https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4747-8066
1. Publishing JCHIMP in the Time of COVID-19
As we sit down to write this annual column on Friday, December 18th, 2020, there have been 80,951 COVID-related PubMed-indexed articles published so far this calendar year [Citation1].This number is … staggering. The need to rapidly publish clinical information to share across the world and in a high enough volume to guide practice and develop guidelines was crushing. Like many overwhelming situations, there were missteps. As noted by Yeo-Teh and Tang, in their review of PubMed and Retraction Watch, the article retraction rate for COVID-related publications is far in excess of the usual retraction rate (9.7 articles retracted per 10,000 published for COVID vs. Approximately 4 per 10,000 of all publications in a usual year)[Citation2]. Even Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, widely respected journals with immense readership and high impact factors with stringent review processes, were forced to retract COVID-related publications. The average retraction time of COVID-related articles was approximately 2 weeks, far faster than the reported usual retraction time of a median of 28 months, as well [Citation2,Citation3].
This is not meant to imply malfeasance on the part of most journals, simply that the volume of papers became overwhelming, and that the likely consequence was a reduction in the number of available reviewers with the expertise to properly vet the articles and editorial standards thereby slipped [Citation2]. However, the academic and medical librarians have raised a warning that activity in predatory open access journals have rapidly increased, as well, with supposedly peer-reviewed papers appearing within days of submission, suggesting that said peer-review was a work of fiction [Citation4].
At JCHIMP, we, too experienced the explosive growth in manuscripts. Submitted manuscripts in 2020 were 293, compared to our high in 2019 of 179 (a 60% increase). We have never needed to retract an article, and we remain committed to the same peer review standards that existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. As an open access journal, we feel that we have additional responsibility in this regard, as anything that we publish is freely available and easy to find on PubMed throughout the world. We wish to thank our reviewers for maintaining our rigorous standards, as well as our contributing authors for their patience with our processes. 2020 presented the worst global health crisis in many years. We can fight this crisis in many ways, but our journal will continue to fight in our way, providing you with reliable, peer-reviewed timely information of interest to our communities. Stay strong, stay safe.
Volume 10 of JCHIMP was completed in December 2020. The journal continued to grow and expand as this report will detail. In the 6 issues of volume 10, there was 134 peer-reviewed manuscripts published, an increase of 11% above our previous high. This brings our total in 10 volumes to 806 manuscripts. Institutional homes of our authors come from a wide range ().
Table 1. Institutions published in 2020
It was hoped that JCHIMP would be a major factor in the development of a wider core of peer reviewers. This has been greatly successful. More than 200 individual reviewers () participated in 2020, many of whom had not been a peer reviewer previously.
Of course, the work of the journal would not be possible without the guidance of the editorial board, the phenomenal work of our peer reviewers, and the organizational and administrative wizardry of Jen Huff. We thank you all for your dedication to the journal and its mission.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
References
- [cited 2020 Dec 18]. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/
- NSL YT, Tang BL. An alarming retraction rate for scientific publications on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Account Res. 2020;23:1–7.
- Trikalinos NA, Ioannidis EE. JPA. Falsified papers in high-impact journals were slow to retract and indistinguishable from nonfradulent papers. J Clin Epidemiol. 2008;61:464–470.
- da Silva JAT. An alert to COVID-19 literature in predatory publishing venues. J Acad Librarianship. 2020;46:102187.