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Synergistic networks of COVID-19’s top papers

Nosrat Riahinia (Department of Knowledge and Information Science, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran)
Farshid Danesh (Information Management Department, Regional Information Center for Science and Technology, Shiraz, Islamic Republic of Iran)
Somayeh GhaviDel (Department of Knowledge and Information Science, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran)

Library Hi Tech

ISSN: 0737-8831

Article publication date: 15 October 2021

Issue publication date: 29 March 2022

228

Abstract

Purpose

Synergy indicators and social network analysis (SNA), as practical tools, provide the possibility of explaining the pattern of scientific collaboration and visualization of network relations. Recognition of scientific capacities is the basis of synergy. The present study aims to measure and discover the synergistic networks of COVID-19’s top papers at the level of co-authorship, countries, journals, bibliographic couples and titles.

Design/methodology/approach

The synergy indicator, co-authorship co-citation network analysis methods were applied. The research population comprises COVID-19’s top papers indexed in Essential Science Indicator and Web of Science Core Collection 2020 and 2021. Excel 2016, UCINET 6.528.0.0 2017, NetDraw, Ravar Matrix, VOSviewer version 1.6.14 and Python 3.9.5 were applied to analyze the data and visualize the networks.

Findings

The findings indicate that considering the three possible possibilities for authors, countries and journals, more redundancy and information are created and potential for further cooperation is observed. The synergy of scientific collaboration has revealed that “Wang, Y,” “USA” and “Science of the Total Environment” have the most effective capabilities and results. “Guan (2020b)” and “Zhou (2020)” are bibliographic couplings that have received the most citations. The keywords “CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19)” were the most frequent in article titles.

Originality/value

In a circumstance that the world is suffering from a COVID-19 pandemic and all scientists are conducting various researches to discover vaccines, medicines and new treatment methods, scientometric studies, and analysis of social networks of COVID-19 publications to be able to specify the synergy rate and the scientific collaboration networks, are not only innovative and original but also of great importance and priority; SNA tools along with the synergy indicator is capable of visualizing the complicated and multifaceted pattern of scientific collaboration in COVID-19. As a result, analyses can help identify existing capacities and define a new space for using COVID-19 researchers’ capabilities.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Researchers appreciate the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Technology of Kharazmi University for its support.

Citation

Riahinia, N., Danesh, F. and GhaviDel, S. (2022), "Synergistic networks of COVID-19’s top papers", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 40 No. 2, pp. 454-494. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-08-2021-0286

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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