  The speed with which biomedical researchers were able to identify and
characterise COVID-19 was clearly due to prior research with other
coronaviruses. Early epidemiological comparisons with two previous
coronaviruses, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), also made it easier to predict COVID-19's likely
spread and lethality. This article assesses whether academic interest in prior
coronavirus research has translated into interest in the primary source
material, using Mendeley reader counts for early academic impact evidence. The
results confirm that SARS and MERS research 2008-2017 experienced anomalously
high increases in Mendeley readers in April-May 2020. Nevertheless, studies
learning COVID-19 lessons from SARS and MERS or using them as a benchmark for
COVID-19 have generated much more academic interest than primary studies of
SARS or MERS. Thus, research that interprets prior relevant research for new
diseases when they are discovered seems to be particularly important to help
researchers to understand its implications in the new context.
