COVID-19 Pandemic and Research Publications; Necessity of Maintaining Scientific Integrity

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 outbreak began in China, scientists and health professionals have rushed to understand and mitigate the threat, however, its root cause, spreading characteristic, effective way to control as well as therapeutical approaches are still a mystery and matter of scientific debate. In an effort to fight against this disease scientists also rushed for a global collaborative approach by sharing their findings so that others can use known information. In view of such emergency scientific journals took steps to expedite the peer review process for coronavirus-related manuscripts which poses another challenge of scientific integrity. Community attention on integrity brought another concern where many authors argue against the idea of peer-review exception which compromises high standard for quality in the name of crisis situations. In the space of eight months, the research community’s response to COVID-19 gives rise to a large volume of paper submission which required rigorous reviewing and of course huge amount of time however, it’s also time which demands fastest publication of the latest finding. To balance in scientific integrity of scholarly journal as well as crisis demand to expedite dissemination of known knowledge, AIJR took a unique approach for COVID-19 related manuscript submission to Int. Ann. Sci. only through AIJR preprints invitation. In this approach author shall post COVID-19 related articles to AIJR Preprints and if it seems suitable for further peer-reviewing, author will get invited to submit to Int. Ann Sci. otherwise author will be advised to improve the article with an updated version. In this way the latest finding can get disseminated immediately as a preprint and after submission to the journal it can undergo standard reviewing process to maintain the scientific integrity. Although invitation through preprints serves both purpose of fastest dissemination and the journal can maintain scientific integrity, preprint may have its own risk for sharing non-reviewed version which may include dishonest findings. The only way to make preprints a great place for accelerated publishing and minimize associated risk of sharing non-reviewed findings is that the authors, readers, and most importantly media reporters act in a vigilant manner by following the sharing responsibility and guidelines adhering to the highest ethical standards.