The Unparalleled Growth of COVID-19 Publications (Preprint)
UNSTRUCTURED The global pandemic of COVID-19 has generated an unprecedented number of research papers from clinicians and scientists worldwide. We searched PubMed for articles on coronaviruses from 1970 to June 2020. Surges of publications occurred in 2003 from SARS and, again in 2012 from MERS. Although the name COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was only announced by WHO in February 2020, the number of publications has already exceeded 16000 by June this year. China and the US lead in publications, but a significant number also come from countries hardest hit by the illness. International collaborative publishing is significant. Since these publications are generally free to access worldwide, it provides a rich evidence base for clinicians and scientists combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.