COVID 19 and the race to publish: an ethical issue.

Editors

The pandemic of COVID-19 s disrupting global health in a proportion unparalleled in modern history. Worldwide, researchers and health professionals are currently on the front line fighting against the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic alongside their patients. However, there is an invisible pandemic as harmful as the virus itself: the race to publish. This race to publish isn't a new phenomenon but dramatically increased with the spread of COVID-19. The motivation of researchers in this race to publish is also concerning as it can be fueled by many non-scientific motives: hierarchical, political, personal, unbalanced media attention (for example hydroxychloroquine), academic bullying, commercial, strategic, abuse of power and/or sexism… None of which are in the best interest of the scientific community.

Scientific journal editors and reviewers hold an anonymous yet essential task of enhancing researchers articles and so they must be acknowledged and congratulated for their work. Publishers are overwhelmed by an avalanche of articles, some of which are of average quality. In 5 months, the number of publications related to COVID-19 is already more than triple that of the number of publications on HIV in the last 20 years. This overproduction of average quality papers is currently polluting the overall medical knowledge on the subject and could lead to a prolongation of the pandemic by slowing down the publication of more relevant articles and diluting the information pool. Since the begin of the year many poor quality articles have been published and cited in other papers, some of which have already been removed from their original journals.

Researchers should therefore be more vigilant and cautious regarding the quality and relevance of their submissions. This race to publish jeopardizes the quality and relevance of articles released on COVID-19. This race also reveals abusive behaviors such as verbal insults and threatening towards juniors at every scientific level: laboratory members, graduate students and postdocs. The COVID-19 pandemic is already stressful. More than ever, researchers are working under pressure and must protect themselves from the “publish or perish” phenomenon. Researchers are facing financial distress and junior colleagues are getting more and more vulnerable, putting them all at risk of burn-outs or suicide.

The threat of quantity over quality is real and may lead to the publication of poorer quality articles. Therefore, scientific journal editors must resist this urge to be read and published and step up against this race, as publications on COVID-19 are emerging in inappropriate journals or are submitted by authors who are not specialized in the research or management of this pandemic. We all have to be vigilant against plagiarism, scientific fraud, non-compliant study design, fake databases, peer reviewing manipulation and lonely scientist coming out the wood work. Publishers therefore have an ethical and historical role to play during this health crisis which is no less than that of the researcher behind the microscope. Far away from the media and hidden from the public (invisible army), editors are playing a vital role in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic by filtering and cautiously examining submitted articles.

None of us was prepared to face a pandemic. Publishers and researchers must fight together against this race to publish. Even if knowledge is built gradually, we need quality, not quantity.