European Radiology (2024) 34:1167–1175

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-023-10001-x

IMAGING INFORMATICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The 100 most‑cited and 100 most‑mentioned COVID‑19‑related

radiological articles: a comparative bibliometric analysis
Jiyeon Ha1 · Dae Young Yoon1 · Sora Baek1 · Chae Woon Lee1 · Kyoung Ja Lim1 · Young Lan Seo1 · Eun Joo Yun1

Received: 6 December 2022 / Revised: 23 May 2023 / Accepted: 5 June 2023 / Published online: 15 August 2023
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to European Society of Radiology 2023

Abstract
Objectives This study aimed to identify the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-
19)–related radiological articles and compare their characteristics.
Materials and methods We searched the Web of Science and Altmetric.com using the search terms “COVID,” “COVID-19,” “Coro-
navirus,” “SARS-CoV-2,” “nCoV,” and “pandemic” to identify the most-cited and most-mentioned COVID-19-related articles. We
identified the top 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned articles in the field of radiology, regardless of their publication journal.
We extracted the information from the listed articles and compared the characteristics between the most-cited and most-mentioned.
Results Thirty (30%) articles were featured in the lists of the most-cited and most-mentioned articles. The comparison of the 100
most-cited and most-mentioned articles on each list showed that the most frequently cited articles were published in November 2020
and before (p < .001), originated from China (p < .001), covered the topic of diagnosis of COVID-19 (p < .001), and were related to
the subspecialty of pulmonary imaging (p < .001); the most frequently mentioned articles were published in December 2020 and after
(p < .001), originated from the USA (p < .001), covered the topic of diagnosis of sequelae of COVID-19 (p = .013) and post-vacci-
nation complications (p < .001), and were related to the subspecialties of cardiac imaging (p < .001) and neuroradiology (p < .013).
Conclusion Significant differences were observed in publication date, country of origin, topic, and subspecialty of scientific
knowledge related to COVID-19 in the field of radiology, between citation and public dissemination.
Clinical relevance statement This bibliometric analysis compares the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related
radiologic articles, aiming to provide valuable insights into the patterns of knowledge dissemination during the pandemic era.
Key Points
• Thirty articles were featured on the lists of the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related articles.
• The 70 unique most-cited articles more frequently originated from China (48.6%), while the unique most-mentioned articles
more frequently originated from the USA (51.4%) (p < 0.001).
• The 70 unique most-mentioned articles were more frequently related to cardiac imaging (25.7% vs.0%, p < 0.001) and
neuroradiology (15.7% vs. 1.4%, p < 0.005) compared to the unique most-mentioned articles.

Keywords COVID-19 · Radiology · Research · Publications · Bibliometrics

Abbreviations
Dae Young Yoon and Sora Baek contributed equally as co-
corresponding authors for this study. AAS Altmetric Attention Score
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease-2019
* Dae Young Yoon CT Computed tomography
evee0914@chollian.net IF Impact factor
* Sora Baek MRI Magnetic resonance imaging
sorab0625@gmail.com
1
Department of Radiology, Kangdong Seong-Sim Hospital,
Hallym University College of Medicine, 150, Seongan‑Ro,
Gangdong‑Gu, Seoul 05355, Republic of Korea

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Introduction
Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) was first detected in
December 2019 and has spread rapidly worldwide, leading to
an ongoing pandemic [1, 2]. The lack of knowledge coupled
with the need to generate information has led to an unprece-
dented surge in scientific publications and their dissemination.
Since the development of citation indexing in the 1960s,
the number of citations has been widely used to assess the
impact of scientific articles in a given field. The number of
citations reflects the impact of a particular article among
researchers rather than the interest of a broad audience [3, 4].
With the advent of the Internet and the recent growth
of social media, the concept of non-traditional alternative
article-level metrics (Altmetrics) was introduced in the
early 2010s. This new metric measures the impact of an
article based on its number of mentions in various online
sources, reflecting its dissemination to the general public
in comparison to the citation counts [5, 6].
Several previous studies [7–13] have conducted biblio-
metric analyses to investigate the responses of both the aca-
demic community and the general public to COVID-19-re-
lated articles during the pandemic. Given the unprecedented
impact of the COVID-19 infectious disease on the existing
healthcare system, as well as the resultant public interest
and fear, we hypothesized that the differences between these
two sets of articles would be more prominent. In this study,
we aim to identify the most important radiologic works
related to the COVID-19 pandemic by providing compre-
hensive lists of the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned
articles. Our research aims to not only identify the most
impactful articles but also explore the discernible differ-
ences between the articles that garnered greater attention
within academic circles and those that generated interest
among the general public. We anticipate that our findings
will provide valuable insights into the dissemination pat-
terns of knowledge through academic articles.
Materials and methods
This study was a bibliometric analysis that did not involve
human subjects, and the need for institutional review board
approval was waived.
Search strategy
We searched for COVID-19-related articles using the fol-
lowing combination of search terms: (COVID-19 OR coro-
navirus OR SARS-CoV-2 OR nCoV OR pandemic) [Title]
AND (2019/12/01 to 2022/04/21) [Publication Date].
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European Radiology (2024) 34:1167–1175
The number of citations for each article was searched
using the “Cited Reference Search” utility of the Web of
Science (Clarivate Analytics) to select the 100 most-cited
COVID-19-related articles.
For the selection of the 100 most-mentioned COVID-
19-related articles, the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS)
of each article was searched using the “Advanced Search”
in Altmetric Explorer (https://​www.​altme​tric.​com/​explo​rer,
Altmetric LLP). AAS reflects a weighted total of all “men-
tions” of an article on various online platforms, including
public policy documents, blogs, mainstream media, Wiki-
pedia, online reference managers (e.g., Mendeley), research
highlights, post-publication peer-review platforms, Open
Syllabus Project, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter [6].
No restrictions were applied regarding the type of arti-
cle, journal, or language used. All searches were conducted
over the Internet on a specific day (April 21, 2022) to avoid
changes in the citation number and ASS of the articles.
Data were ranked in descending order based on the cita-
tion count and AAS to select the 100 most-cited and 100
most-mentioned COVID-19-related radiological articles.
Identification of the 100 most‑cited and 100
most‑mentioned articles
For this study, “a radiological article” was defined as an article
that focuses primarily on medical imaging, imaging techniques,
and imaging interpretation, or that has an impact or relevance
on the average radiologist’s daily clinical practice, regardless of
their publication journal. Articles that mainly focused on other
specialties rather than radiology were excluded from this study.
Two reviewers (J.H. and D.Y.Y., board-certified radiologists)
independently reviewed the titles and abstracts of each arti-
cle to ensure that they were radiological articles and generated
the final lists of the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned
COVID-19-related radiological articles. There was no disagree-
ment between the two reviewers regarding article selection.
Data extraction from articles
The following information was extracted from each of the
100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related
radiological articles: (i) number of citations; (ii) AAS; (iii)
year and month of publication (date of electronic publication
or date of print publication if the date of electronic publica-
tion was not available); (iv) publishing journal; (v) subject
category of journals (radiology, other specialties, or multidis-
ciplinary); (vi) journal impact factor (IF) based on the Journal
Citation Reports (JCR) 2020 edition (Clarivate Analytics);
(vii) quartile based on the journal IF; (viii) language; (ix)
affiliated department of the first and corresponding authors;
European Radiology (2024) 34:1167–1175
(x) number of authors; (xi) country of origin; (xii) col-
laboration (none, interdepartmental, multi-institutional, or
international); (xiii) document type (original article [report
that investigated clearly stated objectives or hypotheses and
contained specifically articulated methods and results sec-
tions], review, case report, letter, guideline/consensus, edito-
rial, technical note, pictorial essay, or miscellaneous); (xiv)
main topic (diagnosis of COVID-19, diagnosis of sequelae
of COVID-19, diagnosis of co-existing disease in patients
with COVID-19, diagnosis of post-vaccination complica-
tion, treatment, education, radiologists, or miscellaneous);
(xv) radiological subspecialty (abdominal, breast, cardiac,
pulmonary, genitourinary, musculoskeletal [including spine],
neuroradiology, head and neck, pediatric, thyroid, vascular/
interventional, combined [more than one category], or mis-
cellaneous); (xvi) imaging modality used (computed tomog-
raphy [CT], conventional radiography, magnetic resonance
imaging [MRI], ultrasonography, angiography, mammogra-
phy, scintigraphy, positron emission tomography, combined
[more than one imaging modality used], or miscellaneous);
(xvii) artificial intelligence (AI) (application or none); (xviii)
accessibility (open-access or pay-for-access); and (xviiii)
funding (none, government, private, industry, or multiple).
For our research, the corresponding author’s country was
considered the country of origin of the publication because
the corresponding author takes the primary responsibility
for communication with the journal during the manuscript
submission, peer-review, and publication processes. If the
corresponding author(s) had affiliation with more than one
country or was a group author, the country of origin of the
publication was determined based on the first author’s coun-
try. The journal quartile was divided into five groups based
on the journal IF in each subject category in the JCR 2020
edition: Q1 (top 25%), Q2 (25−50%), Q3 (50−75%), Q4
(75−100%), and not applicable. Journals were classified as
“not applicable” if they did not have journal IF. If a jour-
nal appeared in more than one subject category, the highest
quartile of the journal was considered.
Two reviewers (J.H. and D.Y.Y.) independently extracted
the data from the articles. A third reviewer (E.J.Y., a board-
certified radiologist) resolved any disagreements between
the reviewers.
Analyses
This study adopted a descriptive research approach using
bibliometric analysis. We compared the characteristics of
COVID-19-related radiological articles that were most-
cited and most-mentioned, using either the chi-square test or
Fisher’s exact test. Statistical analyses were performed with
Statistical Product and Service Solutions software (version
21.0; IBM), and the p-value was set at < 0.05.
1169
Results
The 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-re-
lated radiological articles are listed in Supplementary Tables E1
and E2, respectively. Thirty (30%) articles were featured in the
lists of the 100 most-cited (Supplementary Table E1) and 100
most-mentioned (Supplementary Table E2) articles. The num-
ber of citations for the 100 most-cited articles ranged from 2762
to 129 (median, 219), and the AAS for the 100 most-mentioned
articles ranged from 13,889 to 216 (median, 417).
The first most-cited article was “Correlation of Chest CT
and RT-PCR Testing for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-
19) in China: A Report of 1014 Cases” by Ai et al published in
Radiology in February 2020 [14]. This article was also ranked
at the 5th position in the list of the most-mentioned articles.
The first most-mentioned article was “Outcomes of Cardio-
vascular MRI in Patients Recently Recovered From Coronavi-
rus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)” by Puntmann et al, published
in JAMA Cardiology in July 2020 [15]. This article was also
ranked at the 7th position on the list of most-cited articles.
Radiology was the predominant journal, publishing the
highest number of most-cited (n = 27) and most-mentioned
(n = 32) articles. The next leading journals were the Euro-
pean Radiology (n = 8) for the most-cited articles and the
American Journal of Roentgenology (n = 5) for the most-
mentioned articles (Table 1). The countries with the highest
number of the most-cited COVID-19-related radiology arti-
cles included China (n = 48), followed by the USA (n = 14)
and Italy (n = 10). In contrast, the USA generated the highest
number of the most-mentioned articles (n = 43), followed by
China (n = 17), France, and the UK (n = 7 each) (Table 2).
Among the 30 overlapping articles, the majority were about
the diagnosis of COVID-19 (n = 18). The related subspecial-
ties of the overlapped articles were mainly pulmonary imaging
(n = 21), followed by neuroradiology (n = 3) and cardiac imaging
(n = 3). The modality used most frequently in overlapped studies
was CT (n = 19), followed by MRI (n = 5) and US (n = 3).
The comparison of the characteristics of the 100 articles
on each list is summarized in Table 3. The most frequently
cited articles were published in November 2020 and before
(p < 0.001), originated from China (p < 0.001), had multi-
institutional collaboration (p < 0.05), covered the topic of
diagnosis of COVID-19 (p < 0.001), were related to the
subspecialty of pulmonary imaging (p < 0.001), used CT
(p < 0.001), and used AI methods (p < 0.001).
In contrast, the most frequently mentioned articles were
published in December 2020 and after (p < 0.001), origi-
nated in the USA (p < 0.001), had inter-department col-
laboration (p < 0.001), covered the topic of diagnosis of
sequelae of COVID-19 (p = 0.013) and post-vaccination
complications (p < 0.001), were related to the special-
ties of cardiac imaging (p < 0.001) and neuroradiology
(p = 0.013), and used MRI (p < 0.001).
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1170 European Radiology (2024) 34:1167–1175

Table 1  Journals in which two Journal Number of articles Impact ­factor*

or more of the 100 most-cited or
100 most-mentioned COVID- 100 100 most-
19-related radiological articles most-cited mentioned
were published articles articles

Radiology 27 32 11.105
American Journal of Roentgenology 7 5 3.959
European Radiology 8 0 5.315
Lancet Infectious Diseases 3 3 25.071
European Journal of Nuclear Medicine & Molecular Imaging 2 3 9.236
JAMA Cardiology 2 3 14.676
Journal of Infection 3 2 6.072
Clinical Imaging 0 4 1.605
Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine 2 2 2.153
Radiology-Cardiothoracic Imaging 0 4 N/A
Korean Journal of Radiology 3 0 3.500
IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 3 0 10.048
Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine 3 0 5.428
Computers in Biology and Medicine 3 0 4.589
Investigative Radiology 3 0 6.016
Circulation-Cardiovascular Imaging 0 3 7.792
JACC Cardiovascular Imaging 0 3 14.805
Radiology Case Reports 0 3 N/A
Chaos Solutions & Fractals 2 0 1.820
European Journal of Radiology 2 0 3.528
Journal of the American College of Radiology 2 0 5.532
Nature Machine Intelligence 0 2 15.508
*
Based on the Journal Citation Reports 2020 edition
N/A, not applicable because the journal has no impact factor

Most of the most-cited and most-mentioned radiologi-
cal articles were published in radiology journals (60.0%
and 58.6%) and Q1 journals (62.9% for both) were writ-
ten in English (100.0% for both), were written by the first
and corresponding authors affiliated with the Department
of Radiology (55.7% and 50.0%), were original articles
(71.4% and 61.4%), were open-access (100.0% and 97.1%),
and were not funded (75.7% and 82.9%), respectively, with
no statistically significant differences.
Among 26 AI-based most-cited COVID-19-related radio-
logical articles, 24 used AI technology in the analysis of
chest radiography (n = 15) and CT (n = 9).
Discussion
This study identified impactful COVID-19-related radiologi-
cal articles during the pandemic period and revealed signifi-
cant differences in the characteristics between the most-cited
and most-mentioned articles.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to noticeable transfor-
mations in the publication system for the rapid publication
and sharing of scientific data and information. Many jour-
nals have adopted new policies for COVID-19 articles, such
as fast-tracking, rapid review, preprint repositories, special
issues, and open-access [16, 17]. COVID-19 has also signifi-
cantly impacted social and news media activity [18]. During
the spread of COVID-19, online media platforms have been
the preferred channels for interacting and communicating
COVID-19-related information. As a result, many highly
impactful COVID-19 publications have been widely shared
both in academia and social media, leading to a higher num-
ber of citations and online media mentions of COVID-19-re-
lated articles compared to non-COVID-19 articles.
Our study investigating the 100 most-cited and 100 most-
mentioned COVID-19-related radiological articles found
that COVID‐19 articles received higher or comparable
citations and online mentions compared to non-COVID-19
articles [19–22]. Previous studies in several radiology sub-
specialties reported that the 100 most-cited articles had a
median citation count of 22.1–261 [19, 20] and the 100
most-mentioned articles had an AAS of 82−250.5 [21, 22].
In our study, the median citation count for the 100 most-
cited and AAS of 100 most-mentioned articles were 219

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Table 2  Countries of origin of the 100 most-cited vs. 100 most-men- articles had a higher linear correlation between citations and
tioned COVID-19-related radiological articles AASs than non-COVID-19 articles.
Country Number of articles Several interesting differences were observed between
the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned articles. China
100 most-cited articles 100 most-mentioned
articles and the USA were the leading countries in the most-cited
and most-mentioned COVID-19-related radiological arti-
China 48 17 cles. China had a significant proportion of the most-cited
The USA 14 43 articles, as the initial spread of COVID-19 was first docu-
Italy 10 6 mented in China. A fairly large number of important arti-
France 4 7 cles reporting the initial knowledge of imaging findings by
The UK 2 7 Chinese researchers were published in the early period of
Korea 2 5 the pandemic. The results of previous studies were incon-
Turkey 6 0 sistent regarding the contribution of China to highly cited
Canada 2 2 COVID-19 articles. Previous citation analyses conducted in
Germany 1 2 the early stages of the pandemic have shown that 58−62%
Brazil 1 2 of the most-cited COVID-19 articles were from China [7,
Israel 0 3 8]. However, a recent study [10] reported that only 12% of
India 2 0 the most-cited neurological and neurosurgical articles on
Arab Emirates 1 1 COVID-19 originated in China. However, in China, social
Japan 0 2 media activity is less prominent than in other countries, and
Egypt 1 0 several social media platforms are unavailable. This could
Greece 1 0 help explain the relatively low number of the most-men-
Hong Kong 1 0 tioned articles from China. Our results regarding the origin
Iran 1 0 of the country of the most-mentioned radiological articles
Ireland 1 0 were very similar to those of a previous COVID-19 study
Mexico 1 0 by Moon et al [9], which showed that the USA and China
Netherlands 1 0 published 45% and 18% of the most-mentioned COVID-19
Austria 0 1 related articles, respectively.
Belgium 0 1 A high proportion of the most-cited articles were about
Poland 0 1 the diagnosis of COVID-19. This is understandable, as the
The country of origin was defined by the address provided for the diagnostic imaging features of the new disease might have
corresponding author. If the corresponding author(s) had an affiliation drawn prompt attention of medical practitioners and scientific
with more than one country or was a group author, the first author’s researchers when initial knowledge about the disease is grossly
affiliation was used as the country of origin
limited. As COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory disease, the
dominance of pulmonology subspecialty, and CT as the imag-
ing modality in the most-cited articles can be explained in a
and 417, respectively, within less than two and a half years similar way. These findings were also attributed to the fact that
following the emergence of COVID-19. This finding reflects the implementation of chest CT has been widely discussed as
the vigorous response of the radiology discipline and the a tool to make a presumptive diagnosis of COVID-19 at the
great interest of the general public in a new infectious dis- beginning of the pandemic and as a parameter to assess the
ease that has become a global health concern. severity and clinical course of COVID-19 pneumonia.
There were 30% overlapping articles between lists of In contrast, 50% of the unique most-mentioned articles
the most-cited and most-mentioned articles. Previous non- were about the diagnosis of sequelae of COVID-19 and
COVID-19 studies [23–26] reported that the rate of overlap post-vaccination complications, with the dominance of car-
in the most-cited and most-mentioned articles was 0−6%. diac and neuroradiology subspecialties. This difference can
The higher rate in our study may suggest that many of the be explained by the differences in awareness and attitudes
most important and impactful COVID-19 articles have been toward COVID-19 between researchers and laypersons.
widely shared in academia and online media, leading to an The general public may be anxious and fearful of the rare
increase in the number of citations and Altmetric scores of but potentially fatal heart and brain involvement associated
articles. Furthermore, several studies [27, 28] have found with COVID-19 infection or vaccination. Consequently, the
no correlation between citations and Altmetrics, reflecting proportion of MRI as the imaging modality in the most-
two distinct metrics to evaluate the impact of individual arti- mentioned articles was significantly higher than in the most-
cles. However, a recent study [29] reported that COVID-19 cited articles. Another possible explanation for this result is

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Table 3  Comparison of Characteristic 30 overlap- 100 100 most-men- p-value

characteristics of the most-cited ping articles most-cited tioned articles
vs. most-mentioned COVID-19- articles
related radiological articles
Publication date < 0.001
Dec 2019 − May 2020 9 32 17 0.001
June 2020 − Nov 2020 19 61 32 < 0.001
Dec 2020 − May 2021 2 4 18 < 0.001
June 2021 − Nov 2021 0 3 19 < 0.001
Dec 2021 − Apr 2022 0 0 14 < 0.001
Subject category of journals 0.002
Radiology 20 62 61 0.884
Multidisciplinary 0 4 8 0.234
Other clinical fields 10 15 27 0.037
Others 0 19 4 < 0.001
Quartile of the journal 0.100
Q1 26 70 70 1.000
Q2 4 23 15 0.149
Q3 0 4 4 1.000
Q4 or not applicable 0 3 11 0.026
Language 1.000
English 30 100 100
Non-English 0 0 0
Department of the first and corresponding authors 0.783
Radiology, both 21 60 56 0.567
Radiology and non-radiology 4 12 15 0.535
Non-radiology, both 5 28 29 0.876
Number of authors 0.100
<4 3 17 19 0.713
4–7 10 39 25 0.034
>7 17 44 56 0.090
Country of origin < 0.001
China 14 48 17 < 0.001
The USA 7 14 43 < 0.001
Others 9 38 40 0.772
Collaboration 0.001
None 6 24 20 0.495
Interdepartmental 0 7 28 < 0.001
Multi-institutional 14 48 34 0.044
International 10 21 18 0.592
Document type 0.497
Original article 15 65 58 0.309
Review 2 12 7 0.228
Case report 3 9 18 0.063
Letter 4 4 8 0.234
Guideline/consensus 1 2 2 1.000
Editorial 1 2 1 0.561
Technical note 1 1 1 1.000
Miscellaneous 3 5 5 1.000
Topic < 0.001
Diagnosis of COVID-19 18 85 49 < 0.001
Diagnosis of sequelae of COVID-19 11 13 27 0.013
Diagnosis of post-vaccination complication 0 0 19 < 0.001

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Table 3  (continued) Characteristic 30 overlap- 100 100 most-men- p-value

ping articles most-cited tioned articles
articles

Radiologists 1 2 5 0.248
Radiological subspecialty < 0.001
Pulmonary 21 87 45 < 0.001
Cardiac 3 3 21 < 0.001
Neuroradiology 3 4 14 0.013
Pediatric 1 1 2 0.561
Combined 1 2 2 1.000
Miscellaneous 1 3 16 0.001
Imaging modality < 0.001
Computed tomography 19 63 37 < 0.001
Conventional radiography 0 19 5 0.002
Magnetic resonance imaging 5 6 27 < 0.001
Ultrasonography 3 5 7 0.552
Positron emission tomography 0 1 3 0.312
Combined 2 4 15 0.008
Miscellaneous 1 2 6 0.149
Artificial intelligence < 0.001
Application 1 26 6
None 29 74 94
Accessibility 0.477
Open-access 30 100 98
Pay-for-access 0 0 2
Funding 0.655
None 27 80 85 0.352
Government 3 15 8 0.121
Private 0 3 3 1.000
Industry 0 0 0 1.000
Multiple 0 2 4 0.407

Data in parentheses indicate the number of unique most-cited or unique most-mentioned articles after
exclusion of 30 overlapping articles featured in both lists

that subspecialties of cardiac imaging and neuroradiology
may have more influence on the general public, as compared
to pulmonary radiology.
Our study also found that the most frequently mentioned
articles were published during the late study period (between
December 2020 and April 2022). This finding is in line with
previous studies [23, 24, 28] which revealed that Altmetrics
typically provides an immediate gauge of impact, whereas
citations take much longer to accrue.
An interesting finding in this study was that there has been
remarkable interest by the scientific community in using AI
tools in the diagnosis of COVID-19. AI-based assessment of
chest radiography and CT images has great potential to develop
new approaches for the diagnosis, follow-up, and prognosis of
COVID-19 respiratory infections in the current pandemic [30].
This study had several limitations. The first major
limitation is that the citable and mentionable period was
approximately 2 years and 4 months in our study. There-
fore, we may neglect outstanding articles recently published
and have not had enough time to increase their citations and
mentions. Furthermore, considering the rapidly evolving
nature of the pandemic and COVID-19 research, the lists
of the most-cited and most-mentioned articles are expected
to change over time. We are aware that more long-term
analyses should be performed in the future. Second, cita-
tion counts and Altmetric scores have inherent disadvan-
tages when measuring the impact of a scientific article. The
number of citations may be influenced by other factors, such
as journal accessibility and reputation, institutional bias, lan-
guage bias, authors’ self-citation, obliteration by incorpora-
tion, incomplete citing, and omission bias [31, 32]. There
are also shortcomings to reliance on the Altmetric score,
including vulnerability to manipulation, language barriers,
availability of social networking services, and difficulty in

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1174
assessing the credibility of commentators and the validity
of their comments [33, 34].
In conclusion, there were significant differences in the
date of publication, country of origin, topic, and subspe-
cialty between citation and public dissemination of scientific
knowledge regarding COVID-19 in the field of radiology.
Supplementary information The online version contains supplemen-
tary material available at https://d​ oi.o​ rg/1​ 0.1​ 007/s​ 00330-0​ 23-1​ 0001-x.
Funding There are no financial conflicts of interest to disclose.
Declarations
Guarantor The scientific guarantor of this publication is Dae Young Yoon.
Conflict of interest We have no conflict of interest to declare.
Statistics and biometry No complex statistical methods were neces-
sary for this paper.
Informed consent Written informed consent was not required for this
bibliometric analysis.
Ethical approval Institutional Review Board approval was not required
for this bibliometric analysis.
Study subjects or cohorts overlap No overlapped study subject for this study.
Methodology
• retrospective
• bibliometric analysis
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