Open Science Saves Lives: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In the last decade Open Science principles, such as Open Access, study preregistration, use of preprints, making available data and code, and open peer review, have been successfully advocated for and are being slowly adopted in many different research communities. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic many publishers and researchers have sped up their adoption of some of these Open Science practices, sometimes embracing them fully and sometimes partially or in a sub-optimal manner. In this article, we express concerns about the violation of some of the Open Science principles and its potential impact on the quality of research output. We provide evidence of the misuses of these principles at different stages of the scientific process. We call for a wider adoption of Open Science practices in the hope that this work will encourage a broader endorsement of Open Science principles and serve as a reminder that science should always be a rigorous process, reliable and transparent, especially in the context of a pandemic where research findings are being translated into practice even more rapidly. We provide all data and scripts at https://osf.io/renxy/.

Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This type of misinformation is common to new diseases [33] and social media platforms have recently released a statement outlining their plans to combat this issue [34]. An even greater adoption of open science principles has recently been suggested as one method to counter such misuse of preprints and peer-reviewed articles [35], though for now, this remains an increasingly important discourse.…”

“…2E); the most commented non-COVID-19 preprint received only 15 comments, whereas the most commented COVID-19 preprint had over 500 comments on the 30th April ( Table 5). One preprint, which had 127 comments was retracted within 3 days of being posted following intense public scrutiny [35]. Collectively these data suggest that the most discussed or controversial COVID-19 preprints are being rapidly and publicly scrutinised, with commenting systems being used for direct feedback and discussion of preprints.…”

Credibility of preprints: an interdisciplinary survey of researchers

“…For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, major news sources used preprints regularly to keep the engaged public informed about the latest evidence. The Pew survey [ 22 ] described above indicates that there may be at least some consistency between what the public and researchers might value, and a recent preprint has called for more open science behaviours in COVID-19 preprints to increase rigor and the ability to assess rigor [ 39 ]. But more work is needed to understand if researchers and others generally favour similar or different cues on preprints.…”

COVID-19: time to flatten the infodemic curve

“…Many journals provide fast-tracked services for articles on COVID-19 and consequently the robustness of critical examination of submissions may be compromised [15]. A study that analysed 8455 articles on COVID-19 indexed in the PubMed database found that 8% of the articles had been reviewed and accepted for publication on the day they were submitted or the day after, suggesting that in some cases, the peer review process had been rushed [16].…”