R. Moscote-Salazar 6 (14) 48 (2) 0.50 11 (5) 0.40 N/A

V.S. Santos 6 (14) 212 (1) 8.0 53 (2) 6.5 N/A

P.R. Martins 9 (13) 3 (5) 5.4 4 (6) 4.5 N/A

C. Franco-Paredes 10 (12) 48 (2) 4.0 4 (6) 3.3 12 (1)

E. Marchiori 11 (11) 212 (1) 011 (5) 1.2 N/A

H. Martelli 11 (11) 8 (4) 0.75 250 (1) 1.0 N/A

M.L.R. Neto 11 (11) 48 (2) 20 3 (8) 30 N/A

L.A. Hajjar 14 (10) N/A N/A 250 (1) 8.0 N/A

L.P. Kowalski 14 (10) 212 (1) 99 53 (2) 50 N/A

M.F. Lima-Costa 14 (10) 22 (3) 1.3 28 (3) 1.3 12 (1)

TP: total number of publications; FP: number of first-author publications; RP: number of corresponding-author publications;

SAP: number of single-author publications; FP CPP2020: citations per publication (TC2020/FP); RP CPP2020: citations per

publication (TC2020/RP); N/A: not available.

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et al., 2020) was published in March-April by

Rodriguez-Morales et al. (2020) from Colom-

bia, Peru, Bolivia, USA, Mexico, Venezuela,

Panama, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia,

India, Japan, China, and Nepal with the highest

TC2020 of 490. In 2002, Garfield (2002) noted

that a review with 350 citations within one

year after publication was the highest citation

recorded. A review with 738 citations in the

year of publication and 1 189 citations in the

year after publication was reported (Ho &

Kahn, 2014).

Spanish is the main language in Latin

Americans and the Portuguese language is

mainly used in Brazil that is the most produc-

tive country in Latin Americans. Non-English

TABLE 6

The 10 most frequently cited Covid-19 publications SCI-EXPANDED by the Latin Americans

TC2020 Title (document type) Country Reference

637 Remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19: Final

report (article)

USA, Spain, Greece, Singapore,

Japan, South Korea, Mexico,

Denmark, Germany, the UK

Beigel et al. (2020)

561 Fair allocation of scarce medical resources in the

time of Covid-19 (editorial material)

USA, Canada, Brazil, the UK Emanuel et al.

(2020)

490 Clinical, laboratory and imaging features of

COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-

analysis (review)

Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, USA,

Mexico, Venezuela, Panama,

Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia,

India, Japan, China, Nepal

Rodriguez-Morales

et al. (2020)

357 Using social and behavioural science to support

COVID-19 pandemic response (article)

USA, Brazil, the UK, Poland,

Netherlands, China, Australia,

Canada

Van Bavel et al.

(2020)

330 Effect of high vs low doses of chloroquine

diphosphate as adjunctive therapy for patients

hospitalized with severe acute respiratory

syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection:

A randomized clinical trial (article)

Brazil, Spain, Mozambique Borba et al. (2020)

324 COVID-19: Towards controlling of a pandemic

(editorial material)

Argentina, Sweden, the UK, Nigeria,

Canada, USA, Saudi Arabia, South

Korea, Senegal, Thailand, Germany

Bedford et al.

(2020)

284 The effect of human mobility and control

measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in China

(article)

the UK, USA, Ecuador, France, Italy,

China

Kraemer et al.

(2020)

214 Real estimates of mortality following COVID-19

infection (letter)

Switzerland, China, USA, France,

French Guiana

Baud et al. (2020)

212 Hematologic, biochemical and immune biomarker

abnormalities associated with severe illness and

mortality in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-

19): A meta-analysis (review)

Italy, USA, Brazil Henry et al. (2020)

172 Practical recommendations for the management

of diabetes in patients with COVID-19 (editorial

material)

Germany, the UK, Switzerland,

Italy, Singapore, USA, Netherlands,

France, Australia, Spain, Brazil,

China

Bornstein et al.

(2020)

TC2020: the total number of citations from Web of Science Core Collection since publication year to the end of 2020.

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documents had fewer citations, with a CPP2020

of 0.91, while English documents had a CPP2020

of 5.7. The non-English document with the

highest TC2020 was an article entitled “Food

(in) security in the context of the SARS-CoV-2

pandemic” (Oliveira et al., 2020) published in

Cadernos de Saúde Pública in Portuguese, with

a TC2020 of 15.

The lower percentage of articles (46 % of

all 3 056 documents) compared with medical

topics, for example, 69 % in breast reconstruc-

tion (Li et al., 2020), 70 % in Ebola (Pouris &

Ho, 2016), 75 % in human papillomavirus (Lin

et al., 2011), and 89 % in fracture nonunion

(Giannoudis et al., 2021) was found. Similarly,

it was reported that a lower percentage of arti-

cles were published in the beginning stage of

the SARS breakout in 2003 (Chiu et al. 2004).

The three core Web of Science categories

published 997 documents (33 % of 3 056 docu-

ments) including general and internal medicine

(473 documents; 15 %), public, environmental

and occupational health (380; 12 %), and infec-

tious diseases (232; 7.6 %).

Clinics was the most popular journal.

Documents published in Travel Medicine and

Infectious Disease had the higher citations per

publication. The top two most frequently cited

papers were published in the New England

Journal of Medicine with the highest IF2020

of 91.245.

The first author and corresponding author

are the two most contributed authors in a pub-

lication (Riesenberg & Lundberg, 1990). At the

institutional level, the determined institution of

the corresponding author might be a home base

of the study or origin of the paper (Ho, 2012).

Six publication indicators: total number of

publications (TP), single-country publications

(SP), collaborative publications (CP), first-

author publications (FP), corresponding-author

publications (RP), and single-author publica-

tions (SAP) (Ho & Kahn, 2014) were applied

to compare publication performances. Brazil

ranked top in all six publication indicators

followed distantly by other Latin Americans.

Domination in Covid-19 publications in the

Latin Americans by Brazil was not surprising

since this pattern occurs in other medical top-

ics, for example, stroke (Alarcon-Ruiz et al.,

2019), neurosciences (Forero et al., 2020), and

bariatric surgery (Toro-Huamanchumo et al.,

2021). Colombia ranked the top in two citation

indicators, CPP2020 of FP and RP with 7.6 and

9.2, respectively. The USA had not only active

collaborative research in Covid-19 with the

Latin Americans (730 publications; 53 % of 1

371 internationally collaborative publications)

but also joined the top four highly cited Covid-

19 publications with the Latin Americans

including an article by Beigel et al. (2020) with

TC2020 of 637, an editorial material by Emanuel

et al. (2020) with TC2020 of 561, a review by

Rodriguez-Morales et al. (2020) with TC2020 of

490, and an article by Van Bavel et al. (2020)

with TC2020 of 357. In 2002, Garfield (2002)

noted that a review with 350 citations within

one year after publication was the highest cita-

tion recorded. Furthermore, a review by Lander

et al. (2001) had 738 citations in the year of

publication (Ho & Kahn, 2014).

The University of São Paulo in Brazil

dominated all the six publication indicators

while the Technological University of Pereira

in Colombia had a higher impact for their

first- and corresponding-author publications.

Compare the top ten institutes, publications

with first authors and corresponding authors

from the Technological University of Pereira

(Colombia) had the highest FP CPP2020 of

85 and RP CPP2020 of 35, respectively. Pub-

lications with first authors from the Pontifical

Catholic University of Chile (Chile) had much

lower FP CPP2020 of 1.4 and publications

with corresponding authors from the Federal

University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) had RP

CPP2020 of 1.5.

Rodriguez-Morales also had the most 40

corresponding-author publications. C.D.F. de

Souza at Federal University of Alagoas in

Brazil had the most 13 first-author publica-

tions. Compare the top 16 authors in Table 5,

Rodriguez-Morales had the greatest CPP2020

for his first-author publications with 135 while

D.K. Bonilla-Aldana had the greatest CPP2020

for his corresponding-author publications with

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56. When the names of different authors are the

same, or an author uses different names in his/

her publications (such as maiden surnames),

there may be deviations in authorship analysis

(Zhang et al., 2012).

The citation index of a publication might

not be a direct measure of its quality or impor-

tance; it is a measure of recognition that may

suggest its visibility or impact on the scientific

community (Furlan & Fehlings, 2006). Total

citations (TC) from the Web of Science Core

Collection are one of the popular bibliometric

indicators used by authors in literature. How-

ever, it can be changed over time. Ho proposed

a citation indicator of TCyear to compare the

most cited publications in a field (Ho, 2012;

Ho, 2013). The advantage of TCyear is that it

is invariable and ensures repeatability in com-

parison to the index of citation from the Web of

Science Core Collection (Fu et al., 2012).

USA was the most popular collaborative

partner with nine publications, followed by the

UK with six publications and Brazil and China

with five publications respectively. Eleven

Latin American countries published the top ten

publications including Brazil with five publica-

tions, Mexico with two and one published by

each of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, French

Guiana, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama, Peru,

and Venezuela respectively. Ten institutes had

two of the top ten publications including the

University of Oxford (the UK), Tan Tock Seng

Hospital (Singapore), University of Southamp-

ton (UK), Harvard University (USA), Univer-

sity of California San Diego (USA), University

of Washington (USA), University of Pennsyl-

vania (USA), Peking University (China), Seoul

National University Hospital (South Korea),

and National Institute of Allergy and Infec-

tious Diseases (NIAID) (USA). International

collaborations with authors from outside of the

Latin Americans had the top citations.

Analysis of used words in publication

titles, abstracts, author keywords, and Key-

Words Plus was proposed for the research

focuses (Zhang et al., 2010). In SCI-EXPAND-

ED, 1 781 (58 % of 3 056 publications) and

1 484 (49 %) publications included author

keywords and KeyWords Plus information,

respectively. The analysis of words in publi-

cation titles, author keywords, and KeyWords

Plus revealed that health and infection were the

main research focuses.

Ethical statement: the authors declare

that they all agree with this publication and

made significant contributions; that there is no

conflict of interest of any kind; and that we fol-

lowed all pertinent ethical and legal procedures

and requirements. All financial sources are

fully and clearly stated in the acknowledge-

ments section. A signed document has been

filed in the journal archives.

RESUMEN

Bibliometría de la investigación latinoamericana

sobre COVID-19 en el primer año de la pandemia:

principales tendencias

Introducción: En diciembre de 2019 se produjo un

brote de COVID-19 en la ciudad china de Wuhan. Desde

entonces se publicaron muchos artículos relacionados en

el mundo.

Objetivo: Este estudio tuvo como objetivo identificar y

analizar las características de las publicaciones de COVID-

19 en el Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPAN-

DED) realizadas por latinoamericanos en 2020.

Métodos: Se evaluaron los documentos que incluían pala-

bras clave de búsqueda en su título, resumen o palabras

clave de autor del SCI-EXPANDED. Los aspectos anali-

zados cubrieron las características de los tipos de docu-

mentos, los idiomas, las categorías de la Web of Science

y las revistas. El rendimiento de las publicaciones de los

países e instituciones se evaluó mediante seis indicadores

de publicación y dos indicadores de citación.

Resultados: Se encontró un bajo porcentaje de artículos y

un mayor porcentaje en la lengua española. La categoría

Web of Science de medicina general e interna fue la que

más artículos publicó. The Clinics fue la revista más popu-

lar. Los Cadernos de Saude Publica y la Revista da Asso-

ciacao Medica Brasileira fueron las que más publicaciones

y revisiones publicaron, respectivamente. Brasil ocupó una

posición destacada en los seis indicadores de publicación.

La Universidad de São Paulo en Brasil fue la institución

más productiva. Basándose en el número de citas de la

Web of Science Core Collection desde la publicación

hasta el final de 2020, se presentaron las 10 publicaciones

más citadas. Además, se realizó el análisis de las palabras

en los títulos de las publicaciones, las palabras clave del

autor y KeyWords Plus para encontrar los principales

focos de investigación.

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Conclusiones: En 2020, un total de 3 056 documentos

COVID-19 en SCI-EXPANDED fueron publicados por

latinoamericanos, principalmente en las categorías de la

Web of Science de ‘medicina general e interna’ y ‘salud

pública, ambiental y ocupacional’. Se publicaron más car-

tas y materiales editoriales y menos artículos en el primer

año de su aparición. Se encontró un mayor porcentaje de

publicaciones en español y portugués. Brasil dominó los

seis indicadores de publicación. La Universidad de São

Paulo, en Brasil, ocupó el primer puesto en los seis indi-

cadores de publicación, mientras que la Universidad Tec-

nológica de Pereira, en Colombia, tuvo un mayor impacto

en sus publicaciones de primer y segundo autor. La salud y

la infección fueron los principales focos de investigación.

Palabras clave: SARS-CoV-2; portada; coronavirus; pan-

demia; tendencias de investigación.

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