ArticlePloS one2020
Consolidation in a crisis: Patterns of international collaboration in early COVID-19 research.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 61 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
61 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 162 citations in OpenAlex.
- Advances in NLRP3 inflammasome research in viral infections: evolution, trends, and future directions.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Pooled it
- Mitochondrial transfer in cancer: a global bibliometric analysis.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Pooled it
- Experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic as a healthcare provider in rural Dhanbad, India: An interpretative phenomenological analysis.PloS one · 2022Trial
- Article
- International Collaboration to Develop and Harmonize Drug Interaction Guidance for Nirmatrelvir/Ritonavir During COVID-19: Lessons Learned for Future Pandemic Preparedness.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2026Article
- Participatory development of nursing curricula - a Global North-South partnership between Norwegian and Ethiopian universities.BMC nursing · 2026Article
- Improving modelling for epidemic response: a progress update from a community of UK infectious disease modellers.Interface focus · 2025Article
- Assessment of SDG 3 Research Priorities and COVID-19 Recovery Pathways: A Case Study from University of the Western Cape, South Africa.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- The pivot penalty in research.Nature · 2025Article
- The gravity of the status quo: the response of research governance to system-level shocks.Higher education · 2025Article
- Academic generational differences in Chinese universities: Work preferences, research behaviors and research outputs.PloS one · 2025Article
- Re-evaluating the gender gap: a cross-sectional analysis of accepted American Academy of Neurology annual meeting abstracts in 2020 and 2021.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2024Article
- Evolution of global scientific collaboration in mRNA vaccine research: Insights from bibliometric and social network analysis (2010~2023).Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2023Article
- Opportunities arising from the COVID-19: an international orthopaedic surgeons' perspective.European journal of orthopaedic surgery & traumatology : orthopedie traumatologie · 2023Article
- Global COVID-19 Policy Engagement With Scientific Research Information: Altmetric Data Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- [Health Services research in Germany in Times of COVID-19: How Does the Pandemic Influence Research Processes, Methods and the Personal Situation of Researchers? An Online Survey].Gesundheitswesen (Bundesverband der Arzte des Offentlichen Gesundheitsdienstes (Germany)) · 2023Article
- Professional challenges of nurses working during the SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic.International journal of occupational medicine and environmental health · 2023Article
- Opportunities and Challenges for Psychological Research Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned from a Group of Early-Career Researchers in Quito, Ecuador.Trends in psychology · 2023Article
- The pandemic veneer: COVID-19 research as a mobilisation of collective intelligence by the global research community.Collective intelligence · 2023Article
- Academic Research and Institutional Breakthrough: Theoretical Analysis Under COVID-19.Journal of the knowledge economy · 2022Article
1 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This paper seeks to understand whether a catastrophic and urgent event, such as the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerates or reverses trends in international collaboration, especially in and between China and the United States. A review of research articles produced in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that COVID-19 research had smaller teams and involved fewer nations than pre-COVID-19 coronavirus research. The United States and China were, and continue to be in the pandemic era, at the center of the global network in coronavirus related research, while developing countries are relatively absent from early research activities in the COVID-19 period. Not only are China and the United States at the center of the global network of coronavirus research, but they strengthen their bilateral research relationship during COVID-19, producing more than 4.9% of all global articles together, in contrast to 3.6% before the pandemic. In addition, in the COVID-19 period, joined by the United Kingdom, China and the United States continued their roles as the largest contributors to, and home to the main funders of, coronavirus related research. These findings suggest that the global COVID-19 pandemic shifted the geographic loci of coronavirus research, as well as the structure of scientific teams, narrowing team membership and favoring elite structures. These findings raise further questions over the decisions that scientists face in the formation of teams to maximize a speed, skill trade-off. Policy implications are discussed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.