A topic trend analysis on COVID-19 literature
Objective In the past 2 years, the number of scientific publications has grown exponentially. The COVID-19 outbreak hugely contributed to this dramatic increase in the volume of published research. Currently, text mining of the volume of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 publications is limited to the first m...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
SAGE Publishing
2022-10-01
|
| Series: | Digital Health |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076221133696 |
| _version_ | 1811335918784610304 |
|---|---|
| author | Sara Urru Veronica Sciannameo Corrado Lanera Silvano Salaris Dario Gregori Paola Berchialla |
| author_facet | Sara Urru Veronica Sciannameo Corrado Lanera Silvano Salaris Dario Gregori Paola Berchialla |
| author_sort | Sara Urru |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Objective In the past 2 years, the number of scientific publications has grown exponentially. The COVID-19 outbreak hugely contributed to this dramatic increase in the volume of published research. Currently, text mining of the volume of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 publications is limited to the first months of the outbreak. We aim to identify the major topics in COVID-19 literature collected from several citational sources and analyze the temporal trend from November 2019 to December 2021. Methods We performed an extensive literature search on SARS-Cov-2 and COVID-19 publications on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science (WoS) and a structural topic modelling on the retrieved abstracts. The temporal trend of the recognized topics was analyzed. Furthermore, a comparison between our corpus and the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) repository was performed. Results We collected 269,186 publications and identified 10 topics. The most popular topic was related to the clinical pictures of the COVID-19 outbreak, which has a constant trend, and the least popular includes studies on COVID-19 literature and databases. “Telemedicine”, “Vaccine development”, and “Epidemiology” were popular topics in the early phase of the pandemic; increasing topics in the last period are “COVID-19 impact on mental health”, “Forecasting”, and “Molecular Biology”. “Education” was the second most popular topic, which emerged in September 2020. Conclusions We identified 10 topics for classifying COVID-19 research publications and estimated a nonlinear temporal trend that gives an overview of their unfolding over time. Several citational databases must be searched to retrieve a complete set of studies despite the efforts to build repositories for COVID-19 literature. Our collected data can help build a more focused literature search between November 2019 and December 2021 when carrying out systematic and rapid reviews and our findings can give a complete picture on the topic. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-13T17:31:44Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-bcf73b20619c4d0baebfe3ed32abeedf |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2055-2076 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-13T17:31:44Z |
| publishDate | 2022-10-01 |
| publisher | SAGE Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Digital Health |
| spelling | doaj.art-bcf73b20619c4d0baebfe3ed32abeedf2022-12-22T02:37:33ZengSAGE PublishingDigital Health2055-20762022-10-01810.1177/20552076221133696A topic trend analysis on COVID-19 literatureSara Urru0Veronica Sciannameo1Corrado Lanera2Silvano Salaris3Dario Gregori4Paola Berchialla5 Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Cardiac, Thoracic, Vascular Sciences and Public Health, , Padua, Italy Center of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences, , Turin, Italy Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Cardiac, Thoracic, Vascular Sciences and Public Health, , Padua, Italy Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Cardiac, Thoracic, Vascular Sciences and Public Health, , Padua, Italy Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Cardiac, Thoracic, Vascular Sciences and Public Health, , Padua, Italy Center of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences, , Turin, ItalyObjective In the past 2 years, the number of scientific publications has grown exponentially. The COVID-19 outbreak hugely contributed to this dramatic increase in the volume of published research. Currently, text mining of the volume of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 publications is limited to the first months of the outbreak. We aim to identify the major topics in COVID-19 literature collected from several citational sources and analyze the temporal trend from November 2019 to December 2021. Methods We performed an extensive literature search on SARS-Cov-2 and COVID-19 publications on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science (WoS) and a structural topic modelling on the retrieved abstracts. The temporal trend of the recognized topics was analyzed. Furthermore, a comparison between our corpus and the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) repository was performed. Results We collected 269,186 publications and identified 10 topics. The most popular topic was related to the clinical pictures of the COVID-19 outbreak, which has a constant trend, and the least popular includes studies on COVID-19 literature and databases. “Telemedicine”, “Vaccine development”, and “Epidemiology” were popular topics in the early phase of the pandemic; increasing topics in the last period are “COVID-19 impact on mental health”, “Forecasting”, and “Molecular Biology”. “Education” was the second most popular topic, which emerged in September 2020. Conclusions We identified 10 topics for classifying COVID-19 research publications and estimated a nonlinear temporal trend that gives an overview of their unfolding over time. Several citational databases must be searched to retrieve a complete set of studies despite the efforts to build repositories for COVID-19 literature. Our collected data can help build a more focused literature search between November 2019 and December 2021 when carrying out systematic and rapid reviews and our findings can give a complete picture on the topic.https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076221133696 |
| spellingShingle | Sara Urru Veronica Sciannameo Corrado Lanera Silvano Salaris Dario Gregori Paola Berchialla A topic trend analysis on COVID-19 literature Digital Health |
| title | A topic trend analysis on COVID-19 literature |
| title_full | A topic trend analysis on COVID-19 literature |
| title_fullStr | A topic trend analysis on COVID-19 literature |
| title_full_unstemmed | A topic trend analysis on COVID-19 literature |
| title_short | A topic trend analysis on COVID-19 literature |
| title_sort | topic trend analysis on covid 19 literature |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076221133696 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT saraurru atopictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT veronicasciannameo atopictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT corradolanera atopictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT silvanosalaris atopictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT dariogregori atopictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT paolaberchialla atopictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT saraurru topictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT veronicasciannameo topictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT corradolanera topictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT silvanosalaris topictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT dariogregori topictrendanalysisoncovid19literature AT paolaberchialla topictrendanalysisoncovid19literature |