  Research on infectious diseases constitutes a transversal scientific field. A
specific corpus is designed by combining a controlled language (Medline MeSH
thesaurus) and the categorization of journals (Web of Science). From this
global corpus, the article characterizes the publications from the top 20
countries publishing in the field and evolutions between 2000 and 2020. Topic
maps show the research themes within the field of infectious diseases both in
the world and in France. The explosion of publications on Covid-19 in 2020 has
a quite visible impact on the topic map in infectious diseases and changes the
position of some countries in this field of research. The conclusion points to
issues for further research as more complete data will become available on the
Covid-19 period.
