Curious about what’s going on in submission/peer review/publication of SARS-CoV-2 studies? Me too! TL;DR, it’s NUTS. (1/7)

In the past month or so, as an editor and reviewing editor at two major scientific journals, I’ve handled or consulted on over 30 SARS2 manuscripts (this doesn’t count non-coronavirus manuscripts). (2/7)

Over 75% of these early SARS2 manuscripts have been rejected without sending out for peer review. (For reference, at one of the relevant journals, <10% of papers are typically rejected without review). (3/7)

A few of the SARS2 papers are well done, rigorous, complete, and well written. Most of these are from labs that were studying coronaviruses (or relevant fields/techniques) prior to the emergence of SARS2 and already had pipelines in place. (4/7)

But many of the papers are bad. Like really bad. Many of these are from folks who downloaded data from other groups and did rudimentary alignments, searches, or modeling. And then they make definitive conclusions and leaps in logic. (5/7)

For several of the bad papers, it’s likely that the authors spent a few hours doing modeling and then wrote it up. For some of the papers, it’s possible the entire process took one day. (6/7)

I bring this up since there's been talk of “should I pivot my research to focus on SARS2”? For my viral evolution/pathogenesis lab, the answer is no. For others, the answer may be yes. But all of us should uphold scientific standards/rigor for publication. (7/7)