The long shadow of COVID-19

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  • 1University of Antwerp, Faculty of Social Sciences, B-2020 Antwerpen, Belgium;
    2KU Leuven, Facultair Onderzoekscentrum ECOOM, Naamsestraat 61, Leuven B-3000, Belgium;
    3Laboratory of Metric Studies on Information (LEMI). Department of Library and Information Science. Carlos III University of Madrid. C/Madrid 126, Getafe, 28903 Madrid, Spain;
    4Research Institute for Higher Education and Science (INAECU). Carlos III University of Madrid-Autonomous University of Madrid. C/Madrid 126, Getafe, 28903 Madrid, Spain
† Ronald Rousseau (Email: ronald.rousseau@uantwerpen.be; ronald.rousseau@kuleuven.be).

Received date: 2025-05-09

  Revised date: 2025-05-19

  Accepted date: 2025-05-19

  Online published: 2025-05-23

Abstract

Purpose: Despite the global shutdown of universities and research laboratories in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a significant and unexpected increase in scientific production was observed during 2020 and especially in 2021 (Rousseau et al., 2023). A plausible explanation is that researchers took advantage of the lockdown period to write and develop pre-existing ideas. But what happened once that stockpile of ideas was exhausted?
Design/methodology/approach: This study aims to address that question by analyzing the scientific output of fourteen highly productive countries using data from three databases: WoS, Scopus, and OpenAlex.
Findings: Our analysis shows that, following the production peak in 2021, there was a general decline over the next two years (2022 and 2023) across most Western countries, including Japan and Brazil. However, this trend was not observed in China or India, which have maintained sustained growth since 2021. Russia, by contrast, has shown a continuous decline since 2021, likely related to its involvement in armed conflicts. Notably, this pattern of decline persists even when excluding the broad category of Life Sciences and Biomedicine.
Research limitation: The observed phenomenon cannot be fully explained. A broader understanding would require the wide distribution of a questionnaire among researchers and institutions.
Practical implications: This study provides insight into how the scientific system responded through its publication output to the temporary suspension of research institutions’ activities during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Originality/value: Our analysis contributes to understanding the unusual trends in research publications due to the pandemic’s influence. It can be seen as a discussion of a natural experiment in the science of science.

Cite this article

Ronald Rousseau, Carlos Garcia-Zorita, Elias Sanz-Casado . The long shadow of COVID-19[J]. Journal of Data and Information Science, 0 : 1 -1 . DOI: 10.2478/jdis-2025-0035

References

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