Bibliometric analysis of contributions to COVID-19 research in Malaysia

INTRODUCTION: The advent of COVID-19 has led to an exponential rise in related publications to provide a knowledge driven approach to tame the tide of infection and impact in all spheres. This study gives an insight into COVID-19 research publication pattern in Malaysia using bibliometric analysis.

METHOD: COVID-19 publications on Scopus database between January 1, 2020, and August 26, 2022, were extracted using predetermined search strings. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were set, and data was extracted from the database. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize our findings.

RESULTS: A total of 3,553 COVID-19 related papers were retrieved out of global count of 392,613 and 16,466 for Southeast Asia (SEA). This implies that 0.9% and 21.6% is contributed globally and SEA respectively. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are the three top countries with highest research outputs in the region. This may be correlated to high GDP per capita, research and development, and research and development expenditure. Most of the publications are article/original research (n = 2832, 67%). Ministry of Higher education is the top funding sponsor and Universiti Malaya is the highest contributor and the most cited (n = 466, 4920 citations). The majority of publications are from physical sciences (30.3%), but medicine subcategory produced the highest number of papers (1,586). The top journal was International Journal of Environmental and Public Health (n = 96 publications). Most active collaborating country was the United Kingdom and most active author was from Monash University.

CONCLUSION: Malaysian institutions have made profound contributions to COVID-19 research globally and in SEA. However, there is a need for continuous efforts to improve research outputs on the topic.