Scientometric Trends for Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Viral Infections

Dima Kagan; Jacob Moran-Gilad; Michael Fire

In 2006, Cowen et al. [10] evaluated the ProMED dataset from the years 1996 to 2004. They discovered that there are diseases that received more extensive coverage than others; "86 disease subjects had thread lengths of at least 10 reports, and 24 had 20 or more." They note that the pattern of occurrence is hard to explain even by an expert in epidemiology. Also, with the level of granularity of ProMED data, it is very challenging to predict the frequency that diseases are going to accrue. In 2008, Jones et al. [2] analyzed the global temporal and spatial patterns of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). They analyzed 305 EIDs between 1940 and 2004 and demonstrated that the threat of EIDs to global health is increasing. The same year, Freifeld et al. [11] developed HealthMap, an interactive surveillance system that integrates disease outbreak reports from various sources. Using their system, they created a classifier that was able to classify diseases with an accuracy of 84%.