Bibliometric overview of reactivity in research on environmental response to COVID-19

COVID-19 has been a worldwide emergency and continues to spread in the environment. It is crucial to keep following up on current solutions to this pandemic and think about future epidemic prevention. Herein, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis was performed to examine different facets of research output on the environmental response against COVID-19. The relevant bibliographic dataset was queried in PubMed for literature published since the COVID-19 outbreak. Python program was used to extract the metadata information from the dataset toward the research production in environmental response to the pandemic. Key points covered in the analysis included contribution of authorship and country to the scientific output, strength of collaborative network, and main topics of research themes. Regarding contributions, the USA was the most productive country in terms of publications and authorships, followed by China, the UK, Italy, and India. Using activity index as a relative indicator for research reactivity, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and India, followed by the USA and the UK, were highly reactive to the environmental and COVID-19 studies. For research collaboration, the USA demonstrated the highest level of domestic independence and Saudi Arabia had an extremely high level of international collaborations. The global research production could be covered in 20 major topics and grouped into four themes as control and prevention, public healthcare, disease research, and COVID-19 impacts. Overall, this study visualized global research reactivity and interactive networks in environmental response to COVID-19 and provided a basis of utilizing Python program in rapid literature review for strategizing scientific solutions to future epidemic prevention.Copyright © 2023 John Libbey Eurotext. All rights reserved.