Author response to: Comment on: COVID 19 and the race to publish: an ethical issue

Editor

We read with great interest the Kiely and Nolan’s letter concerning our article ‘COVID 19 and the race to publish: an ethical issue’¹. We thank the authors for their suggestions and their point of view. We agree with their claim that ‘This flurry of academic activity has given these authors a glimmer of hope through the darkness of lockdown’. Certainly, the way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas (Edison quotes). As an example, the race to publish has advantages; in a similar time frame in the previous year, the median time from receipt to final acceptance of COVID-related articles was eight times faster than that of non-COVID-related articles published².

However, quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles (Steve Jobs). This race to publish must be framed by rules. We all have to be vigilant against plagiarism, scientific fraud, non-compliant study design, fake databases, peer-reviewing manipulation, and the lonely scientist coming out the woodwork³. As an example, 65.3 per cent of paper retraction is attributed to misconduct, particularly plagiarism⁴. It is very important to prevent that danger of unframed publication race and find solutions, given the high risks: exhaustion, change of medical specialty, burnout, emotional/financial distress, and suicide amongst vulnerable junior staff⁵.