Supporting data for "Scientometric Trends for Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Viral Infections"

COVID-19 is the most rapidly expanding coronavirus outbreak in the past two decades. To provide a swift response to a novel outbreak, prior knowledge from similar outbreaks is essential. Here, we study the volume of research conducted on previous coronavirus outbreaks, specifically SARS and MERS, relative to other infectious diseases by analyzing over 35 million papers from the last 20 years. Our results demonstrate that previous coronavirus outbreaks have been understudied compared to other viruses. We also show that the research volume of emerging infectious diseases is very high after an outbreak and drops drastically upon the containment of the disease. This can yield inadequate research and limited investment in gaining a full understanding of novel coronavirus management and prevention. Independent of the outcome of the current COVID-19 outbreak, we believe that measures should be taken to encourage sustained research in the field. <br>The code used to generate these findings is available from GigaDB (below) as well as in the GitHub repository. There are complete instructions on installation and use included in the Readme.md file within the GitHub repository, as well as additional dataset descriptions in the Dataset.md file.