A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT ON STI LITERATURE

This study investigated how the COVID 19 pandemic impacted the STI literature. We addressed this question by comparing the contents of the STI literature before COVID-19 and since the pandemic's beginning, using bibliometric and clustering techniques as well as a systematic qualitative review of key publications. We find that the concentration in the top ten countries was lower in the Covid Publications than in the non-Covid ones and that the countries hit hard by the pandemic had a higher participation rate in the Covid publications set. Of the 27 selected journals, only 18 had Covid-related publications, and of these, only six journals had a higher participation rate in the Covid set. For the non-Covid publications set, the bibliographic coupling of the journals revealed a clear distinction between two groups, a management/business related one and one of core STI journals. For the 2019 and 2020_21 non-Covid publications set, we obtained a similar result of four clusters that were interpreted as representing the following topics: Firm Innovation, Innovation Management, Scientometrics, and Gender, respectively. With regard to the Covid publications, the cluster analysis revealed that the Covid related STI literature can be divided into four different thematic clusters: Economic Dynamics and Entrepreneurship; New Innovation Models; Scientometrics and Education. The overlay map analysis revealed that most of the shared terms between the non-Covid and Covid sets belonged the Scientometrics cluster, a research theme identified as central by clusters in both sets. Also, we found an intersection in the “Firm Innovation” cluster of the non-Covid publications centered around small business and entrepreneurship topics. However, the publications within the Covid set focused on their role in the economic dynamics and recovery. The Covid pandemic will have lasting effects on several dimensions of science, technology and innovation-related areas and this research aims to help to identify and gain insight into the potential STI knowledge fields related to the impact of Covid-19