Holistic Analysis of Coronavirus Literature: A Scientometric Study of the Global Publications Relevant to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), MERS-CoV (MERS) and SARS-CoV (SARS).

While in the 1980s, the United States and developed countries from Europe were major source countries and the virus was identified only as an animal disease in the literature and its biological and genetic structure was investigated, in the 2000s, China became a major contributor of coronavirus literature because the SARS outbreak originated from southern China. Almost all most-cited publications in this period are related to SARS and the ACE2 protein.