Massive covidization and subsequent decovidization of the scientific literature involved 2 million authors is a dataset published in Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (2025). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 0.215, placing it in the top 55.2% of the data-sharing corpus. It has been cited 5 times, with 2 citing works in its 1-hop citation network.
ObjectivesWe aimed to examine the growth trajectory and impact of COVID-19-related papers in the scientific literature and how the scientific workforce engaged in this work.Study design and settingWe used Scopus data to August 1, 2024, and a search string for COVID-19-related publications. Authors of COVID-19 work were mapped against databases of top-cited authors.ResultsScopus indexed 718,660 COVID-19-related publications. As the proportion of all indexed scientific publications, COVID-19-related publications peaked in September 2021 (4.7%) remained at 4.3%-4.6% for another year and then gradually declined but was still 1.9% in July 2024. COVID-19-related publications included 1,978,612 unique authors: 1,127,215 authors had ≥5 full papers in their career and 53,418 authors were in the top 2% of their scientific subfield. Authors with >10%, >30%, and >50% of their total career citations attributed to COVID-19-related publications were 376,942, 201,702, and 125,523, respectively. As of August 1, 2024, 65 of the top 100 most cited papers published in 2020 were COVID-19-related, declining to 24/100, 19/100, 7/100, and 5/100 for the most cited papers published in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively. Across 174 scientific subfields, 132 had ≥10% of their active influential (top 2% by composite citation indicator) authors publish something on COVID-19 during 2020-2024. Among the 300 authors with highest composite citation indicator specifically for their COVID-19-related publications, 41 were editors or journalists or columnists.ConclusionCOVID-19 massively engaged the scientific workforce in unprecedented ways. As the pandemic ended, there has been a sharp decline in the overall volume and high impact of newly published COVID-19-related publications.Plain language summaryWe evaluated Scopus, a bibliometric database, for the increase and waning of the COVID-19 scientific literature. Until August 1, 2024, we identified 718,660 COVID-19-related publications indexed in Scopus that had involved 1,978,612 unique authors. The rise and subsequent decline pattern of COVID-19 publications was similar to other previous epidemics like Zika, Ebola, and H1N1, but at a far larger, unprecedented scale. 125,523 authors had >50% of their total career citations attributed to COVID-19 papers. 132/174 scientific subfields had at least one of every 10 of their top-cited authors publish something on COVID-19 during 2020-2024. Many influential authors were editors or journalists or columnists. Overall, COVID-19 massively engaged a huge number of authors and created a vast literature. As the interest has now sharply declined, one needs to examine what this immense COVID-19 scientific workforce will do in the future.
FAIR checklist signals are shown for context only and do not affect DataRank scoring.
Base Score Contribution
0.208
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
6.62 × 10⁻³
From 1 citing papers with measurable signal
Ranked by citation count — the same ordering the engine uses when summing log1p(Cq) over citers.
DataRank blends this paper's own citation count with the influence of the papers that cite it. Here, roughly 97% comes from its base citations and 3% from the citation network (1 citing paper contributed measurable signal).
Citers are pulled from OpenAlex sorted by cited_by_count:descand capped per paper, so when the cap binds we keep the highest-signal references and the score is reproducible across reruns.
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