Publication by association: how the COVID-19 pandemic has shown relationships between authors and editorial board members in the field of infectious diseases
Clara Locher, David Moher, Ioana A. Cristea, Florian Naudet
Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rush to scientific and political judgements on the merits of hydroxychloroquine was fuelled by dubious papers which may have been published because the authors were not independent from the practices of the journals in which they appeared. This example leads us to consider a new type of illegitimate publishing entity, 'self-promotion journals' which could be deployed to serve the instrumentalisation of productivity-based metrics, with a ripple effect on decisions about promotion, tenure and grant funding, but also on the quality of manuscripts that are disseminated to the medical community and form the foundation of evidence-based medicine.
Topics & Concepts
PandemicCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)Promotion (chess)PublishingField (mathematics)Political scienceEditorial boardPolitics2019-20 coronavirus outbreakSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)MedicinePublic relationsLibrary scienceVirologyLawInfectious disease (medical specialty)Computer sciencePathologyMathematicsPure mathematicsOutbreakDiseaseHealth and Medical Research ImpactsAcademic Publishing and Open AccessMeta-analysis and systematic reviews