Thread, with some reflections as editor of an academic journal in the time of COVID-19. There are so many COVID-19 submissions and pitches it's almost impossible to keep up and give each its due consideration: blog posts commentaries, editorials, research papers, et cetera 1/5
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They're broadly in 3 categories: 1. offering opinion about how to improve the response; 2. aiming to influence the response in real time with evidence and experience; and 3. setting the scene for what post-COVID-19 global health should look like given the response so far 2/5
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Of the 3 categories, 1 is least useful; 2 confirms my suspicions that academic journals are, by design, too slow and not well suited for learning and evidence needs on the go (while the legitimising role of journals and peer review is important, we need alternative models) 3/5
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3 is where academic journals, as currently conceived, can be most impactful in situations like this; providing a platform for necessary discussions and debates (second only to my fear of the havoc COVID-19 may still wreak, is that we may not learn much from the devastation) 4/5
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Of Churchill's many witticisms, this his insult to a political adversary haunts me most: "occasionally he stumbled over the truth but he always picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened." I hope same won't be said of the "global health elite" post-COVID-19. 5/5
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@seyeabimbola
Honestly I think we all want to say something particularly in regards to
#3
, and as a working mom in academia, the global health elite needs to understand that time is up. It’s not all about funding, but empathy and humility and the right to health for all.
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@seyeabimbola
Need to hold my thought on this thread!! Phew!! The slew of
#COVID
ー19 submissions is frankly concerning. My question is what is really being published? why does everybody have so much to say in so little time? And why are the journal editors requesting for
#COVID19
papers?!...
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@seyeabimbola
@AbraarKaran
I agree with your take. I was reluctant to even call for papers, but then did what everybody else did. In reality much of the content currently in production will be outdated by the time it comes out. Journals with the exception of top flight medical journals are useless for 1&2.
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@seyeabimbola
I did something else today, I went through global publishers' COVID19 article repositories. There's a frightening amount of peer reviewed papers that were accepted on the day of submission. There are innocent explanations that are possible to explain this, but I wonder...
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