Outbreaks of publications about emerging infectious diseases: the case of SARS-CoV-2 and Zika virus
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Background
Outbreaks of infectious diseases generate outbreaks of scientific evidence. In 2016 epidemics of Zika virus emerged, and in 2020, a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused a pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We compared patterns of scientific publications for the two infections to analyse the evolution of the evidence.
Methods
We annotated publications on Zika virus and SARS-CoV-2 that we collected using living evidence databases according to study design. We used descriptive statistics to categorise and compare study designs over time.
Results
We found 2286 publications about Zika virus in 2016 and 21,990 about SARS-CoV-2 up to 24 May 2020, of which we analysed a random sample of 5294 (24%). For both infections, there were more epidemiological than laboratory science studies. Amongst epidemiological studies for both infections, case reports, case series and cross-sectional studies emerged first, cohort and case-control studies were published later. Trials were the last to emerge. The number of preprints was much higher for SARS-CoV-2 than for Zika virus.
Conclusions
Similarities in the overall pattern of publications might be generalizable, whereas differences are compatible with differences in the characteristics of a disease. Understanding how evidence accumulates during disease outbreaks helps us understand which types of public health questions we can answer and when.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.20.20235242: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Strengths and limitations. Strengths of this study include the comparable and reproducible search strategies for two emerging infectious diseases and categorisation of study design by a volunteer crowd of epidemiologist …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.20.20235242: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Strengths and limitations. Strengths of this study include the comparable and reproducible search strategies for two emerging infectious diseases and categorisation of study design by a volunteer crowd of epidemiologist reviewers. A limitation is that the design of an epidemiological study is not always clear, and different scientists might classify the same study differently. We tried to tackle this limitation by screening and training of the volunteer scientists, verification of decisions and having a third person resolving disagreements.12 There are other limitations. First, we only recorded the study design of publications and did not assess the content or its methodological quality. To trace the evolution of evidence for specific research questions, in-depth studies are needed. Second, for SARS-CoV-2, the volume of publications meant that we only annotated a sample of records. The total in the first five months of the pandemic was, however, higher than for one year of publications about Zika virus and the proportions of different study designs for Zika virus stabilised quickly. Third, the searches do not include all sources of peer-reviewed evidence or preprint sources. Incompleteness of the evidence base should not affect our conclusions as long as other sources account for a stable proportion of publications. We followed two dimensions of the publication of evidence about two newly emerging infectious diseases; the overall distribution of publication types and changes ...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
-
