The Flood of COVID-19 Publications: a Word of Caution
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COVID-19
The Flood of COVID-19 Publications: a Word of Caution Punit Tiwari 1
&
Harmeet Kaur 2
Accepted: 18 November 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The entire world is currently experiencing difficult times with respect to physical, mental, and socio-economic health. The rapid spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) since early 2020 caught the world by surprise. While there are promising developments, to date, there is no available drug or vaccine, and researchers are working around the clock to develop a solution. Sadly, all these crucial efforts are being affected and, at times, misguided and derailed by the publication of fake articles by so-called researchers and perhaps the mismanagement by authentic and predatory journals. The problem is that genuine and good quality articles are getting lost in the crowd. More than ever, it is now the time to bring in stricter controls and to follow due diligence before allowing articles into the public domain. At the same time, it has become life-saving to separate the wheat from the chaff so that the genuine studies of first-hand experience of handling and management of COVID-19 patients, and authentic research is not submerged in this flood of unreliable publications. Keywords COVID-19 . SARS-CoV-2 . Fake research
The onset of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) since the end of 2019 has taken the world and the medical fraternity by surprise [1]. At the time of writing, there is no proven drug or vaccine available to work as a cure or protective elixir with an acceptable and reproducible success rate [2]. In this ephemeral state of change, several drugs, like hydroxychloroquine [3], ivermectin [4], and antivirals [5], have been put forward as potential treatments only to be withdrawn later since their benefits do not seem to outweigh potential risks. Taking advantage of a crisis is nothing new. It is a common trait of human behaviour. For some years, this has been spreading out into the world of scientific, technical, and medical (STM) publishing [6]. Initially, so-called ‘predatory’ journals [7] were main culprits,
but now, it would appear that even the standard benchmark journals are suffering from a deluge of submissions of variable quality. [8]. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the expedition of related reports and research, it would appear that many have tried to take advantage of a relaxation in publishing norms and controls. The expediting and increased availability of research were originally intended to promote research and dissemination of knowledge. However, this noble goal has been defeated, and some well-established journals have suffered and have had to retract articles [9, 10]. The role and impact of unregulated mainstream and social media networks cannot be overstated in the dissemination of dubious information regarding this pandemic [11]. In addition, a lack of transparent information regarding types of journals and their publication process has been a major cause
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