Contributions of Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences (IJMS) during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dear Editor

Since late 2019, the world and since early 2020, Iran has been experiencing a catastrophic pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). ¹ This fatal virus has a high potential for person-to-person transmission; therefore, this deadly outbreak has caused massive job losses, various psychiatric problems, and increasing difficulties for all businesses worldwide. ^{2 - 5} Production of scientific data and its timely dissemination are the essential elements of an effective response to any crisis including the current pandemic. The current study aimed to determine the early contributions of the Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences (IJMS) during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We retrieved all the IJMS publications in 2020 and divided the published articles into three main categories: clinical sciences, basic sciences, and editorials. We also identified and highlighted the studies related to COVID-19.

There were 66 published articles in 2020. This number was also 66 in the previous year (2019). The main categories of the 2020 articles included: 32 clinical studies (48.5%), 23 basic sciences studies (34.9%), and 11 editorials/letters to the editor (16.7%) (figure 1). In total, 10 studies (15.2%) were related to COVID-19 (figure 2). From the clinical studies, three (9.4%) were COVID-19 related studies. ^{6 - 8} None of the basic sciences studies was related to COVID-19. However, from 11 articles that were published as editorials/letters to the editor, seven (63.6%) were COVID-19-related. ^{9 - 15} This study showed that while the pandemic of COVID-19 has disrupted many businesses and works globally, it has not negatively affected the scientific publications by IJMS. On the other hand, the current situation has created a lot of enthusiasm for research and publication on the issue of “COVID-19”; this is a global phenomenon. ¹⁶ It seems that while the healthcare fraternity is struggling to circumvent the clinical and humanitarian consequences of this fast-spreading fatal infection, at the same time, they are trying hard to continue their scientific research and discoveries and share them with others through their research publications in a timely manner. ¹⁷ The higher percentage of the COVID-19 related editorials (63.6%) indicates the focus of the IJMS editorial team on this global issue and their efforts to spotlight the up-to- date important topics regarding COVID-19.

Figure 1.

The figure shows the number and percentage of the published articles in IJMS in 2020

Figure 2.

The figure shows the distribution of the published article types in IJMS in 2020, including COVID-19-related articles. Seven out of 11 COVID-19-related publications were editorials/letters to the editor, while three were clinical studies.

Conflict of Interest

Manica Negahdaripour, as the Editorial Team Member, was not involved in the peer-review and decision-making processes for this manuscript.