The emerging state of COVID-19 research as assessed through preprint servers

Researchers and scientists have responded in force to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2019-20. Much of this scientific information has been shared ahead of print via preprint servers. In order to help shed light on research priorities and trends, and guide researchers in gaps in the literature, we performed a bibliometric analysis of preprint articles pertaining to COVID-19 disseminated via bioRxiv and medRxiv (n=1,890 manuscripts as of April 18, 2020). We conducted two main analyses of these data: research themes by time and research productivity by geography. Data were compared against confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported to the World Health Organization. Our thematic analysis demonstrated a clear trend in the research activity, from pathogenesis, to outbreak epidemiology, and most recently clinical management and public health prevention. The majority of manuscripts were from China and the United States (55% of manuscripts), followed by the United Kingdom, India, Italy, and Germany (20% of manuscripts). Our work found that research has increased proportional to the pandemic and is resulting from authors affiliating with institutions in largely affected countries.