How did research article publications on the COVID-19 pandemic progress in the Q1 ranked SCImage index journals in 2020?

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this paper is to survey the COVID-19 research articles in Q1 ranked high SJR index journals according to the SCImago journal rank indicator.
 Material and Method: The study was carried out on the website named "https://www.scimagojr.com". The search was conducted by selecting the criteria “medicine”, “pathology and forensic medicine”, “all regions/countries”, “journals”, and the “2020” as the year. Only 50 scientific journals met these criteria. COVID-19-related and unrelated research articles published in these journals were manually scanned. Review articles, book reviews, conferences, commentaries, case reports, mini reviews, short communications, letters to the editor were not included in the study. COVID-19 related research articles were divided into groups in terms of antemortem and postmortem type of the study by reviewing the abstract of the studies and also grouped according to the country of first author and countries of all authors. 
 Results: A total of 3906 research articles published in 50 journals with Q1 SJR index over 0.887 were investigated. Of these 3906 research articles, 40 of them were related to COVID-19. 31 of these 40 COVID-19 related research articles were antemortem and 9 were postmortem studies. Among these 40 COVID-19 related scientific articles, the first author of publications belonged to 12 countries. United States, Australia, China, and Italy were found to be the most productive countries for published research articles on COVID-19 in selected high SJR index journals. The United States was the country with the highest number of first authors with 15 articles. China was the country with the highest number of multinational author list research articles.
 Conclusion: We believe that the number and content of studies conducted in these high-quality scientific journals on COVID-19 make important contributions and understanding in the fields of disease transmission, disease prevention, course and severity of symptoms, pathophysiology, molecular characteristics, and treatment approach processes.