ArticlePloS one2022
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the life sciences.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 69 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
69 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Unpacking mathematical gender stereotypes: trends and directions from 25 years of research.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Antibacterial activity of medicinal plants on the management of mastitis in dairy cows: A systematic review.Veterinary medicine and science · 2023Pooled it
- Dengue virus infection in Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2023: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Pathogens and global healthPooled it
- Pre-emptiveFrontiers in pharmacology · 2026Trial
- Assessing Shifts in Research Priority Areas From the Neurological Community Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2026Article
- Building a case for accelerated clinical development of drugs and vaccines - what are the driving forces?Globalization and health · 2026Article
- Interactive, Personalized Patient Decision Aid for COVID-19 Vaccination in Canada: User-Centered Design Approach.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
- Current rat models of extracorporeal life support following global ischaemia: a scoping review.Intensive care medicine experimental · 2026Review
- Mapping the Evolution of Brain Organoid Research: A Decade of Progress and Future Perspectives (2015-2025).Molecular neurobiology · 2026Review
- Article
- Association between screen exposure and language development delay during the COVID-19 pandemic for 18-72 months children in China: evidence from a cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Mapping inequities in global vaccine sentiment research.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- Huntington's Disease Research Over Six Decades: Global Insights, Gaps, and Future Directions.Cureus · 2025Review
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on computational biology early career researchers: A global retrospective study.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Deficiency and Development: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Effects of Iron Deficiency on Human Development.Cureus · 2025Review
- ECOLOGICAL NICHE MODELING APPLICATIONS TO INFECTIOUS DISEASES.Biodiversity informatics · 2025Article
- Evaluating a novel reproduction number estimation method: a comparative analysis.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Evaluating Rabies Test Accuracy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Human and Canine Diagnostic Methods.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Vegetable Fibers in Cement Composites: A Bibliometric Analysis, Current Status, and Future Outlooks.Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- A twofold perspective on the quality of research publications: The use of ICTs and research activity models.PloS one · 2025Article
9 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
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The COVID-19 outbreak has posed an unprecedented challenge to humanity and science. On the one side, public and private incentives have been put in place to promptly allocate resources toward research areas strictly related to the COVID-19 emergency. However, research in many fields not directly related to the pandemic has been displaced. In this paper, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on world scientific production in the life sciences and find indications that the usage of medical subject headings (MeSH) has changed following the outbreak. We estimate through a difference-in-differences approach the impact of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific production using the PubMed database (3.6 Million research papers). We find that COVID-19-related MeSH terms have experienced a 6.5 fold increase in output on average, while publications on unrelated MeSH terms dropped by 10 to 12%. The publication weighted impact has an even more pronounced negative effect (-16% to -19%). Moreover, COVID-19 has displaced clinical trial publications (-24%) and diverted grants from research areas not closely related to COVID-19. Note that since COVID-19 publications may have been fast-tracked, the sudden surge in COVID-19 publications might be driven by editorial policy.
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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.