A flood of coronavirus research swept websites and journals this year. It changed how and what scientists study, a Nature analysis shows.  The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted science in 2020 — and transformed research publishing, show data collated and analysed by Nature.

Around 4% of the world’s research output was devoted to the coronavirus in 2020, according to one database. But 2020 also saw a sharp increase in articles on all subjects being submitted to scientific journals — perhaps because many researchers had to stay at home and focus on writing up papers rather than conducting science.

Submissions to publisher Elsevier’s journals alone were up by around 270,000 — or 58% — between February and May when compared with the same period in 2019, one analysis found¹. The increase was even higher for health and medicine titles, at a whopping 92%.

1. Squazzoni, F. et al. Preprint at SSRN http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3712813 (2020).