ArticlePLoS biology2021
The evolving role of preprints in the dissemination of COVID-19 research and their impact on the science communication landscape.
Article in PLoS biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 150 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
150 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- SARS-CoV-2 post-acute sequelae in previously hospitalised patients: systematic literature review and meta-analysis.European respiratory review : an official journal of the European Respiratory Society · 2023Pooled it
- Comparison of Preprint Postings of Randomized Clinical Trials on COVID-19 and Corresponding Published Journal Articles: A Systematic Review.JAMA network open · 2023Pooled it
- Three out of four published systematic reviews on COVID-19 treatments were not registered and one-third of those registered were published: a meta-research study.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- Infectious disease modelling for SARS-CoV-2 in Africa to guide policy: A systematic review.Epidemics · 2022Pooled it
- Identifying factors contributing to increased susceptibility to COVID-19 risk: a systematic review of Mendelian randomization studies.International journal of epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- Fostering cultural change in research through innovative knowledge sharing, evaluation, and community engagement strategies.NPJ science of learning · 2026Review
- Fabricated references are twice as common in medRxiv preprints as in peer-reviewed articles.Journal of internal medicine · 2026Article
- From shadow AI to accountable assistance: a framework for level 2 AI-supported peer review in medical journals.Japanese journal of radiology · 2026Article
- The art of sharing: From research to outreach in the social media era.Experimental physiology · 2026Article
- PreprintToPaper dataset: connecting bioRxiv preprints with journal publications.Scientific data · 2026Article
- When peer review drags on: the harm to early career researchers.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2026Article
- Article
- Stark Decline in Journalists' Use of Preprints Postpandemic.Science communication · 2025Article
- Comprehensive bibliometric analysis of characteristics, patterns, and causes of retractions in pediatric literature.European journal of pediatrics · 2025Review
- Enabling inclusive systematic reviews: incorporating preprint articles with large language model-driven evaluations.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Incorporating preprints in systematic reviews: a preliminary study of a novel method for rapid evidence synthesis.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Ivermectin repurposing for COVID-19: pharmacological and bibliometric analysis.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2025Article
- Post-publication peer review and the identification of methodological and reporting issues in COVID-19 trials: a qualitative study.BMJ evidence-based medicine · 2025Article
- Research on New Methods of Topic Mining and Topic Prediction for Medical Preprints on Emerging Infectious Diseases.Cureus · 2025Article
- The importance of rigor in pharmacy research: Challenges and solutions.Research in social & administrative pharmacy : RSAP · 2025Article
90 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The world continues to face a life-threatening viral pandemic. The virus underlying the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused over 98 million confirmed cases and 2.2 million deaths since January 2020. Although the most recent respiratory viral pandemic swept the globe only a decade ago, the way science operates and responds to current events has experienced a cultural shift in the interim. The scientific community has responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing over 125,000 COVID-19-related scientific articles within 10 months of the first confirmed case, of which more than 30,000 were hosted by preprint servers. We focused our analysis on bioRxiv and medRxiv, 2 growing preprint servers for biomedical research, investigating the attributes of COVID-19 preprints, their access and usage rates, as well as characteristics of their propagation on online platforms. Our data provide evidence for increased scientific and public engagement with preprints related to COVID-19 (COVID-19 preprints are accessed more, cited more, and shared more on various online platforms than non-COVID-19 preprints), as well as changes in the use of preprints by journalists and policymakers. We also find evidence for changes in preprinting and publishing behaviour: COVID-19 preprints are shorter and reviewed faster. Our results highlight the unprecedented role of preprints and preprint servers in the dissemination of COVID-19 science and the impact of the pandemic on the scientific communication landscape.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.