Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Biomedical Publications and Their Citation Frequency

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in enormous related publications. However, the citation frequency of these documents and their influence on the journal impact factor ( JIF) are not well examined. We aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on biomedical research publications and their citation frequency. Methods: We searched publications on biomedical research in the Web of Science using the search terms "COVID-19," "SARS-Cov-2," "2019 corona*," "corona virus disease 2019," "coronavirus disease 2019," "novel coronavirus infection" and "2019-ncov." The top 200 journals were defined as those with a higher number of COVID-19 publications than other journals in 2020. The COVID-19 impact ratio was calculated as the ratio of the average number of citations per item in 2021 to the JIF for 2020. Results: The average number of citations for the top 200 journals in 2021, per item published in 2020, was 25.7 (range, 0-270). The average COVID-19 impact ratio was 3.84 (range, 0.26-16.58) for 197 journals that recorded the JIF for 2020. The average JIF ratio for the top 197 journals including the JIFs for 2020 and 2021 was 1.77 (range, 0.68-8.89). The COVID-19 impact ratio significantly correlated with the JIF ratio (r = 0.403, P = 0.010). Twenty-five Korean journals with a COVID-19 impact ratio > 1.5 demonstrated a higher JIF ratio (1.31 +/- 0.39 vs. 1.01 +/- 0.18, P < 0.001) than 33 Korean journals with a lower COVID-19 impact ratio. Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic infection has significantly impacted the trends in biomedical research and the citation of related publications.