COVID-19 and Substance Use: A Scientometric Assessment of Global Publications During 2020 and 2021
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aim: This study aimed to assess the characteristics and trends of research on substance use and COVID-19. Methods: Keywords related to “Covid-19” and “Substance Use” were used in a search query formulated for the Scopus search engine. The articles published during the years 2020 and 2021, through early November 2021, were considered. Results: A total of 2184 publications were published on this topic, averaging 9.69 citations per paper. About one-seventh (13.96%) share of global publications was supported by extramural funding support. The maximum number of publications emerged from the United States of America (USA) ( n = 831; 38.05%), followed by the United Kingdom (UK) ( n = 212; 9.71%), India ( n = 165; 7.55%), and Canada (155 papers; 7.10%). In terms of citation impact, publications emerging from China (24.42 and 2.52) had the highest citation impact, followed by publications emerging from Australia (18.83 and 1.94), France (16.48 and 1.70), the UK (15.44 and 1.59), Italy (13.36 and 1.38), and Canada (12.73 and 1.31). When the data in terms of specific institutes were evaluated, Harvard Medical School, USA ( n = 52), was ranked first in productivity, followed by the University of Toronto, Canada ( n = 47); the Yale School of Medicine, USA ( n = 35); INSERM, France ( n = −29); and the University of British Columbia, Canada ( n = 2s). The University College London, UK (30.24 and 3.12), ranked first in citation impact, followed by INSERM, France (22.0 and 2.27); the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (17.4 and 1.8); and the University of Toronto, Canada (13.68 and 1.41). When the journals were evaluated, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ( n = 83) ranked first in publication productivity, followed by the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment ( n = 73), Frontiers in Psychology ( n = 39), Drug and Alcohol Dependence ( n = 28), and International Journal of Drug Policy ( n = 26). Conclusion: This bibliometric study suggests that a large amount of literature has accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic on substance use disorders, both from developed and developing countries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.060 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.110 | 0.132 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".