The 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related radiological articles: a comparative bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to identify the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19)-related radiological articles and compare their characteristics.

Materials and methods: We searched the Web of Science and Altmetric.com using the search terms "COVID," "COVID-19," "Coronavirus," "SARS-CoV-2," "nCoV," and "pandemic" to identify the most-cited and most-mentioned COVID-19-related articles. We identified the top 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned articles in the field of radiology, regardless of their publication journal. We extracted the information from the listed articles and compared the characteristics between the most-cited and most-mentioned.

Results: Thirty (30%) articles were featured in the lists of the most-cited and most-mentioned articles. The comparison of the 100 most-cited and most-mentioned articles on each list showed that the most frequently cited articles were published in November 2020 and before (p < .001), originated from China (p < .001), covered the topic of diagnosis of COVID-19 (p < .001), and were related to the subspecialty of pulmonary imaging (p < .001); the most frequently mentioned articles were published in December 2020 and after (p < .001), originated from the USA (p < .001), covered the topic of diagnosis of sequelae of COVID-19 (p = .013) and post-vaccination complications (p < .001), and were related to the subspecialties of cardiac imaging (p < .001) and neuroradiology (p < .013).

Conclusion: Significant differences were observed in publication date, country of origin, topic, and subspecialty of scientific knowledge related to COVID-19 in the field of radiology, between citation and public dissemination.

Clinical relevance statement: This bibliometric analysis compares the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related radiologic articles, aiming to provide valuable insights into the patterns of knowledge dissemination during the pandemic era.

Key points: • Thirty articles were featured on the lists of the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related articles. • The 70 unique most-cited articles more frequently originated from China (48.6%), while the unique most-mentioned articles more frequently originated from the USA (51.4%) (p < 0.001). • The 70 unique most-mentioned articles were more frequently related to cardiac imaging (25.7% vs.0%, p < 0.001) and neuroradiology (15.7% vs. 1.4%, p < 0.005) compared to the unique most-mentioned articles.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; COVID-19; Publications; Radiology; Research.