Will the Quality of Research Remain the Same During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Dear Editor:

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of published articles on COVID-19 is increasing in parallel with the number of infected patients. , As of March 21, 2020, more than 1000 articles including the term “COVID-19” were published in PubMed. With this rapid surge in new evidence and the urgency to get this disseminated, can we shorten the peer-review process, but do so without decreasing the quality of research? This is our challenge as editors and reviewers. Usually, it takes at least 2 weeks of peer review followed by another 1 or 2 weeks before the final decision is rendered. However, most manuscripts require a second round of revisions. In the current setting, the time between the initial submission and final acceptance is much shorter than usually reported. International guidelines and even some clinical trials using a fast-track process were published in this emergency setting. We may face several issues here. First of all, as reviewers, we could be influenced by the current drama when evaluating a manuscript. Furthermore, some of us who may be working as front-line clinicians might not be able to pay enough attention to every detail. Last, but not least, as physicians, we all believe that we need to inform the entire community about the evolution of the pandemic and lessons to be learned from other countries and other centers as soon as possible. Whether these factors would influence the quality of research published in the next few months remain to be seen. On a different note, it appears that every journal, every Editor, and every reviewer potentially could accelerate the entire peer-review process; something that would be useful in the long term. This would speed up the medical research worldwide (if necessary). Let us hope that all published reports on COVID-19 have the same quality than those published before the beginning of this pandemic. Time will tell.