key: cord-0997667-2gwv0vbs
authors: Odone, Anna; Signorelli, Carlo; Stuckler, David; Galea, Sandro
title: The first 10,000 COVID-19 papers in perspective: Are we publishing what we should be publishing?
date: 2020-08-20
journal: Eur J Public Health
DOI: 10.1093/eurpub/ckaa170
sha: 059febf60ec24ae1a8179f83323b549d53becf50
doc_id: 997667
cord_uid: 2gwv0vbs

nan

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented focus of the world's scientific community on one topic. To quantify, we have calculated that 4% of all scientific outputs during the last five months have been about COVID-19; this has increased from 0.3% in February, to 1.2% in March, 4 .5% in April, 6.5% in May, 8 .3% in June and 6.6% in July. We systematically retrieved and critically assessed the first 10,000 Pubmed indexed papers on COVID-19. They were published between 20th January and 7th May 2020, with an average of nearly 100 new papers added every day, published in 1881 different scientific journals. Fewer than 8% of journals have published half of the total production, and 7 journals alone have indexed more than 100 papers each. By contrast, 43.3% of journals only published one paper on COVID-19. Unsurprisingly, the largest amount of papers, one-fourth of the 10,000, were published in the US, the country with the largest COVID-19 burden and ranking first in the 2019 Nature index for quality research 1 , followed by China (22.2%), Italy (9%), the UK (7.6%) and France (3.2%).

Are we publishing what we should be publishing? At the end of January, Nature listed the six key questions scientists should be asking 2 . Among these were: how does the virus spread? Can infected people spread the virus without showing symptoms? How deadly is the virus? Where did the virus come from? What can we learn from the virus's genetic sequence? Can a drug be developed to treat the coronavirus? Although acknowledging that some research questions are quicker to answer than others, and that some research answers are moving targets, almost five months after none of them is fully answered. Later in February 2020, a more detailed list of research priorities was identified as essential to inform effective public health responses to COVID-19 3 . In March, the Science Translational Medicine Editorial framed key questions for pandemic prevention, identifying selected pathogen-and society-based variables to be measured 4 . We are far from answering these questions, from fully understanding COVID-19 epidemiology, or from having quantified the impact of different control measures. While science takes time, and not understanding is not an indictment of purposeful science, it is worth asking whether the deluge of science has been asking the right Are we publishing the way we should be publishing? As scientific output around COVID-19 evolves over time, we find, consistent with other efforts that are systematically monitoring the literature 5 , both poor adherence to identified research priorities, and a predominance of opinion over data. More than 60% of published papers on COVID-19 are opinion pieces not reporting original data.

Overall, the question remains: has the surge in scientific publication around COVID-19 been a positive, or a negative, for science? On the positive side, the COVID-19 public health emergency context has pushed journals to laudable efforts to fast track peer reviews, publishers to waive publication fees and provide free access to articles' content, and encouraged a preprint model of publication, the latter carrying both pro and con arguments. It has highlighted the role of new tools based on machine learning and artificial intelligence that are available to support methodologists in conducting systematic reviews or assessing research quality 6 . And it has shown us that scientific publications might become live documents, constantly updated. On the negative side, this moment has made foggier the distinction between data-driven and expository outputs, with important implications for how the work of science is communicated. It also has revealed a divide between the production of science with its ultimate aims, of taking us towards individual and population wellbeing.

Galileo Galilei in the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems 7 warned science had to deal with the "sensible world and not a world of paper". How would he react to so few published papers on COVID-19 report original data? How would he react to the rapid dissemination of inaccurate and exaggerated information? 8 The idea of a "sensible world" was the revolt of scientists against philosophers writing their opinions devoid of empiric observation and physical fact. One wonders whether we are entering a new Galilean age where science and empiricism needs to regain the upper hand, focusing on questions that address key scientific need, and prioritizing data over opinion in an effort to solve a global problem.

China coronavirus: Six questions scientists are asking

Epidemiological research priorities for public health control of the ongoing global novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak. Euro surveillance : bulletin Europeen sur les maladies transmissibles

New coronavirus outbreak: Framing questions for pandemic prevention

COVID-19: living map of the evidence

Coronavirus in context: Scite.ai tracks positive and negative citations for COVID-19 literature

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo)

Coronavirus disease 2019: The harms of exaggerated information and non-evidence-based measures