Proliferation of Papers and Preprints During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: Progress or Problems With Peer Review?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread exponentially throughout the world in a short period, aided by our hyperconnected world including global trade and travel. Unlike previous pandemics, the pace of the spread of the virus has been matched by the pace of publications, not just in traditional journals, but also in preprint servers. Not all publication findings are true, and sifting through the firehose of data has been challenging to peer reviewers, editors, as well as to consumers of the literature i.e. scientists, health care workers, and the general public. There has been an equally exponential rise in the public discussion on social media. Rather than decry the pace of change, we suggest the nephrology community should embrace it, making deposition of research into preprint servers the default, encouraging pre-publication peer review more widely of such preprint studies, and harnessing social media tools to make these actions easier and seamless.

COVID-19 Preprints and Their Publishing Rate: An Improved Method

“…As we know, extraordinary phases in the history of science are marked by a sharp acceleration of progress. Covid-19 research represents one of the most intense scientific efforts in the modern history of science (Vlasschaert, Topf, Hiremath, 2020). Scientists and journal editors and reviewers alike were (and arguably still are) overwhelmed with a tsunami of COVID-19 papers (Brainard, 2020; Kwon, 2020).…”

“…Da Silva (2020: 1) call it “open public scrutiny for preprints”. That is, even though preprints are not formally reviewed before being uploaded to preprint servers, they are often commented on and shared on social media—including blog posts (Vlasschaert, Topf, Hiremath, 2020)—by laymen and experts alike (Majumder et al, 2020; Fraser et al, 2020), downloaded, and periodically updated by its author(s) once online, and cited – even more cited than published articles (Gianola et al, 2020). Some independent initiatives have also “arisen whereby reviews are posted in the comments section of preprint servers and hosted on independent websites” (Fraser et al; from 34).…”

Ciencia abierta: un modelo con piezas por encajar

“…Ahora bien, la ventaja de la rapidez en compartir los resultados tiene una contrapartida: son documentos que no han pasado aún por una revisión experta y, a veces, pueden ser controvertidos. Esto ha pasado recientemente en diversos artículos publicados como preprints que se han retirado de la consulta por contener errores, como fue el caso de un artículo publicado como preprint por The Lancet sobre el uso de la hidroxicloroquina para combatir la COVID 19 y que tuvo que ser retirado porque se demostró que los datos utilizados no eran correctos (Vlasschaert, 2020). Por ello es preciso que se sepa que el documento no ha pasado por una revisión experta y por tanto, que sus resultados deben tomarse con cautela.…”

Publication practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: Biomedical preprints and peer-reviewed literature

“…Considering the reported influence of preprints on policy-making during the COVID-19 pandemic [27] and ongoing article retractions [28], the concern about the quality of un-refereed preprints is genuine [29]. The Sinai Immunology Review Project is an example of an institutional effort to review and validate the COVID-19 related preprints posted to medRxiv and bioRxiv servers [30].…”