Abstract
[Background] On January 7, 2020, the novel coronavirus named "COVID-19" aroused worldwide concern was identified by Chinese scientists. Many related research works were developed for the emerging, rapidly evolving situation of this epidemic. This study aimed to analyze the research literatures on SARS, MERS and COVID-19 to retrieve important information for virologists, epidemiologist and policy decision makers. [Methods] In this study, we collected data from multi data sources and compared bibliometrics indices among COVID-19, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) up to March 25, 2020. In purpose to extract data in corresponding quantity and scale, the volume of search results will be balance with the limitation of publication years. For further analysis, we extracted 1,480 documents from 1,671 candidates with Natural Language Processing technologies. [Results] In total, 13,945 research literatures of 7 datasets were selected for analysis. Unlike other topics, research passion on epidemic may reach its peak at the first year the outbreak happens. The document type distribution of SARS, MERS and COVID-19 are nearly the same (less than 6 point difference for each type), however, there were notable growth in the research qualities during these three epidemics (3.68, 6.63 and 11.35 for Field-Weighted Citation Impact scores). Asian countries has less international collaboration (less than 35.1\%) than the Occident (more than 49.5\%), which should be noticed as same as research itself. [Conclusions] We found that research passion on epidemics may always reach its peak at the first year after outburst, however, the peak of research on MERS appeared at the third year because of its outburst of reproduction in 2015. For the research quality, although we did better in research qualities than before especially on COVID-19, research on epidemics not started from our own country should not be looked down. Another important effective strategy for enhancing epidemic prevention for China and other Asian countries is to continue strengthening international collaboration.
From SARS to COVID-19: A Bibliometric study on Emerging Infectious Diseases with Natural Language Processing technologies
