Path analysis of Sino-foreign scientific and technological cooperation in COVID-19 research / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To provide a basis for policy support of Sino-foreign cooperation in the area of COVID-19, through exploring the composition, integration and main path of Sino-foreign scientific research cooperation in this field.Methods:Based on bibliometrics theory and the core database of Web of Science, Sino-foreign cooperative literatures in COVID-19 research area were screened to construct the keyword co-occurrence network. VOSviewer 1.6.16 software was used for cluster analysis, internal and external connectivity measurement and path exploration.Results:In COVID-19 research area, there were 61 countries, each of which had published more than 10 papers in cooperation with China. The proportion of Sino-US cooperative papers was the highest, accounting for 48.0%. The collaborative research field was divided into five clusters basic medicine, clinical medicine, public mental health, epidemiology, and environmental impacts. The internal connectivity rate of basic medicine cluster was the highest(60.2%), and the lowest was epidemiology cluster(20.1%). The integration degree of basic medicine cluster and clinical medicine cluster was high, and the number of connecting nodes accounted for 27.7% and 21.9% in the two clusters. Through path analysis, a collaborative research main path of " emergent transmission-infection mechanism-clinical characteristics-anxiety" had been formed in the field.Conclusions:Sino-foreign scientific and technological cooperation in the field of COVID-19 was still in the early stage of development, but the research clusters had initially constructed. Some clusters showed high convergence and integration, and formed a main path of the collaborative research field. In order to realize the in-depth development of research in this field and the full utilization of cooperation resources, the health management department can formulate accurate health policies of scientific and technological cooperation for the development stages of different clusters according to the main path.