Between panic and motivation

Did the first wave of Covid-19 affect scientific publishing in Mediterranean countries

Bibliographic Data

ID21443186
AuthorsMona Farouk Ali (0000-0002-2928-6669, Helwan University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume127
Issue6
Pages3083-3115
Publication date2022-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScientometrics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0138-9130 • E-ISSN: 1588-2861
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11192-022-04391-w
PMID35694422
OpenAlexW4281683552
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited58

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that began in the winter of 2020, all communities and activities globally have been positively or negatively affected. This scientometric study raises an interesting question concerning whether the volume and characteristics of scientific publishing in all disciplines in 23 Mediterranean countries have been impacted by the pandemic and whether variations in the cumulative totals of COVID-19 cases have resulted in significant changes in this context. The Scopus database and SciVal tool supplied the necessary data for the years targeted for comparison (2019 and 2020), and the annual growth rates and differences were computed. The study used the Mann–Whitney test to examine the significance of the differences between the two years and the Spearman and Kendall correlation tests to evaluate the effect of the number of infections on these differences for all aspects of scientific performance. The findings demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic served as a powerful incentive, and the Mediterranean region experienced considerable differences in the volume and features of publications during this crisis. The most substantial implications were the significant growth from 3.1 to 9.4% in productivity and the increases in the annual growth rates of international collaboration, by 12% for the collaboration among Mediterranean countries and 10% for collaboration with the top ten epidemic countries. It was also proven that some characteristics of the publications were positively correlated with the total number of infections. This investigation can help university leaders and decision-makers in higher education and research institutions in these countries make decisions and implement measures to bridge the gaps and motivate researchers in all fields to conduct more research during this ongoing pandemic

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Affect (linguistics) · Anxiety · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) · Panic · Political science · Psychiatry · Publishing · Scientific literature · Scientific publishing · Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) · Academic Publishing and Open Access · COVID-19 and Mental Health · Geology · Medicine · Psychology · scientometrics and bibliometrics research · Virology

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