Research on Schistosomiasis in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Bibliometric Analysis

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jun 30;19(13):8051. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19138051.

Abstract

The objectives of this work are to check whether the COVID-19 pandemic affected the research on schistosomiasis, to provide an insight into the most productive countries and journals and the most cited publications, and to analyse any association between the total publications of countries and a set of socio-economic and demographic factors. Based on PRISMA methodology, we used the Scopus database to search for articles published between 1 January 2020 and 26 March 2022. VOSviewer was used to generate the co-authorship and the co-occurrence networks, and Spearman's rank correlation was applied to study associations. A total of 1988 articles were included in the study. Although we found that the year-wise distribution of publications suggests no impact on schistosomiasis research, many resources have been devoted to research on COVID-19, and the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance revealed the main activities for eradication of schistosomiasis had been affected. The most productive country was the United States of America. The articles were mainly published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The most prolific funding institution was the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The total publications per country were significantly correlated with population, GERD, and researchers per million inhabitants, but not with GDP per capita and MPM.

Keywords: COVID-19; PRISMA; bibliometric analysis; correlation analysis; schistosomiasis; socio-economic indicators.

Publication types

  • Review
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Bibliometrics
  • COVID-19* / epidemiology
  • Humans
  • Neglected Diseases
  • Pandemics
  • Publications
  • Schistosomiasis* / epidemiology

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Red de Investigación de Centros de Enfermedades Tropicales—RICET (RD16/0027/0023 and RD16/0027/0013) of the PN de I+D+I, ISCIII-Subdirección General de Redes y Centros de Investigación Cooperativa RETICS, Ministry of Health and Consumption, Madrid; by CIBER de Enfermedades Infecciosas (CB21/13/00056), ISCIII, Ministry of Science and Education, Madrid, Spain; by the PROMETEO Program, Programa de Ayudas para Grupos de Investigación de Excelencia (2021/004), Generalitat Valenciana, Valencia, Spain; and by Proyecto de Investigación en Salud PI-0001-2019 (Cofunded FEDER, A way to make Europe/Investing in your future), Consejería de Salud y Familias de la Junta de Andalucía, Sevilla, Spain.