Journal of Modern Medical

Introduction
اnfodemic or information overload refers to the spread of false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak. Infodemic causes confusion and risky behaviors that can harm health. It also leads to distrust of health authorities and undermines the public health response. Social media is the main source of false information during crises. It is important to involve experts in the field of health along with the recruitment of university graduates for combating COVID-19 infodemic in online social media. The first effort in Iran to fight against COVID-19 infodemic was made by Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), when an emergency occurs at the national or international level, the need for up-to-date and reliable information increases. A website belonging to TUMS has been created, the purpose of which is to allow the general public to access timely, accurate and understandable advice and information from reliable sources about public health events and outbreaks. Currently, the public health emergency is related to the pandemic caused by COVID-19. With the spread of t COVID-19, infodemic has also spread. The role of infodemic in vaccination can also be important. In the current study, we aim to provide the science map of the studies in the field of COVID-19 infodemic.

Methods
This is an applied scientometric study. The required data were extracted by searching in Web of Science and PubMed databases for studies in the field of online COVID-19 infodemic and its vaccination from 2019 to 2020. The search was conducted in 04/22/2022 using the keywords “infodemic”, “misinformation”, “disinformation”, “COVID-19”, and “vaccine” by applying Boolean operators (AND, OR). VOSviewer software, version 6.1 was used to draw science and co-occurrence maps and determine science clusters and newly formed co-occurrence clusters. Before drawing the maps, the strength association method was used to normalize the data. Then, the maps related to the scientific structure of COVID-19 infodemic were drawn using the visualization network matrix.

Results
Based on the Web of Science data, the categories of professional and public health were the most important studied categories and the U.S. ranked first and Iran ranked thirty third in the world. The science maps obtained from the databases showed the co-occurrences of the government, vaccination and social media as the most important items that made up the maps. The first to fourth clusters of science map based on Web of Science data (Figure 1) respectively included: child, evaluation, immunogenicity, safety and vaccine items.

The second cluster included the occurrences of China, healthcare worker, vaccination and willingness.
The third cluster included the co-occurrences of COVID-19, MRNA vaccine, and vaccine. The fourth cluster consists of the item “vaccine development” and its relationship with the other three clusters.
The scientific map of studies in COVID-19 infodemic using the PubMed database (Figure 2) had some differences with that of Web of Science data including more attention of scientists to the fields related to patients, information, management, outcome of treatment or interventions, risk factors, and clinical symptoms of the disease.

Since COVID-19 is related to the field of health sciences, the PubMed-based science map has a special value.
The first cluster this map included 18 items mostly related to age, death, diagnosis, disease, risk factors, mortality, and management related to COVID-19. The second cluster contains 11 items; the third cluster contains two items of anxiety and fear, and finally the fourth cluster contains the item “world” and its relationship with the other three clusters.

Discussion
Based on the Web of Science data, the categories of professional and public health, communication, psychological experiences, computer science and information systems are among the most important categories examined in studies related to COVID-19 infodemic. Loftus Ef and the League of European Research Universities (LERU) had the most studies in this field. Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, and Springer publishing houses had published the most papers in this field. Scientists have paid the most attention to the fields of physiology, computer science, and professional and public health. The U.S, U.K., and Australia ranked first to third, and Iran ranked  thirty third in the world among countries producing scientific works in the field of COVID-19 infodemic. The science map obtained from the PubMed data included 4 clusters containing co-occurrences of age, death, diagnosis, disease, risk factors, mortality, management related to COVID-19, government, vaccination, misinformation, information, social media, anxiety, fear, and world. It can be concluded that, in order to control the COVID-19 infodemic in Iran, there is a need for policy making in the field, the information published in social networks, and paying attention to the role of government. Moreover, paying attention to the relationship between infodemics and vaccination rates is important in this field, which requires a correct policy by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education. 

Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
Since no experiments were conducted on human or animal samples, no ethical principles were needed to be considered.

Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Authors' contributions
Writing, review & editing: Maryam Tavosi; Methodology and data analysis:Saeid Shirshahi; Writing and supervision: Nosrat Riahinia.

Conflicts of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the professors in the Department of Information Science and Epistemology at Kharazmi University and the Department of Medical Library and Information at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences for their coolaborations.

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