Bibliometric analysis through the use of keywords and abstract : research in law during the pandemic

The health emergency derived from the pandemic caused a domino effect in all aspects of human life, which has required extraordinary measures, especially at the level of laws, essential tools for the preservation of life, health and means of livelihood. According to the Scopus database, in the period January 1, 2020-June 8, 2021, more than 220,000 articles related to law have been published. Taking these data into account, a bibliometric analysis is proposed to examine the content of the publications from a word analysis to identify research topics in a set of publications, and establish consensus of relating concepts. Articles will be selected by keywords, limiting themselves to examining those that contain the following categories: "law" "legislation" and "jurisprudence".Our hypothesis holds that the words contained in both keywords and abstracts demonstrate whether the investigation has been able to reflect the extraordinary measures adopted during the pandemic period. The results show that the diversification of the keyword occurrence networks confirms the multidisciplinary participation, 26 areas of which research predominates in fields such as medicine, public health. The keyword analysis also shows that the origin of this research is the “human” with a relevant interpretation of the right to life, to the human rights, using the law to clarify the fundamental guarantees. The analysis of the abstracts confirms the emerging research with tendencies to study the pandemic from different points of view. The number of publications in the analyzed period suggests an acceleration in the publication process, as well as some aspects attributed to open data science.