Auditing citation polarization during the early COVID-19 pandemic

• DOI: 10.1162/qss_a_00326
• Publication Date: 2024-08-28T15:59:27Z
• Authors: Taekho You; June Young Lee; Jinseo Park; Jinhyuk Yun
• Keywords: Pandemic; Publication; Citation analysis; Impact factor

Abstract The recent pandemic stimulated scientists to publish a significant amount of research that created surge citations COVID-19-related publications in short time, leading an abrupt inflation the journal impact factor (IF). By auditing complete set Web Science, we reveal here worsened polarization academic journals: IF before was proportional increment IF, which had effect increasing inequality while retaining rankings. We also found most highly cited studies related COVID-19 were published prestigious journals at onset epidemic. Through present quantitative investigation, our findings caution against belief metrics, particularly can indicate significance individual papers. Rather, such metrics reflect social attention given particular study.