Characterising COVID-19 empirical research production in Latin America and the Caribbean: A scoping review

  1. Cristián Mansilla
  2. Cristian A. Herrera
  3. Laura Boeira
  4. Andrea Yearwood
  5. Analia S. Lopez
  6. Luis E. Colunga-Lozano
  7. Eva Brocard
  8. Tatiana Villacres
  9. Marcela Vélez
  10. Gabriel Di Paolantonio
  11. Ludovic Reveiz

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Abstract

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID19) pandemic has struck Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) particularly hard. One of the crucial areas in the international community’s response relates to accelerating research and knowledge sharing. The aim of this article is to map and characterise the existing empirical research related to COVID-19 in LAC countries and contribute to identify opportunities for strengthening future research.

Methods

In this scoping review, articles published between December 2019 and 11 November 2020 were selected if they included an empirical component (explicit scientific methods to collect and analyse primary data), LAC population was researched, and the research was about the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of publication status or language. MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS, Scielo, CENTRAL and Epistemonikos were searched. All titles and abstracts, and full texts were screened by two independent reviewers. Data from included studies was extracted by one reviewer and checked by a second independent reviewer.

Results

14,406 records were found. After removing duplicates, 5,458 titles and abstracts were screened, of which 2,323 full texts were revised to finally include 1,626 empirical studies. The largest portion of research came from people/population of Brazil (54.6%), Mexico (19.1%), Colombia (11.2%), Argentina (10.4%), Peru (10.3%) and Chile (10%), while Caribbean countries concentrated 15.3%. The methodologies most used were cross-sectional studies (34.7%), simulation models (17.5%) and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (13.6%). Using a modified version of WHO’s COVID-19 Coordinated Global Research Roadmap classification, 54.2% were epidemiological studies, followed by clinical management (22.3%) and candidate therapeutics (12.2%). Government and public funds support were reported in 19.2% of studies, followed by universities or research centres (9%), but 47.5% did not include any funding statement.

Conclusion

During the first part of the COVID-19 pandemic, LAC countries have contributed to the global research effort primarily with epidemiological studies, with little participation on vaccines research, meaning that this type of knowledge would be imported from elsewhere. Research agendas could be further coordinated aiming to enhance shared self-sufficiency regarding knowledge needs in the region.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0263981
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.30.21261386: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Study selection: Duplicates were removed using EndNote® and Covidence®.
    Covidence®
    suggested: (Covidence, RRID:SCR_016484)
    The following characteristics of the included studies were extracted (see S1 Supporting information 2 for a complete description of each item extracted): The data extraction template was piloted with 10 studies by two authors, and the full data extraction process was conducted in Microsoft Excel ®.
    Microsoft Excel
    suggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)

    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Strengths and limitations of the review: This review has several strengths. Firstly, to our knowledge, this is the first study systematically mapping and characterising all empirical research produced in response to COVID-19 in LAC. Secondly, while most of the studies exploring COVID-19 research production have had a broad bibliometric focus (e.g. counting the total number of publications, not differentiating by their empirical nature), this review only includes empirical studies using at least some basic scientific method that have a higher likelihood of contributing with novel information to literature and decision making. Thirdly, most of the studies exploring countries’ involvement in COVID-19 research have looked for author’s affiliation, as opposed to the actual participation of country’s people or population, which is the main focus of this review. Finally, while evidence syntheses often consider certain type of study designs in their inclusion criteria, this review gathers all relevant empirical research, including all type of study designs and methods (e.g., modelling studies, basic science, etc.). Among the limitations of this review, we could only report the month of the studies at the time the searches were conducted, which might have missed some studies that became publicly available later but with earlier dates of publication. Another limitation relates to the possibility that some studies might have not explicitly described the scientific methods used to collec...

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.30.21261386v1 on medRxiv