General medical publications during COVID-19 show increased dissemination despite lower validation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has yielded an unprecedented quantity of new publications, contributing to an overwhelming quantity of information and leading to the rapid dissemination of less stringently validated information. Yet, a formal analysis of how the medical literature has changed during the pandemic is lacking. In this analysis, we aimed to quantify how scientific publications changed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

We performed a cross-sectional bibliometric study of published studies in four high-impact medical journals to identify differences in the characteristics of COVID-19 related publications compared to non-pandemic studies. Original investigations related to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 published in March and April 2020 were identified and

SUBMITTER: Gai N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7853485 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature