The impact of COVID-19 on citations of laboratory medicine journals

This article provides objective estimation of the real impact that COVID-19 has had on laboratory medicine journals, as reflected by the number of citations to articles dealing with this specific topic during the past three years. The top-the number of citations to articles dealing with COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 published since January 2020 to present time in the top-ten laboratory medicine journals was 17,938 out of 38,319 citations to all articles published by these journals during the same period, thus yielding to an exceptional rate of 47% (i.e., one in two citation was for COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 articles). Nonetheless, such percentage decreased linearly over time, from 69% in2020, to 51% in2021 and, finally, to 33% in2022 (up to November 14), respectively (Pearson’s correlation, r=1.00; p=0.014). Although this trend was substantially consistent across most of the journals, the rate of COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 articles to all articles citations between 2020 and 2022 varied substantially, being the highest for Clin Chem Lab Med (67%), closely followed by Crit Rev Clin Lab Sci (62%), and was the lowest for Adv Clin Chem (0%), which only published a single article on the topic of COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2, in 2022. Importantly, no significant correlation was found between the 2021/2019 IF ratio and the ratio between citations to COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 articles and those to total articles (Pearson’s correlation, 0.25; p=0.490).