Has Covid-19 Gone Viral? An Overview of Research by Subject Area

• Published in: Health education & behavior Vol. 47; no. 6; pp. 861 - 869
• Main Authors: Ruiz-Real, José Luis, Nievas-Soriano, Bruno José, Uribe-Toril, Juan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.12.2020; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Betacoronavirus; Bibliometrics; Biomedical Research - statistics & numerical data; Cluster analysis; Coronavirus Infections - epidemiology; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Health sciences; Humanities; Humans; Information Retrieval; Interdisciplinary aspects; Medical Research; Multivariate Analysis; Pandemics; Periodicals as Topic - statistics & numerical data; Physical Sciences; Pneumonia, Viral - epidemiology; Research - statistics & numerical data; SARS-CoV-2; Scientific Research; Social Science Research; Social sciences; Social Sciences - statistics & numerical data; Technology; Transferability; Usefulness; Viral diseases; Vocabulary; COVID-19; coronavirus; health; pandemic; social sciences; bibliometrics
• ISSN: 1090-1981; 1552-6127; 1552-6127
• DOI: 10.1177/1090198120958368

When a pandemic outbreak occurs, it seems logical that related scientific production should increase substantially; however, it is important to recognize its interdisciplinary usefulness to find a solution to the problem. The main aim of this research is to analyse the main keywords of the scientific research about COVID-19, by subject area. To discover the influence of certain terms and their transferability, synergies, and future trends, a cluster analysis of the keywords was performed. The results show that Health Sciences dominate the publications with 88.23% of the total volume. As expected, the largest volume of research was dedicated to medical aspects of the disease, like experimental treatments, its physiopathology, or its respiratory syndrome. However, other fields, like Social Sciences (6.07%), Technology (2.68%), Physical Sciences (1.95%), and Arts and Humanities (1.08%), also played an important role in research on COVID-19.