The Landscape of Medical Literature in the Era of COVID-19: Original Research Versus Opinion Pieces
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J Gen Intern Med DOI: 10.1007/s11606-020-06021-8 © Society of General Internal Medicine 2020
INTRODUCTION
There has been rapidly growing scientific literature related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), in attempts to convey any potential hypotheses or confirmed facts about the disease. Notably, there has been a plethora of viewpoints and other opinion pieces to help guide ongoing research efforts. However, this trend carries a risk of redundant publications.1, 2 Our objective was to evaluate the nature of the published scientific literature (original investigations and opinion pieces) related to COVID-19 and to quantify their relative proportions to determine whether the trend of publication of opinion pieces has changed over time.
METHODS
For this cross-sectional analysis, we searched the Medline database from February 1, 2020, to April 20, 2020, using the keywords “COVID-19” and “corona.” Articles were categorized to “opinion” articles (i.e., narrative reviews, viewpoints, perspectives, commentaries, news pieces, letters to the Editor, educational material, and consensus statements/guidelines), and original investigations (i.e., randomized control trials [RCTs], observational studies [retrospective, cross-sectional or prospective], meta-analyses, translational or animal studies, and epidemiologic modeling studies). Consensus statements and guidelines were considered as “opinion” articles since the recommendations from these documents are mainly based on expert opinion. Case reports and case series of ≤ 10 patients as well as articles describing a clinical trial design or a prospective study protocol were excluded. Editorials addressing articles published in the same journal issue were excluded since those are integral part of the journal structure. In addition, we excluded systematic reviews given the lack of consensus on whether they should be considered as original investigations. 3 Non-English articles Akram Y. Elgendy and Amr F. Barakat contributed equally to this work. Received June 2, 2020 Accepted June 30, 2020
where the exact type could not be determined by reviewing the title and abstract were also excluded. Importantly, to ensure that articles are classified into the correct categories, we manually reviewed the content of each article rather than depending on the provided journal classifications. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess the trend in the relative proportion of “opinion” articles over the study period. Descriptive statistical analyses were performed using SPSS statistical package (SPSS version 25.0, IBM Inc., Armonk, NY).
RESULTS
The search identified 5479 articles, among which 276 were non-COVID-related, 63 were non-English articles that could not be classified, 8 were errata, and 3 articles were retracted. In addition, 403 were case reports or case series of ≤ 10 patients, 89 were systematic reviews, 20 were trial design or study protocol, and 124 were editorials related to an article within the same journal. The final analysis included 4493 articles. Among 1030 (
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