Frontlist | International publication activity during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Pandemics lead to new challenges for healthcare systems and a subsequent shift of the scientific focus, which can partially be seen in alterations in scientific publication activity. OBJECTIVES: Follow-up on the global publication activity within the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in a comparison of national contexts with regards to local infection rates and the involvement of the discipline of pathology. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Comparative analysis of the number of publications in the PubMed® database concerning COVID-19 with respect to publication type, date and place of publication, affiliation to an institute of pathology, and correlation with the number of SARS-CoV‑2 infections over the same timeframe. RESULTS: After an initial peak with regards to the number of publications in the months of May and June 2020, a slight decrease was observed, followed by another increase starting in August/September 2020. Further, the time between data collection and publication contracted to approximately 3-4 months. Countries faced with early SARS-CoV‑2 infections published promptly, even though there was no overall association between the number of publications and COVID-19 case numbers. On average, 4% of authors were affiliated to an institute of pathology, with a steady increase of this percentage within the course of the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 altered global publication activity by providing for an unprecedented number of publications combined with an acceleration of publication times irrespective of the geographical location and overall case numbers.