The rapid, massive growth of COVID-19 authors in the scientific literature

ABSTRACT We examined the extent to which the scientific workforce in different fields was engaged in publishing COVID-19-related papers. According to Scopus (data cut, March 1, 2021), 129,570 COVID-19-related publications included 495,010 unique authors, of which 211,894 authors had published at least 5 full papers in their career and 15,012 authors were at the top 2% of their scientific subfield based on a career-long composite citation indicator. The growth of COVID-19 authors was far more rapid and massive compared with cohorts of authors historically publishing on H1N1, Zika, Ebola, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. All 174 scientific subfields had some specialists who had published on COVID-19. In 98 of the 174 subfields of science, at least one in ten active, influential (top-2% composite citation indicator) authors in the subfield had authored something on COVID-19. 67 hyper-prolific authors had already at least 40 (and up to 160) COVID-19 publications each. Among the 300 authors with the highest composite citation indicator for their COVID-19 publications, most common countries were USA (n=75), China (n=60), UK (n=30), and Italy (n=20). The rapid and massive involvement of the scientific workforce in COVID-19-related work is unprecedented and creates opportunities and challenges. There is evidence for hyper-prolific productivity.