The impact of open access on the production and dissemination of knowledge about Covid-19

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18617/liinc.v16i2.5296

Keywords:

COVID-19, Bibliometric Indicators, Altmetric Indicators, Open Access, Cooperation Network

Abstract

The race to publish results during the outbreak of the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has highlighted the relevance of sharing data and research results more quickly and openly than the current scientific communication system, as well as the role of social media in this context. This paper aims to analyze the impact of open access on the production and dissemination of knowledge about COVID-19 in traditional scientific communication and on the social web. We analyzed 6,631 papers and reviews of PubMed and Scopus databases, published between January and April 2020, through bibliometric and altmetric indicators. The results showed that the volume of scientific open access publications related to COVID-19 increased by an average monthly rate of 166% in the period analyzed. The countries with the highest number of publications are those that had the most registered cases of COVID-19. In general, the scientific open access publications had greater attention from social media and more intense cooperation networks than compared to non-open access publications. The combination of bibliometric and altmetric indicators allowed us not only to characterize the evolution and diffusion of scientific production on COVID-19 but also to understand the relationship between the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus and the interaction of society around research products. Our findings reinforce the importance of open access practices to create and strengthen research collaboration networks and to stimulate publications on emerging themes of global interest

Author Biographies

  • Tatiana Bermúdez-Rodríguez, Departamento de Política Científica e Tecnológica, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brasil

    Pós-doutoranda no Departamento de Política Científica e Tecnológica (DPCT), Doutora em Política Científica e Tecnológica, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, Brasil.
    Link CV Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/4470504768610356
    ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9766-1865

  • Vinicius Muraro da Silva, Departamento de Política Científica e Tecnológica, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brasil

    Doutorando em Política Científica e Tecnológica, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, Brasil.
    Link CV Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/4564890992428149
    ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8531-0793

     

  • Ana Carolina Spatti, Departamento de Política Científica e Tecnológica, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brasil

    Doutoranda em Política Científica e Tecnológica, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, Brasil.
    Link CV Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/2422549895945659
    ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8839-8276

  • Cristina Abreu Sampaio Leme Monaco, Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo, Campinas, SP, Brasil.

    Mestre em Política Científica e Tecnológica, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Professora da Rede de Ensino do Estado de São Paulo, Campinas, SP, Brasil.
    Link CV Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/8282326784909895
    ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5648-1702

References

ALBAGLI, S.; CLINIO, A.; RAYCHTOCK, S. Ciência aberta: correntes interpretativas e tipos de ação. Liinc em Revista, v. 10, n. 2, 2014.

ARAÚJO, K. Mendonça de et al. A produção científica sobre zika em periódicos de acesso aberto. RECIIS, Rio de Janeiro, v. 11, p. 1-8, nov. 2017. Suplemento.

BAHETI, A. D.; BHARGAVA, P. Altmetrics: a measure of social attention toward scientific research. Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology, v. 46, n. 6, p. 391-392, 2017.

BARROS, M. Altmetrics: métricas alternativas de impacto científico com base em redes sociais. Perspectivas em Ciência da Informação, v. 20, n. 2, p. 19-37, 2015.

BOETTO, E. et al. Using altmetrics for detecting impactful research in quasi-zero-day time-windows: the case of COVID-19. 2020.

BORREGO, Á. Altmétricas para la evaluación de la investigación y el análisis de necesidades de información. Profesional de la Información, v. 23, n. 4, p. 352–358, 2014.

BRAINARD, J. Scientists are drowning in COVID-19 papers: can new tools keep them afloat?. Science, 2020.

BUDAPESTE. Budapeste open access initiative. Disponível em: https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/. Acesso em 23 de maio de 2020.

CHAHROUR, M. et al. A Bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 Research activity: a call for increased output. Cureus, v. 2, n. p. 1–8, 2020.

CHEN, E.; LERMAN, K.; FERRARA, E. Covid-19: The first public coronavirus twitter dataset. 2020.

COLAVIZZA, G. et al. A scientometric overview of CORD-19. bioRxiv, p. 2020.04.20.046144, 2020.

CORBURN, J. et al. Slum health: arresting COVID-19 and improving well-being in urban informal settlements. Journal of Urban Health, p. 1-10, 20-?.

DE FELICE, F.; POLIMENI, A. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): a machine learning bibliometric analysis. In vivo (Athens, Greece), v. 34, n. 3, p. 1613–1617, 2020.

GORBALENYA, A. E. Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus–the species and its viruses, a statement of the coronavirus study group. BioRxiv. 2020. Doi:10.1101/2020.02.07.937862. 2020.

HAGHANI, M. et al. The scientific literature on Coronaviruses, COVID-19 and its associated safety-related research dimensions: a scientometric analysis and scoping review. Safety Science, v. 129, n. May, 2020.

KISSLER, S. M. et al. Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the postpandemic period. Science, v. 368, n. 6493, p. 860-868, 2020.

KOUZY, R. et al. Coronavirus goes viral: quantifying the COVID-19 misinformation epidemic on Twitter. Cureus, v. 12, n. 3, 2020.

LAKSHAM, S. et al. Mapping the research output on coronavirus: a scientometric study. Gedrag en Organisatie, v. 33, n. 2, p. 163–186, 2020.

LARIVIÈRE, V.; SHU, F.; SUGIMOTO, C. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak highlights serious deficiencies in scholarly communication. LSE Impact of Social Sciences. Disponível em: https://blogs. lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/03/05/the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak-highlights-serious-deficiencies-in-scholarly-communication. Acesso em: 25 de abril de 2020.

LEE, S.; BOZEMAN, B. The impact of research collaboration on scientific productivity. Social Studies of Science, v. 35, p. 673–702, 2005.

LOU, J. et al. Coronavirus disease 2019: A bibliometric analysis and review. European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences, v. 24, n. 6, p. 3411–3421, 2020.

MAO, X. et al. The status and trends of coronavirus research: a global bibliometric and visualized analysis. Medicine, v. 99, n. 22, p. e20137, 2020.

OKUBO, Y. Bibliometric indicators and analysis of research systems: methods and examples. [S.l.]: OECD ilibrary, Publishing Systems, 1997.

OLIVEIRA, A. C. S. de; SILVA, Edilene Maria da. Ciência aberta: dimensões para um novo fazer científico. Informação & Informação, v. 21, n. 2, p. 5-39, 2016.

ORGANIZAÇÃO MUNDIAL DA SAÚDE - OMS. R&D Blueprint and COVID-19. Disponível em: https://www.who.int/teams/blueprint/covid-19. Acesso em: 11 jul. 2020.

ORGANIZAÇÃO MUNDIAL DA SAÚDE - OMS. Developing global norms for sharing data and results during public health emergencies, 2015. Disponível em: https://www.who.int/medicines/ebola-treatment/blueprint_phe_data-share-results/en/. Acesso em: 03 out. 2020.

ORGANIZAÇÃO MUNDIAL DA SAÚDE - OMS et al. Who director-general's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19. Geneva, Switzerland, 2020.

PIWOWAR, H. Value all research products. Nature, v. 493, p. 159, 2013.

PRATA, D. N.; RODRIGUES, W.; BERMEJO, P. H. Temperature significantly changes COVID-19 transmission in (sub) tropical cities of Brazil. Science of the Total Environment, p. 138862, 2020.

PRIEM, J. et al. Altmetrics: a manifesto. 2010. Disponível em: http://altmetrics.org/manifesto. Acesso em: 11 mar. 2020.

PRITCHARD, A. Statistical bibliography or bibliometrics?. Journal of Documentation, v. 24, n. 4, p. 348-349, 1969.

PUBMED CENTRAL. Public Health Emergency COVID-19 Initiative. 2020. Disponível em: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR05xNYVrbSE6eBy3wCiVS9Y_R1zlSo4nOrprspcg1MF0NIGURatmHQexMk. Acesso em: 11 jul. 2020.

SINGH, L. et al. A first look at COVID-19 information and misinformation sharing on Twitter. arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.13907,2020.

SWAN, A. Diretrizes para as políticas de desenvolvimento e promoção do acesso aberto. [S.l.]: UNESCO Brasil, IBICT, 2016. Disponível em: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000246018. Acesso em 13 abr. 2020.

TORRES-SALINAS, D.; ROBINSON-GARCIA, N.; CASTILLO-VALDIVIESO, P. A. Open access and Altmetrics in the pandemic age: forescast analysis on COVID-19 related literature. BioRxiv, 2020.

VALERO, J. S.; CABO. J. V.; CASTIEL, L. D. A iniciativa Open Access no acesso à informação técnico-científica nas Ciências da Saúde. 2007.

WASSERMAN, S.; FAUST, K. Social network analysis: methods and applications. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K. 1994.

WILLIAMS, A. E. Altmetrics: an overview and evaluation. Online Information Review, v. 41, n. 3, p. 311–317, 2017.

WU, Z.; MCGOOGAN, J. M. Characteristics of and important lessons from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in China: summary of a report of 72 314 cases from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Jama, v. 323, n. 13, p. 1239-1242, 2020.

XU, B. et al. Open access epidemiological data from the COVID-19 outbreak. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, v. 20, n. 5, 534. 2020.

ZHAI, F. et al. Research progress of coronavirus based on bibliometric analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, v. 17, n. 11, p. 1-15, 2020.

ZHANG, L. et al. How scientific research reacts to international public health emergencies: a global analysis of response patterns. Scientometrics, n. 0123456789, 2020.

ZHOU, Y.; CHEN, L. Twenty-year span of global coronavirus research trends: a bibliometric analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, v. 17, n. 9, 2020.

Downloads

Published

11/12/2020

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2020): Informational Perspectives and Challenges in Times of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Section

Informational Perspectives and Challenges in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

License

How to Cite

The impact of open access on the production and dissemination of knowledge about Covid-19. Liinc em Revista, [S. l.], v. 16, n. 2, p. e5296, 2020. DOI: 10.18617/liinc.v16i2.5296. Disponível em: https://revista.ibict.br/liinc/article/view/5296. Acesso em: 15 mar. 2025.