Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19

Serge P.J.M. Horbach

We assessed the usage of preprint servers as a fast way of disseminating academic knowledge by counting the number of preprints on Covid-19 related content both during and before the current pandemic. For this we used all preprints in de database, and did use a more narrow sampling strategy. Hence, we include all Covid-19 related preprints. In addition, we analysed the number of preprints that also appeared as journal articles, and the average number of days between publication of the preprint and the corresponding journal article. The analysis is based on the linkage of preprints and journal articles in the Dimensions Database (https://docs.dimensions.ai/dsl/index.html). Figure 2 compares the overall duration of journals' publication process prior to and during the present pandemic. It demonstrates that, on average, journals have drastically increased the speed of their processes for Covid-19 publications: average turnaround times in our journal sample has decreased from 117 to 60 days. Comparing the 95% confidence intervals of both statistics, shows the decrease to be highly substantial and significant. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . Table 1 presents descriptive statistics on the average duration of the publication process for Covid-19 related articles in journals in our sample. It distinguishes between the periods before and during the pandemic and it splits the entire publication process in the Review stage (between submission and acceptance) and Editorial stage (between acceptance and submission). Figure 3 presents a graphical overview of the average decrease in turnaround time in the period during the crisis compared to the period prior to the pandemic. It again distinguishes between the Review and Editorial stages of the publication process. Note that negative numbers in this case indicate an increase in turnaround time. The figure indicates the Review stage shortens for ten out of the fourteen journals in our sample, while nine journals managed to shorten their Editorial stage. Average acceleration is around 50% for both stages, but it goes up to nearly 100% in some journals. To check whether the acceleration of publication processes is specific to Covid-19 related papers, we analysed the turnaround times for non-Covid-19 related articles published since the start of the pandemic. For all journals in our sample, we selected the ten most recently published articles (as of April 16 th , 2020) about non-Covid-19 related content. In particular, these were articles not present in our previous dataset and articles not mentioning Covid-19, coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, or Cov-19 in their title, keywords and abstract. For these articles we also analysed the turnaround times of their publication process. Results are presented in figure 4 . The figure indicates that for most journals, articles not related to Covid-19 have very similar turnaround times as articles published before the pandemic. Unpacking the publication process in the Review and Editorial stage, we conclude that, again, non-Covid-19 related articles follow a very similar pattern to articles published before the pandemic.