Coronavirus research performance across journal quartiles. Advantages of Q1 publications

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the share of coronavirus publications and its citation-based indicators in various journal impact factor quartiles to discover their relationship and analyze the advantages of Q1 publications. Design/methodology/approach - Bibliomenic analyses of world coronavirus research publications (articles and reviews) indexed in Web of Science database over 20 yeses among four journal quartiles were performed. Findings - The publication and citation shares in various journal quartiles were decreased in the following order. Q1 > Q2 > Q3 > Q4. World coronavirus publications/citations share in Q1 journals were on average 1.78/4.18, am/ 7.90 and 5.07/27.79 times greater than Q2, Q3 and Q4 publications respectively. Moreover, similar patterns were obtained for various research performance dimensions: impact, excellence, corporate interest and funding indicators. These indicators of Q1 publications were much better than the corresponding values for world overall and infectious disease literature. Thus, there was a clear research performance advantage of Q1 coronavirus publications. Originality/value - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study analyzing the journal impact factor quartiles and its impact on coronavirus research performance. The results/findings of this study are useful for many stakeholders to enhance the research influence by considering journal impact factor quartiles especially Q1 journals.