A Review of Global Collaboration on COVID-19 Research during the Pandemic in 2020

Abstract

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, which has become a severe threat to the health and sustainability of human life, scholars have published numerous research results. Although the importance of international research collaboration has been highlighted as a means of overcoming this global crisis, research on this particular problem has been lacking. Therefore, this study focused on the response of academia to COVID-19 by examining the collaboration between international research, and its impact. This study extracted data from Scopus, sampling articles and reviews published in 2020. By analyzing scenarios by country and international research collaboration based on data on authors’ nationalities and the research areas of documents, this study revealed that the United States and China contributed the most. In all countries, most research was conducted on medicine. European and American countries demonstrated significant interest in the social sciences and Asian countries in the life sciences. Furthermore, some countries, including Belgium and Pakistan, extended their research interests through international research collaboration. The results of this study highlight the importance of international research collaboration across various areas by overcoming the regional imbalance in intercountry collaboration and the concentration on a limited scope of subjects.