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. 2021 Mar;24(1):21-26.
doi: 10.1007/s11019-020-09990-z. Epub 2020 Nov 20.

Optimizing peer review to minimize the risk of retracting COVID-19-related literature

Jaime A Teixeira da Silva  1 , Helmar Bornemann-Cimenti  2 , Panagiotis Tsigaris  3
Affiliations

Optimizing peer review to minimize the risk of retracting COVID-19-related literature

Jaime A Teixeira da Silva et al. Med Health Care Philos. 2021 Mar.

Abstract

Retractions of COVID-19 literature in both preprints and the peer-reviewed literature serve as a reminder that there are still challenging issues underlying the integrity of the biomedical literature. The risks to academia become larger when such retractions take place in high-ranking biomedical journals. In some cases, retractions result from unreliable or nonexistent data, an issue that could easily be avoided by having open data policies, but there have also been retractions due to oversight in peer review and editorial verification. As COVID-19 continues to affect academics and societies around the world, failures in peer review might also constitute a public health risk. The effectiveness by which COVID-19 literature is corrected, including through retractions, depends on the stringency of measures in place to detect errors and to correct erroneous literature. It also relies on the stringent implementation of open data policies.

Keywords: Academic quality; Correction; Public health risk; Retraction; Type I and II errors; Withdrawal.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Trade-off between rigor and speed in peer review. Pressure to achieve the latter may result in a compromise of the former. This phenomenon, which has become acute in the COVID-19 era, has particularly serious reputational consequences for high-ranking journals
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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