Polymeric materials are used for personal protective equipment (PPE), which is mandatory for clinicians to use when handling coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. The development of diagnostic tools and vaccines for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is also dependent on polymer technology. This current report aims to provide readers with the trend of polymer research regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, by employing bibliometric analysis. A literature search on the Scopus database (31 January 2022) was carried out using predetermined terms. Using Scopus database features, the publications were filtered based on the year of publication (2020–2022), types of articles (original research and review), and language (English). The metadata were extracted in a CSV (.csv) file, to be later used in VOSviewer software. The data were presented in a table, graph, and network visualization. As many as 512 publications were included, consisting of 66.4% original research articles and 33.6% review articles. Most of the publications were written by authors whose affiliation was in the United States (n = 118, 23%) and covering the Materials Science subject area (n = 142, 27.7%). The Ministry of Education of China was the most productive organization, publishing 11 articles. The National Science Foundation of China was the top funding source, supporting 45 publications. Heinz C. Schröder was the most prolific author, publishing nine articles. Science of the Total Environment was the leading journal publishing the included studies. The trend of polymer technology related to COVID-19 mostly covers PPE and waste-management themes. The use of polymer technology as a delivery system for the anti-SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 vaccine is also among the frequently researched areas. We encourage more research in the field of polymer technology be carried out, to overcome the global pandemic.

Essential oils are thought as potential therapies in managing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Many researchers have put their efforts to tackle the pandemic by exploring antiviral candidates which consequently changes the research landscape. Herein, we aimed to assess the effect of COVID-19 pandemic toward the landscape of essential oil research. This study employed bibliometric analysis based on the metadata of published literature indexed in the Scopus database. The search was performed on December 15^th, 2022 by using keyword ‘essential oil’ and its synonyms. We grouped the data based on publication year; pre-COVID-19 (2014–2019) and during COVID-19 (2020–2024, some studies have been published earlier). Further, we separated the COVID-19-focused research from COVID-19 (2020–2024) by introducing a new keyword ‘COVID-19’ during the search. All metadata were processed using VoSviewer and Biblioshiny for network visualization analysis. Selections of frequently occurring keywords, clusters of keyword co-occurrence, and the list of most impactful papers were performed by two independent reviewers. Metadata from a total of 35,262 publications were included for bibliometric analysis, comprised of three groups of datasets namely pre-COVID-19 (n = 18,670), COVID-19 (n = 16,592), and COVID-19-focused (n = 281). Five research topics clusters were found from pre-COVID-19 dataset, eight – from COVID-19 dataset, and nine – from COVID-19-focused dataset. COVID-19 cluster containing the keyword ‘antiviral’ emerged in the COVID-19 dataset, whereas none of the previous research topic clusters contained the keyword ‘antiviral’. Antiviral, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) inhibitory, and anti-inflammation activities were among the top occurring keywords in studies covering both essential oil and COVID-19. Studies on essential oil used for managing COVID-19 were most reported by authors from the United States (documents = 37, citations = 405), Australia (documents = 16, citations = 115) and Italy (documents = 23, citations = 366). A significant increase was found during COVID-19 pandemic for publications covering essential oil themes, but only a small portion was occupied by COVID-19 research. The COVID-19 pandemic does not alter the ongoing progress of essential oil research but rather offers a new spotlight on the antiviral potential of essential oils. Hence, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity to investigate deeper the antiviral potential of essential oils.

Increasing trends of environmental pollution and emerging contaminants from anthropogenic activities have urged researchers to develop innovative strategies in wastewater management, including those using the biocatalyst laccase (EC 1.10.3.2). Laccase works effectively against a variety of substrates ranging from phenolic to non-phenolic compounds which only require molecular oxygen to be later reduced to H₂O as the final product. In this study, we performed a bibliometric analysis on the metadata of literature acquired through the Scopus database (24 October 2022) with keyword combination “Laccase” AND “Pollutant” OR “Wastewater”. The included publications were filtered based on year of publication (1978–2022), types of articles (original research articles and review articles) and language (English). The metadata was then exported in a CSV (.csv) file and visualized on VosViewer software. A total of 1865 publications were identified, 90.9% of which were original research articles and the remaining 9.1% were review articles. Most of the authors were from China (n = 416; 22.3%) and India (n = 276; 14.79%). In the case of subject area, ‘Environmental Science’ emerged with the highest published documents (n = 1053; 56.46%). The identified papers mostly cover laccase activity in degrading pollutants, and chitosan, which can be exploited for the immobilization. We encourage more research on laccase-assisted wastewater treatment, especially in terms of collaborations among organizations.

The presence of global threats such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic could potentially affect the research landscape, particularly that of systematic reviews. The aim of this study was to examine disparities between countries and the role of funding availability in the publication of health-themed systematic reviews. Metadata of published literature was collected from the Scopus database as of June 30, 2023. The dataset was divided into ‘pre-COVID-19 (2017–2019)’ and ‘during COVID-19 (2020–2022)’ by utilizing filter feature of the Scopus search engine. Network visualization of co-authorship was carried out on VoSviewer to identify collaborative patterns between countries. Our results suggest that most of the systematic reviews were published by authors from the United States of America (USA), both in pre-COVID-19 (n=29,463; Total link strength, TLS=32,832) and during COVID-19 (n=35,520; TLS=45,616). During COVID-19, the trend was not much different with the USA (14.6%), the UK (8.8%), and Australia (5%) in the top position among high-income countries. China (12.3%) and Iran (2.4%) topped the upper-middle-income and low-income countries groups. Publications by those who were from low-income countries were in a concerning low number; Ethiopia ranked first in this group only occupied 0.4% of the total publications (n=1,047). Furthermore, the number of publications was proportional to the number of funded studies (as observed in the top countries). However, during COVID-19 pandemic, the proportionality between funded publications and total publications was observed less. Taken altogether, our findings stress the importance of capacity building and providing more funds for on-desk research to close the disparity among countries.

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractGreen accounting has become an increasingly crucial research field due to its significance in addressing climate change. While global studies in this field have expanded extensively, contributions from Indonesia-affiliated researchers remain relatively underexplored, much to Indonesia’s detriment, given its vast natural resources and existing environmental challenges. This study employs a bibliometric analysis to explore trends, impact, and collaboration patterns in green accounting studies globally, with a specific comparison of Indonesia-affiliated publications. A comprehensive analysis utilizing the retrieved dataset from the Scopus database was conducted to identify key research clusters and to highlight relevant topics such as carbon accounting, sustainability, environmental performance, and the integration of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into corporate policies. Network visualizations using VosViewer were constructed to examine the landscape of green accounting both globally and within Indonesia-affiliated research, aiming to compare global research with that linked to Indonesia. Global research covers broader topics surrounding carbon accounting, sustainability, environmental performance, the integration of ESG factors into corporate policies, and life cycle assessment. Meanwhile, Indonesia-affiliated research is more concentrated, focusing on topics such as financial/environmental performance and forestry issues. This study suggests that Indonesia-affiliated research would benefit from diversifying its focus toward globally emerging or established topics such as sustainable practices, carbon management, and the global sustainability reporting standards to enhance its academic visibility and relevance.