Covid-19 and Cancer: A Scientometric Assessment of India's Publications During 2020–21

Abstract

The article examines and evaluates India's research output on the theme ‘Covid-19 and Cancer’ using bibliometric methods. A total of 520 India's publications were identified on the topic of ‘Covid-19 and Cancer’ in Scopus database, that were cited 2713 times with an average of 5.22 citations per paper. About 12.11% of these publications received external funding support and registered 8.25 citations per paper. The largest number of India's publictaions (88.46%) were published in Medicine journals and adults constitutes the largest population age group (15.38%) studied among India's total publications. Lung cancer research constitutes the largest publications share (9.42%) among different types of cancers and surgery reported the largest publication share among treatment methods studies in India's total publications on this topic. The maximum number of publications emerged from USA, Italy and U.K. (2641, 1357 and 1153 publications), and publications from China (24.56, Spain (14.52) and Italy (13.12) received the highest citation per paper. The organisations that produced the highest number of publications were Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai (75 papers), All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (63 papers), Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai (59 papers) and Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh (35 papers). The organisations with highest citation impact per paper and relative citation index were Tata Medical Center, Kolkata (13.0 and 2.49), BHU-Varanasi (12.70 and 2.43), VMMC and Safdarjang Hospital, New Delhi (5.0 and 0.96) and Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai (4.73 and 0.91). The authors that produced the highest number of publications were B. Biswas (12 papers), S. Bhatnagar (11 papers) and A. Batra (9 papers). The authors who had the highest citation impact per paper and relative citation index were P. Chaturvedi (13.25 and 2.54), C.S. Pramesh (12.29 and 2.35) and S. Gupta (4.0 and 0.77). The journals that produced the highest number of publications were Indian Journal of Medical and Paediatric Oncology (with 28 papers), Indian Journal of Surgical Oncology (19 papers) and Journal of Surgical Oncology (18 papers) and the most impactful journals were Clinical Oncology (19.17), JCO Global Oncology (19.09) and Indian Pediatrics (17.80). The most studied subfields as reflected in keyword frequency were Covid-19, Pandemic (332), Neoplasms (175), Cancer Patients (112), Malignant Neoplasm (100), Cancer Surgery (79) and Cancer Chemotherapy (66).