COVID-19; Anxiety; A Bibliometric Analysis; VOSviewer.
Background: The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the overall health and well-being brought fear, anxiety, worry, and mental health issues. Thus, a bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 and anxiety-related publications was performed to examine the current research trends and prospects to support policymakers, funding agencies, and researchers to safeguard the global population from post-COVID-19 psychological impact.
Methods: We used the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) to search relevant documents in the early stage of the outbreak up to date (October 21, 2021). Mesh heading terms were used to extract the relevant keywords indexed in medical databases: HistCite, R software, and VOSviewer.Var1.6.6 were adopted as bibliometric analysis tools.
Results: A bibliometric analysis was employed to examine 796 COVID-19- anxiety-related documents on WoSCC. Approximately 7,478 citations, average citations per document 0, and h_index 39 were recorded. The publications cover 3858 authors, 166 journals, 71 countries. The finding shows that Chen Lei from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, China was the most influential author. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health was the most active. Turkey and the USA are the most productive countries for COVID-19–Anxiety-related publications.
Conclusion: The study suggested that more studies should be conducted to address anxiety among developing countries. The network analysis and keyword visualization allowed verification of the current significant research focus and provided a paradigm for future research in the COVID-19 and Anxiety research.