key: cord-299237-pdkxqf3h authors: Pericàs, Juan M; Torrallardona‐Murphy, Orla; Arenas, Andrea; Valero, Helena; Nicolás, David title: Profile and quality of published reviews on COVID‐19 date: 2020-05-30 journal: Eur J Clin Invest DOI: 10.1111/eci.13293 sha: doc_id: 299237 cord_uid: pdkxqf3h COVID‐19 has created the necessity to rapidly generate evidence to enlighten many blind spots encompassing the pandemic, from pathophysiology to management. Scientific journals have timely responded to this challenge by prioritizing COVID‐19 research, with proactive editorial efforts favoring open‐access to articles, launching calls for papers, implementing specific sections and special issues on COVID‐19, among others. However, the impact of all these measures on the overall quality and adequacy of research are largely unknown and several authors have shown concern in this regard. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved Dear Editor, COVID-19 has created the necessity to rapidly generate evidence to enlighten many blind spots encompassing the pandemic, from pathophysiology to management. Scientific journals have timely responded to this challenge by prioritizing COVID-19 research, with proactive editorial efforts favoring open-access to articles, launching calls for papers, implementing specific sections and special issues on COVID-19, among others. However, the impact of all these measures on the overall quality and adequacy of research are largely unknown and several authors have shown concern in this regard. [1] [2] [3] Reviews of the literature should provide comprehensive and summarized accounts of the evidence on a particular research topic and therefore studying their contents and quality might provide a good indication of the overall rigor of research on COVID-19. We searched PubMed for reviews addressing COVID-19 published from January 1 st to April 8 th , 2020 and screened them individually. The search strategy for initial identification of articles included the following expression: ["coronavirus" and "review"]. Exclusion criteria from the analysis were as follows: articles that did not address COVID-19, articles that did not include a review of the literature, articles written in languages other than English, protocols, guidelines, consensus statements, and expert opinion. Reporting of the study conforms to broad EQUATOR guidelines. 4 The search flow diagram according to the PRISMA Statement 5 is shown in Figure 1 . Descriptive statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS software v.23. The characteristics of the 239 reviews analyzed are shown in Table 1 . These findings reflect the abundant scientific production triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of a rapidly spreading pandemic with dismal consequences, large amounts of observational studies were carried out in a very short period and this evidence was synthetized into reviews providing pathophysiological insight and guidance for diagnosis and management of COVID-19. Within This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved thirteen weeks, the international scientific community produced and published hundreds of freely accessible reviews of different approaches to rapidly cope with the theoretical and practical challenges posed by COVID-19. Such a herculean effort at the global level, likely without precedent, is to be complemented. On the other hand, our findings raise cause for concern. Firstly, the speed of acceptance (25% of articles were accepted within 2 days or less of submission) as well as the low correction rate makes it unlikely that scientific rigor was uniformly and thoroughly maintained during this period. Secondly, a generally poor methodological appraisal of reviews was found, as shown by the low proportion of studies providing the search strategy, the low number of systematic reviews and the low percentage of these following PRISMA 5 and GRADE 6 principles. These caveats reveal the difficulties to reach an adequate balance between urgent knowledge needs and scientific rigor, globally. Thirdly, publication speed seemingly entailed a very low rate of fulfillment of ICMJE criteria 7 on authorship and few systematic studies including meta-analysis and PROSPERO registration. Currently, over 500 hundred ongoing reviews have been registered, 8 showing that a second-wave of highest quality evidence is being generated after the first three months of "emergence publication mode". It is worth noting that approximately quarter of publications were international enterprises. This is shocking provided that the COVID-19 pandemic is a global threat requiring joint international initiatives. In conclusion, during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic the scientific community, including journals, has rapidly generated a large amount of reviews on the increasing and necessary evidence produced to understand and tackle with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this has probably been achieved with the cost of lowering the quality threshold in many instances. Scholars and journal editors are called on to make a joint effort to transition to a highquality research-reporting period regarding COVID-19 at the global level. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved None of the authors declare competing interests with regards to the current work. Other type of reviews 17 (7.1) Coronavirus disease 2019: The harms of exaggerated information and nonevidence-based measures Redundancy in Reporting on COVID-19 Exaggerated Information and COVID-19 Outbreak A catalogue of reporting guidelines for health research Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement GRADE: an emerging consensus on rating quality of evidence and strength of recommendations Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors International prospective register of systematic reviews (PROSPERO)