  With the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists from various
disciplines responded quickly to this historical public health emergency. The
sudden boom of COVID-19 related papers in a short period of time may bring
unexpected influence to some commonly used bibliometric indicators. By a
large-scale investigation using Science Citation Index Expanded and Social
Sciences Citation Index, this brief communication confirms the citation
advantage of COVID-19 related papers empirically through the lens of Essential
Science Indicators' highly cited paper. More than 8% of COVID-19 related papers
published during 2020 and 2021 were selected as Essential Science Indicators
highly cited papers, which was much higher than the set global benchmark value
of 1%. The citation advantage of COVID-19 related papers for different Web of
Science categories/countries/journal impact factor quartiles were also
demonstrated. The distortions of COVID-19 related papers' citation advantage to
some bibliometric indicators such as journal impact factor were discussed at
the end of this brief communication.
