Analyzing the Intellectual Structure of Covid-19 Scientific Outputs in Iran: A Scientometrics Study

Purpose: With the outbreak of the Covid-19 disease in the Wuhan in China and its rapid spread in most countries of the world, many studies have been conducted on the various aspects of this disease throughout the world, and also in Iran. Research has a fundamental role understanding a problem and designing a strategy to deal with it. Therefore, the aim of the current research was to analyze the scientific metrics and draw the intellectual structure and concepts of the scientific outputs of Iranian researchers in the field of Covid-19 in the Web of Science database.
Methodology: This research is a descriptive and analytical study, which was carried out with the common techniques of scientometric studies and using co-word analysis and clustering. The statistical population of the research consists of all the studies of Iran about covid-19 in the Web of Science database in the period of 2020-2023; in which 10963 Iranian researchers’ scientific documents related to the field of covid-19 in Web of Science were retrieved. Then, data preparation and analysis, as well as drawing, using RaverPrimp (v. 1.2), SPSS (v. 23), UCInet and netdraw (v. 6) software used.
Findings: The findings of the research showed that a total of 10963 articles by 46487 authors in 2741 journals have played a role in the production of scientific documents in the field of Covid-19 by Iranian researchers. A total of 177 countries have cooperated with Iranian researchers in the production of documents in the field of Covid-19, and have produced entire articles. Also, a total of 3435 universities have played a role in the production of scientific documents in the field of Covid-19 by Iranian researchers. among the 4985 universities, Tehran University of Medical Sciences ranked first with 1247 articles, and Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Iran University of Medical Sciences ranked second and third with 850 and 573 articles, respectively. Also, the findings of the research showed that the trend of publishing articles was positive. According to the distribution of high-frequency keywords, the keyword "pandemic" is ranked first with 352 repetitions, followed by the words "infection" and "immunity" with 202 and 193 repetitions. Also, the findings of the centrality measures of rank, Betweenness, Closeness and Degree of authors and words of scientific documents produced in the field of Covid-19 by Iranian researchers were reported in the database. The results of the centrality analysis in the reviewed articles show that the author "Sahebkar, A" with a rank centrality of 0.975 is in first place, followed by "Rezaei, N" with a rank centrality of 0.869 in second place and the author "Banach, M" is in the third place with the degree of centrality of 0.709; also, the results of the Closeness centrality analysis show that the author "Rezaei, N" with a closeness centrality of 0.509 ranks first, followed by "Soltani, S" with a Closeness centrality of 0.505 and the author "Irvani, SSN" with a Centrality of 0.505. They rank 0.499 in the third place. The results of the Betweenness centrality analysis show that the author "Rezaei, N" with a degree of Betweenness centrality of 7.85 ranks first, followed by the author "Sahebkar, A" with a degree of Betweenness centrality of 7.251, and the author "Khosravi, A" with a degree of the intermediate centrality of 5.38 ranks third.
Conclusion: The Covid-19 pandemic requires the serious attention of scientists and researchers involved in scientific communication. The result of hierarchical clustering based on Bradford's law of 102 keywords in the research area, led to the formation of 13 thematic clusters, which are: Covid-19 and mental pressures (anxiety, stress, and depression); mental health and quality of life of nurses and healthcare workers; Observing health and performing physical activities in the prevention of the epidemic of Covid-19 (or the role of electronic services in the prevention of the epidemic of Covid-19); The effect of mesenchymal stem cells on modulating the immune system in Covid-19 (immune regulation and cells...); respiratory infectious diseases; tests for the diagnosis of covid 19 disease and antiviral treatments; Application of nanoparticles in production of corona vaccine; Examining the molecular structure of the corona virus through molecular dynamics simulation; Corona detection with artificial intelligence; Special care for the elderly with chronic diseases; kidney disorders in patients with covid 19; Prevention of acute respiratory infectious diseases in sensitive groups of the society; Effects of covid 19 on the central nervous system. The results show that the field of covid-19 is a wide field, and most of the topics related to covid-19 are in different fields, including epidemic, infection, SARS, and immunity, which have been of interest to researchers.