World Science against COVID-19: Gender and Geographical Distribution of Research

In just a year and a half, an enormous volume of scientific research has been generated throughout the world to study a virus/disease that turned into a pandemic. All the articles on COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 included in the SCI-EXPANDED database (Web of Science), signed by more than a third of a million of authorships, were analyzed. Gender could be identified in 92% of the authorships. Women represent 40% of all authors, a similar proportion as first authors, but just 30% as last/senior authors. The pattern of collaboration shows an interesting finding: when a woman signs as a first or last/senior author, the article byline approximates gender parity

According to the corresponding address, the USA shares 22.8% of all world articles, followed by China (14.4%), Italy (7.8%), the UK (5.8%), India (4.2%), Spain (3.8%), Germany (3.6%), France (2.9%), Turkey (2.5%), and Canada (2.4%).

Despite their short lives, the papers received an average of 11 citations. The high impact of papers from China is striking (25.1 citations; the UK, 12.4 citations; the USA, 11.3 citations), presumably because the disease emerged in China, and the first publications (very cited) came from there.