sustainability Article Bibliometric Analysis of SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 Studies from India and Connection to Sustainable Development Goals Raghu Raman 1, * , Ricardo Vinuesa 2, * and Prema Nedungadi 1   Citation: Raman, R.; Vinuesa, R.; Nedungadi, P. Bibliometric Analysis of SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 Studies from India and Connection to Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainability 2021, 13, 7555. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147555 Academic Editors: Marc A. Rosen and Ans Vercammen Received: 8 June 2021 Accepted: 3 July 2021 Published: 6 July 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Amrita School of Engineering, Amritapuri Campus, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Kerala 690525, India; prema@amrita.edu 2 KTH Engineering Mechanics, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden * Correspondence: raghu@amrita.edu (R.R.); rvinuesa@mech.kth.se (R.V.) Abstract: India is ranked fifth in the world in terms of COVID-19 publications accounting for 6.7% of the total. About 60% of the COVID-19 publications in the year 2020 are from United States, China, UK, Italy, and India. We present a bibliometric analysis of the publication trends and citation structure along with the identification of major research clusters. By performing network analysis of authors, citations, institutions, keywords, and countries, we explore semantic associations by applying visualization techniques. Our study shows lead taken by the United States, China, UK, Italy, India in COVID-19 research may be attributed to the high prevalence of COVID-19 cases in those countries witnessing the first outbreak and also due to having access to COVID-19 data, access to labs for experimental trials, immediate funding, and overall support from the govt. agencies. A large number of publications and citations from India are due to co-authored publications with countries like the United States, UK, China, and Saudi Arabia. Findings show health sciences have the highest number of publications and citations, while physical sciences and social sciences and humanities counts were low. A large proportion of publications fall into the open-access category. With India as the focus, by comparing three major pandemics—SARS, MERS, COVID-19—from a bibliometrics perspective, we observe much broader involvement of authors from multiple countries for COVID-19 studies when compared to SARS and MERS. Finally, by applying bibliometric indicators, we see an in- creasing number of sustainable development-related studies from the COVID-19 domain, particularly concerning the topic of good health and well-being. This study allows for a deeper understanding of how the scholarly community from a populous country like India pursued research in the midst of a major pandemic which resulted in the closure of scientific institutions for an extended time. Keywords: COVID-19; coronavirus; pandemic; bibliometrics; SARS; MERS 1. Introduction The present COVID-19 pandemic has affected every socioeconomic sector. Globally, everything from manufacturing to entertainment has been affected. Academia is no exception. In fact, most universities globally have suspended on-campus activities and have moved online [1]. While teaching practices can to some extent be mitigated by digital interventions and online teaching, research is more complex and often requires campus collaboration and laboratory facilities [2]. While safety norms may require research to be suspended, research is also an essential first step in understanding and fighting this pandemic. Given that it is a novel virus, research regarding its characteristics is integral to developing mechanisms for fighting it. Similarly, methods of detection, isolation, protection, etc., also need to be developed at a fundamental level. In addition, given the scale of the pandemic, research on its effects on other aspects ranging from the global supply chain to mental health needs to be understood and any adverse effects mitigated [3,4]. In light of all these needs, researchers across the world have continued their work even under these challenging conditions, generating an impressive volume of research during this time [5]. In Sustainability 2021, 13, 7555. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147555 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability