Digital Science reports that preprints account for one quarter of COVID-19 research

By Alex Jackson • June 4, 2020

Digital Science, a leading technology company serving emergent needs across the research sector, has today released a report highlighting the global research landscape trends and cultural changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report How COVID-19 is Changing Research Culture analyses publication trends, regional focal points of research, collaboration patterns, and top institutional producers of research in COVID-19.

The report key findings include:

As of 1 June 2020, there have been upwards of 42,700 scholarly articles on COVID-19 published, 3,100 clinical trials, 420 datasets, 270 patents, 750 policy documents, and 150 grants.
Preprints have rapidly established as a mainstream research output and a key part of COVID-19 research efforts. They started at relatively low levels in early January 2020 and accounted for around one quarter of research output by the beginning of May 2020.
To date, more than 8,300 organisations have been involved in supporting COVID-19 research, with over 71,800 individual researchers identified as working on COVID-19 research.
The highest intensity of research into COVID-19 began in China and gradually migrated west mirroring the movement of the virus itself.
While the US and EU have both now published more than China in journals such as The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA, China continues to benefit from an early mover advantage and continues to enjoy the lionshare of the citations. While research in the field is clearly moving quickly, it currently remains anchored to China’s early publications.
A density map of global COVID-19 paper production shows there are three to four major centres of research: an extended area in China composed of several cities—Wuhan, where the virus is alleged to have started, Beijing and Shanghai; Europe, specifically Italy and the UK, two of the harder hit countries; the US’s east coast research corridor including Boston and New York; and finally, a lighter focus from the Californian institutions on the West coast.
The top producing institution of COVID-19 research (since the beginning of 2020) is in China, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, followed by Harvard University and the University of Oxford.
The top healthcare producers of COVID-19 research (since the beginning of 2020) are Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, then Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, and Massachusetts General Hospital.
While the proportion of internationally co-authored work is steady, the vast majority of research on COVID to date has been unusually authored within countries.
At the time of writing, 156 grants totalling at least 20.8m USD have been awarded to COVID-themed researchers in public institutions.
Much of the clinical trial initiation activity in January and February is sponsored by China and this then begins to fall off in March, April and May. We see a similar wave for Europe and the US, but shifted back by two months, beginning in March.

Daniel Hook, CEO of Digital Science and co-author of the report, said: “Although the situation around COVID-19 is unfortunate, it is allowing us to see the development of a new field, and the culture change associated with that development in ‘real time’. Dimensions’ combination of full text search and daily updates, together with the inclusion of data beyond publications and citations, gives us critical insights not only into the research itself, but also into how the community is responding to this important issue.

“That response has been immediate and intensive. The research world has moved faster than many would have suspected possible. As a result, many issues in the scholarly communication system, that so many have been working to improve in recent years, are being highlighted in this extreme situation. From peer review to scholarly search, we are seeing changes in behaviours condensed into a few months that many have long campaigned for. We live in interesting times.”

The report can be read in full here

Notes to editors:

Digital Science is a technology company working to make research more efficient. We invest in, nurture and support innovative businesses and technologies that make all parts of the research process more open and effective. Our portfolio includes admired brands including Altmetric, CC Grant Tracker, Dimensions, Figshare, Gigantum, ReadCube, Symplectic, IFI Claims, GRID, Overleaf, Ripeta, Scismic and Writefull. Digital Science’s Consultancy group works with organisations around the world to create new insights based on data to support decision makers. We believe that together, we can help researchers make a difference. Visit www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter.

Dimensions is a modern, innovative, linked research knowledge system that re-imagines discovery and access to research. Developed by Digital Science in collaboration with over 100 leading research organizations around the world, Dimensions brings together grants, publications, citations, alternative metrics, clinical trials, patents and datasets to deliver a platform that enables users to find and access the most relevant information faster, analyze the academic and broader outcomes of research, and gather insights to inform future strategy. Visit Dimensions’ website and find us on Twitter @DSDimensions.