Bibliometric Analysis of COVID-19 in the Context of Migration Health: A Study Protocol

  1. Sweetmavourneen Pernitez-Agan
  2. Mary Ann Bautista
  3. Janice Lopez
  4. Margaret Sampson
  5. Kolitha Wickramage

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Abstract

Introduction

Human mobility has been pivotal to the spread of COVID-19 through travel and migration. To mitigate the spread, most countries have imposed strict travel restrictions that have severely affected both the wellbeing and livelihoods of many migrant and mobile populations (both internally and internationally), particularly those from impoverished communities, those affected by humanitarian crises, including populations displaced and/or living in camps and camp-like settings. The need to include migrants (both regular and irregular or ‘undocumented’) in national strategic response plans for disease prevention and control has been increasingly recognized. Better understanding of the existing scientific evidence in migration health is crucial in designing effective response measures. In this paper, we present a protocol for a bibliometric analysis of scientific publications on COVID-19 and migration health. Expected study findings aim to provide valuable information to support evidence mapping on COVID-19 and migration health, particularly the identification of important research gaps.

Methods and analysis

Using Elsevier’s Scopus abstract and citation database, a comprehensive search strategy will be applied to map scientific publications on COVID-19 and migration health. The current analysis will focus on research published from 1 January 2020 to 4 May 2020. The search query on migration health will largely focus on migration, migrant and human mobility-related terms. Three reviewers will screen publications for eligibility. The extracted bibliographic information will be analysed to determine the dominant research themes, country coverage and migrant groups. Collaboration networks will be analysed using VosViewer, a network analysis software. A deep dive on dominant research themes or migrant health-related topics will be done by creating visualization network maps of keywords from the retrieved publications.

Ethics and dissemination

This analysis will draw on publicly available data and does not directly involve human participants; ethics review is not required.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.09.20149401: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Citation database: Scopus, a citation and abstract database of peer-reviewed literature developed by Elsevier, will be used to retrieve publications on COVID-19 and migration health.
    Elsevier
    suggested: (Elsevier, RRID:SCR_013811)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.09.20149401v1 on medRxiv