Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19

Horbach, Serge P. J. M.

doi:10.1101/2020.04.18.045963

Cited by 58 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…1 Given the severe nature and rapid impact of this disease, the pace of research and information sharing has been accelerated in a variety of ways, including increased speed of research publications by reducing turnaround time for peer review and posting pre peer-reviewed papers. 2 The result is that more than 32,000 publications related to have been generated in these past 6 months, according to PubMed. Although it is beneficial to disseminate this information quickly, culling information from this large publication volume can be difficult and time-consuming.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Listening as a Rapid Approach to Collecting and Analyzing COVID-19 Symptoms and Disease Natural Histories Reported by Large Numbers of Individuals

Picone¹,

Inoue²,

DeFelice³

et al. 2020

Population Health Management

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Given the severe and rapid impact of COVID-19, the pace of information sharing has been accelerated. However, traditional methods of disseminating and digesting medical information can be time-consuming and cumbersome. In a pilot study, the authors used social listening to quickly extract information from social media channels to explore what people with COVID-19 are talking about regarding symptoms and disease progression. The goal was to determine whether, by amplifying patient voices, new information could be identified that might have been missed through other sources. Two data sets from social media groups of people with or presumed to have COVID-19 were analyzed: a Facebook group poll, and conversation data from a Reddit group including detailed disease natural history-like posts. Content analysis and a customized analytics engine that incorporates machine learning and natural language processing were used to quickly identify symptoms mentioned. Key findings include more than 20 symptoms in the data sets that were not listed in online lists of symptoms from 4 respected medical information sources. The disease natural history-like posts revealed that people can experience symptoms for many weeks and that some symptoms change over time. This study demonstrates that social media can offer novel insights into patient experiences as a source of real-world data. This inductive research approach can quickly generate descriptive information that can be used to develop hypotheses and new research questions. Also, the method allows rapid assessments of large numbers of social media conversations that could be applied to monitor public health for emerging and rapidly spreading diseases such as COVID-19.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Listening as a Rapid Approach to Collecting and Analyzing COVID-19 Symptoms and Disease Natural Histories Reported by Large Numbers of Individuals

Picone¹,

Inoue²,

DeFelice³

et al. 2020

Population Health Management

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“…Interestingly, a recent preprint estimated that the average time to publication in journals during the COVID-19 pandemic is approximately two months (4,12).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pharmacological interventions for the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of preprint articles: The good, the bad and the ugly

Nicolalde

Añazco

Mushtaq

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background: Preprints are preliminary reports that have not been peer-reviewed. On Dec 2019, a novel coronavirus appeared in China, and since then, scientific production, including preprints, has drastically increased. In this study, we intend to evaluate how often preprints regarding pharmacological interventions against COVID-19 were cited, in spite of the fact that some of these preprints remained unpublished.Methods: We conducted a search on medRxiv and bioRxiv to identify preprints related to pharmacological interventions against SARS-CoV-2 from Jan 1st to Mar 31, 2020. We gathered metadata on included preprints and identified if they had been published in a peer-reviewed journal. We performed Mann-Whitney U tests to evaluate if published articles had differences in citation numbers or usage, as defined by PDF downloads and abstract views, when compared to preprints that were not published.Results: Our sample included 97 preprints, of which only 14 were published on peer-reviewed journals and 83 remained unpublished. The most common study designs we found among preprints were basic science research and case series. Published articles had a significantly higher number of citations and metrics (PDF and abstract downloads) when compared to unpublished preprints.Conclusions: The use of preprints during this pandemic has been higher than in previous outbreaks, however, the publication rate in peer-reviewed journals in our sample was low. Preprints should be used as a mean to display preliminary data rapidly in order to obtain feedback by the scientific community, or to guide further research. However, due to the lack of peer-review, and potentially flawed data analysis, preprints alone should not be used to guide clinical practice, as the risk of unwarranted modifications to management is concerning.

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“…A recent study-ironically, a preprint-shows that 14 medical journals have decreased by almost 50% the time required on average to publish a COVID-19 paper by reducing the number of days required for the peer review. 3 These issues raised concerns about the quality of COVID-19 publications, the spread of misinformation and lack of scientific integrity, which are the foundations of the so-called 'infodemic'.…”

Section: An Excessive Amount Of Scientific Literature May Lower the Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Frauds in scientific research and how to possibly overcome them

et al. 2020

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Frauds and misconduct have been common in the history of science. Recent events connected to the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted how the risks and consequences of this are no longer acceptable. Two papers, addressing the treatment of COVID-19, have been published in two of the most prestigious medical journals; the authors declared to have analysed electronic health records from a private corporation, which apparently collected data of tens of thousands of patients, coming from hundreds of hospitals. Both papers have been retracted a few weeks later. When such events happen, the confidence of the population in scientific research is likely to be weakened. This paper highlights how the current system endangers the reliability of scientific research, and the very foundations of the trust system on which modern healthcare is based. Having shed light on the dangers of a system without appropriate monitoring, the proposed analysis suggests to strengthen the existing journal policies and improve the research process using new technologies supporting control activities by public authorities. Among these solutions, we mention the promising aspects of the blockchain technology which seems a promising solution to avoid the repetition of the mistakes linked to the recent and past history of research.

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Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19

Cited by 58 publications

References 18 publications

Social Listening as a Rapid Approach to Collecting and Analyzing COVID-19 Symptoms and Disease Natural Histories Reported by Large Numbers of Individuals

Social Listening as a Rapid Approach to Collecting and Analyzing COVID-19 Symptoms and Disease Natural Histories Reported by Large Numbers of Individuals

Pharmacological interventions for the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of preprint articles: The good, the bad and the ugly

Frauds in scientific research and how to possibly overcome them

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