ArticleRevista panamericana de salud publica = Pan American journal of public health2022
Scientific publication speed and retractions of COVID-19 pandemic original articles.
Article in Revista panamericana de salud publica = Pan American journal of public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 4 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
18 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Development of a Conceptual Framework of Health Misinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Systematic Review of Reviews.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Pooled it
- Scientific Evidence in Public Health Decision-Making: A Systematic Literature Review of the Past 50 Years.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Pooled it
- Effectiveness of face masks for reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2: a rapid systematic review.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2023Pooled 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
- Beyond correlation and causation: epistemic caution, anomalous findings, and COVID-19 vaccine safety.Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM · 2026Review
- Scientific retractions: causes, processes, and implications for research integrity.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Review
- Risks and benefits of face masks in children.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2026Review
- Risk of bias and low reproducibility in meta-analytic evidence from fast-tracked publications during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- How COVID-19 affected academic publishing: a 3-year study of 17 million research papers.International journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Why is it important to implement meta-research in universities and institutes with medical research activities?Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Article
- Scientific Publication Speed of Korean Medical Journals during the COVID-19 Era.Healthcare informatics research · 2024Article
- COVID-19 Pandemic and Impact on Research Publications in Critical Care.Critical care explorations · 2024Observational
- Bibliometric analysis of ChatGPT in medicine.International journal of emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Publications on COVID-19 in radiology journals in 2020 and 2021: bibliometric citation and co-citation network analysis.European radiology · 2023Article
- The impact of COVID-19 on global health journals: an analysis of impact factor and publication trends.BMJ global health · 2023Article
- Repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic for science and for the management of the Jornal Brasileiro de Pneumologia.Jornal brasileiro de pneumologia : publicacao oficial da Sociedade Brasileira de Pneumologia e Tisilogia · 2023Article
- Responsible conduct of research: Preparedness for times of crisis.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2023Article
- Biased, wrong and counterfeited evidences published during the COVID-19 pandemic, a systematic review of retracted COVID-19 papers.Quality & quantity · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: To describe the editorial processing time of published COVID-19 research articles and compare this with a similar topic, human influenza, and analyze the number of publications, withdrawals, and retractions. Methods: A descriptive-analytical study using PubMed on research articles with the MeSH terms human influenza and COVID-19. Time to acceptance (from submission to acceptance) and time to publication (from acceptance to publication) were compared. Retractions and withdrawals were reviewed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Results: There were 31 319 research articles on COVID-19 and 4 287 on human influenza published during 2020. The median time to acceptance for COVID-19 was lower than that for human influenza (8 vs. 92 days). The median time to publication for COVID-19 articles was shorter than those on human influenza (12 vs. 16 days); 47.0% of COVID-19 research articles were accepted within the first week of submission, and 19.5% within one day. There were 82 retractions and withdrawals for COVID-19 articles, 1 for human influenza, and 5 for articles that contain both terms; these were mainly related to ethical misconduct, and 27 (31.0%) were published by the same group of authors in one highest-quartile journal. Conclusions: The conundrum between fast publishing and adequate standards is shown in this analysis of COVID-19 research articles. The speed of acceptance for COVID-19 manuscripts was 11.5 times faster than for human influenza. The high number of acceptances within a day or week of submission and the number of retractions and withdrawals of COVID-19 papers might be a warning sign about the possible lack of a quality control process in scientific publishing and the peer review process.
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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.