The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted science in 2020 — and transformed research publishing, show data collated and analysed by Nature.

Around 4 % of the world’s research output was devoted to the coronavirus in 2020, according to database Dimensions. But 2020 also saw a sharp increase in articles on all subjects being submitted to scientific journals – perhaps because many researchers had to stay at home and focus on writing up papers rather than conducting science.

Submissions to publisher Elsevier’s journals alone were up by around 270,000 – or 58 % – between February and May when compared with the same period in 2019, one analysis found. The increase was even higher for health and medicine titles, at a whopping 92 %.

More than 30,000 of the COVID-19 articles published in 2020 were preprints – between 17 % and 30 % of total COVID-19 research papers (depending on database searched). And, according to Dimensions, one-tenth of all preprints this year were about COVID-19.

More than half of the preprints appeared on one of three sites – medRxiv, SSRN and Research Square (see «Coronavirus preprints»).

Source: https://www.infodocket.com/2020/12/17/report-how-a-torrent-of-covid-science-changed-research-publishing-in-seven-charts/