Coronavirus is a common disease between humans and animals (zoonosis) (1, 2), which is enveloped, non-segmented, and has positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus (3). Genotypically and serologically, there are four groups, with approximately thirty types of coronaviruses common to humans, mammals, and birds. So far, considerable attention has paid to international cases of Pathogenesis and pathology (5-7). COVID-19 identified by WHO in Wuhan, China, at the beginning of 2020 (6, 5, 2), is considered the most dangerous virus of this family these days and has raised severe health concerns for all countries of the world (13). The virus causes severe respiratory and intestinal infections in animals and humans (14) and subsequently leads to death (15).
With the increase of scientific publications, the importance of observing such studies has become more critical in assessing the effects of scientific output on the medical sciences and has become an integral part of monitoring the performance of organizations (20). Investigating the existing capacities helps policymakers and research managers in the ranking of performance quality assessment, correct and normative budget allocation (21).
Scientometrics studies in international citation databases such as WOS are one of the essential tools for observing medical research processes and developments (22). Now (March 2020), in line with the challenging and global spread of Coronavirus, medical scientists do many types of research and publish papers to find innovative solutions to prevent the virus. To this end, medical scientists, using various indexes and software to analyze Coronavirus, observe and evaluate research outputs and present their findings to science and technology researchers and policymakers.
Some of the most essential literatures related to scientific representation of medical sciences utilizing scientometrics methods and indicators in Iran and internationally include Coronaviruses bibliographic analysis (14), Nipah Virus (23), MERS-CoV (24), HPV (25), Parasitology (26), Diabetes (27), Surgery (28), Neonatal Healths (29).
A review of the literature indicates that different scientometrics tools have attracted the attention of medical scholars and have been useful in representing the structure of medical science knowledge by analyzing this method. Given the immense and strategic importance of Coronavirus and the increasing scientific publicity of this subject, the study of scientometrics of Coronavirus is of great importance.
The main issue of this paper is to determine the status of the knowledge structure of international Coronavirus research outputs. Representing the scientific structure from different angles will guide Coronavirus specialists and researchers and policymakers in the Ministry of Health and medical science associations. Based on the elaborated theoretical framework, the primary purpose of this paper was to analyze half a century of scientific publications of Coronavirus in the world using scientific methods and tools. It is essential to review the process of scientific publishing, the type of resources, citations to articles, and identify the top journals, researchers, countries, and organizations in this subject area to achieve this goal from 1970 to 2019.

 

This applied research was carried out using scientometrics methods and an analytical approach. The statistical population of this article includes 5128 Coronavirus subject area documents indexed on the WOS from 1970 to 2019. The keywords were extracted from the Mesh browser and analyzed using Excel 2016 software.