Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Western nations, there has been a whopping 87,000, or so, scientific papers published pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study by Ohio State University.
The massive total of studies produced in such a short time span was surprising to researchers, making it perhaps the most unprecedented in modern scientific history. The pandemic resulted in an astronomical body of scientific work from scientists around the world, working together to comprehend the challenges that the COVID-19 strain upheld.
As detailed in the peer-reviewed journal Scientometrics, Ohio State researchers scoured through numerous databases to identify coronavirus-based articles. They uncovered nearly 90,000, published between the start of the pandemic and October 2020.
“As the pandemic has dragged on around the world throughout 2020, we see the numbers of articles rise but more slowly than in the earliest months,” the authors wrote in their study.
“That said, over time the research system recovers from the initial shock and many more nations begin to collaborate and publish results. By Autumn 2020, the network is similar in density to that of coronavirus research communities in the pre-COVID period.”
“The rate of rapid funding of research may be closely tied to infection rates as a political response to the emergency,” the authors also stated. “Future research will explore these possibilities as explanations for changes in the patterns of collaboration.”
The study was authored by X. Cai, C. V. Fry, and C . S. Wagner.
