Profiling of Malaysian and global scientific research on COVID-19

This study investigates the scientific collaboration network of Malaysian and global researchers in terms of literature growth, organization, authors, co-authorship countries, research areas, and topics of COVID-19 studies. It analyzes academic publications about COVID-19 from Malaysian researchers by comparing their findings with those of international studies in the social sciences and sciences based on papers published between 1st January 2020 and 30th November 2021. The comparison covers literature growth, countries, organizations, co-authorship countries, research areas, and keywords co-occurrences. The results show that Malaysian researchers have published the most research in the areas of public environmental occupational health, environmental sciences ecology, and science technology, whilst non-Malaysian publications have focused more on general internal medicine, public environmental occupational health, and infectious diseases. The findings relate only to COVID-19 published and indexed in Web of Science among Malaysian researchers. Academic researchers should consider whether their current collaborations and areas of topic relating to COVID-19 are able to address the evolving demands of pandemic societies. The COVID-19 pandemic has generated an enormous amount of academic research to address its medical and societal implications. Although the global dimension of the academic response to the pandemic has been analyzed, it is not clear whether all types of countries have reacted similarly. The results show that academic research is becoming more widely spread with new demands and challenges in response to COVID-19.