India’s Research on Covid-19: A Scientometric Assessment of Publications 2019-21

Background: As a global pandemic, Covid-19 has aroused great concern and garnered research interest world-wide In India a growing number of related researches have been published in the last few months. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis of these publications may provide indication of current status and future research trends in the field. Methods: The India’s literature about Covid-19 published during 2019-2021 were searched in the Scopus database using a well- defined search strategy. The following keywords “Covid 19” or “2019 novel coronavirus” or “coronavirus 2019” or “coronavirus disease 2019” or “2019-novel CoV” or “2019 ncov” or covid 2019 or covid19 or “corona virus 2019” or ncov-2019 or ncov2019 or “nCoV 2019” or 2019-ncov or covid-19 or “Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” or “SARS-CoV-2”were used in “Keyord” and “Title” (Title of articles) tags to reach the relevant publications. VOSviewer was applied to perform the bibliometric analysis of these articles. Results: The bibliometric analysis of India’s literature on Covid-19 indicates that there were 10,233 indexed publications in Scopus database until April 2021. Of all these publications, 52.87% were original articles and 11.75% (1202) publications received external funding from more than 150 agencies and 27.41% (2805) involve international collaboration with more than 150 countries. USA contributed the largest share (38.47%) in India’s international collaborative papers, followed by U.K. (22.89%), China (11.55%), Saudi Arabia (11.44), Australia (11.23%), etc. In the geographical distribution, Delhi tops the publication list (with 21.86% share), followed by Mumbai (7.30%), Chennai (7.27%), Pune (6.44%) and Kolkata (6.04%). Among population age groups, “Adults” accounts for the largest publication share (9.98%), followed by “Middle Aged” (5.07%), “Children” (3.65%), “Aged” (3.65%) and “Adolescents” (2.82%). “Treatment studies” among prominent topics, account for the largest publication share (34.12% share), followed by “Clinical Studies” (13.13%), “Epidemiology” (10.54%), “Imaging and Diagnostics” (9.64%), “Pathophysiology” (6.27%), and etc. The 1311 organizations and 3413 authors participated in India’s research on Covid-19, of which the top 30 organizations and authors contributed 43.50% and 11.57% national publication share and 45.62% and 32.14% national citation share. AIIMS-New Delhi and PGIMER-Chandigarh were the most productive organizations (with 623 and 468 papers). IVRIBareilly (21.32 and 4.44) and IIT-New Delhi (12.37 and 2.58) were the most impactful organizations. V. Wiwanitkit and K. Dhama were the most productive authors (with 182 and. 107 papers). R. Sah (42.89 and 8.93) and A. Misra (41.93 and 8.74) were the most impactful authors. International Journal of Research in Pharmaceutical Sciences (270 papers) and Indian Journal of Ophthalmology (210 papers) were the most productive journals. Science of the Total Environment (43.98) and Asian Journal of Psychiatry (19.19) were the most impactful journals. Conclusion: The paper provides a deeper understanding of the current Covid-19 research milieu in India, by identifying key players (and their collaboration linkages) and key sub-fields, while highlighting potential patterns that could assist future researchers in their scientific pursuits.