Critical care journals during the COVID-19 pandemic: challenges and responsibilities

Excerpt

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on the critical care community, as one of the front-line areas in the ongoing pandemic, and on its journals. In response to the COVID-19 emergency, ‘observational research’ is being produced at an unprecedented rate. Although randomized trials were initially in the minority, recently more than 500 clinical trials have been formally registered. Consequently, medical journals have been overwhelmed with manuscripts of all types, mostly observational, and often anecdotal and in short format. All critical care journals have recorded a huge increase in the number of submissions in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2019. Clinicians, justifiably, have been eager to get information about this frightening new disease, while the lay press has put COVID-19 developments in the spotlight, often without distinguishing between fake news, anecdotes and solid science. The various social media, as usual, have acted as an amplifier of what seems to be a phenomenon unprecedented in the history of modern medicine. …