Pakistan’s Contribution to COVID-19 Research: A Scientometric Analysis of Publications from 2020-2023

Abstract

This study aims to analyse the characteristics, trends, current status and hotspots in Pakistan COVID-19 research output. We retrieved the relevant literature on Pakistan COVID-19 from the Scopus database from 2020 to 2023. Bibliometric and visualisation analysis was undertaken using MS Excel and VOSviewer software. Results: In all 7,749 papers on Pakistan COVID-19 research was published in 1,471 sources contributed by 12,633 authors affiliated to 5,305 institutions. The 17.77% share of 7749 Pakistan publications received external funding support and 64.64% publications were involved in international collaboration with 86 foreign countries. Among foreign countries, Saudi Arabia, China and the USA collaborated with Pakistan in almost half of Pakistan’s collaborative publications. The Aga Khan University, Karachi and Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi contributed the highest number of publications. I. Ullah and S. Ahmad contributed the most, while A.M. Baig and Z.A. Bhutta registered the highest average citations per paper. The Pakistan Armed Forces Medical Journal (n=222) and Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association (n=176) published the most papers. Only 2.33% share of its total publications were considered as High-Cited Papers (HCPs), as they received 100 to 1,609 citations. This study will provide an opportunity to scholars and policy-makers to understand the overall trends, current status and research hotspots in Pakistan’s COVID-19 research, help in identifying the future subject areas of collaboration and may be used as a valuable reference for future research.