The wave of "opinion articles" in the coverage of COVID-19 in surgical literature
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Karem Slim1,2, Catherine Mattevi3, Flora Badon3
1Department of Digestive Surgery, University Hospital CHU Clermont-Ferrand, Place Lucie Aubrac, 63003, Clermont-Ferrand, France. kslim@chu-clermontferrand.fr.
Introduction:
The COVID-19 pandemic is having a deep impact on our surgical practice and scientific publishing output.
Methods:
The 100 best-ranked "surgery journals" were selected. The contents of the March, April, May, and June 2020 issues and ahead-of-print articles were screened. The retrieved articles on COVID-19 were separated into two categories: "opinion articles" and "scientific articles," i.e., randomized trials and original articles with structured methods and results. The number of COVID articles published in the TOP-10 journals was compared with that of COVID articles published elsewhere.
Results:
There were 59 COVID original articles (8%). The great majority of articles were opinion articles (83.4%). Almost 40% of COVID articles were published in the TOP-10 journals.
Conclusion:
Original COVID articles (the core of our knowledge) are scant. Faced with a novel disease, neither the authors nor the editors should be criticized regarding this situation. The future step should be to publish high-quality papers in the setting of a major health crisis.
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