To the Editor,
The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced emergency medicine (EM) practice tremendously in 2020. The impact also emerged in EM journals. We did a brief study on the trend of COVID-19 related publications in EM journals in 2020. Journal list was adopted from 2019 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) category of EM [1]. All publication data were retrieved from SCOPUS database on December 25, 2020 [2]. A total of 762 COVID-19 related publications were found in 7287 (10.46% of total) EM journal publications. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine (AJEM) published the most COVID-19 related publications (183, 72 published, 111 in press) followed by the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine (66 published), and Resuscitation (57, 53 published, 4 in press). Out of the 1165 publications in the AJEM in 2020, 15.71% were COVID-19 related publications. Forty-nine countries published at least one COVID-19 related articles in EM journals. The United States published the most (286, 37.53% of total) which were followed by Italy (48, 6.30%), Canada (46, 6.04%), United Kingdom (45, 5.91%), and Spain (44, 5.77%). The majority publication types were Article (373, 49.0% of total), Letter (226, 29.7%), and Review (67, 8.8%).
These publication trends reflected that both emergency physicians and EM journals respond to COVID-19 pandemic quickly from the perspective of publications. The United States played the major role in COVID-19 research in EM journals. Almost 30% of publications were in Letter format which indicated the importance of short and brief format of publication on transmitting updated information at early stage of emerging disease. The publication trend on COVID-19 publications in EM journals provided guidance for authors when submitting COVID-19 related research.
References
- 1.Journal Citation Reports. 2019. https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/journal-citation-reports/ Available from:
- 2.Scopus Database. 2020. https://www.scopus.com/home.uri Available at.