The early scientific literature response to the novel Coronavirus outbreak: who published what?

Introduction Recent events highlight how emerging and re-emerging pathogens are becoming global challenges for public health. In December 2019, a novel coronavirus has emerged. This has suddenly turned out into global health concern. Objectives Aim: of this research is to focus on the bibliometric aspects in order to measure what is published in the first 30-days of a global epidemic outbreak Methods We searched PubMed database in order to find all relevant studies in the first 30-days from the first publication. Results From the initial 442 identified articles, 234 were read in-extenso. The majority of papers come from China, UK and USA. 63.7% of the papers were commentaries, editorials and reported data and only 17.5% of the sources used data directly collected on the field. Topics mainly addressed were “epidemiology”, “preparedness” and “generic discussion”. NNR showed a reduction for both the objectives assessed from January to February. Conclusions “Diagnosis” and effective preventive and therapeutic measures were the fields in which more research is still needed. The vast majority of scientific literature in the first 30-days of an epidemic outbreak is based on reported data rather than primary data. Nevertheless, the scientific statements and public health decisions rely on these data. Strengths of our study This is the first bibliometric research in Pubmed Database on the first 30 days of publications regarding the novel Coronavirus (SARS-nCoV-2) outbreak of 2019. The vast majority of publication in the first 30-days of an epidemic outbreak are reported data or comments, and only a small fraction of the papers have directly collected data. Limitations of our study Our research is only PubMed based. It ill be auspicable to consult more than one relevant database in future papers. In addition, we excluded non-English publications leading to a potential bias due to the fact that the outbreak started in China.