Competing with a pandemic: Trends in research design in a time of Covid-19

During the Covid-19 pandemic, major journals have published a significant number of Covid-19 related articles in a short period of time. While this is necessary to combat the worldwide pandemic, it may have trade-offs with respect to publishing research from other disciplines.

To assess differences in published research design before and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

We performed a cross-sectional review of all 322 full-length research studies published between October 1, 2019 and April 30, 2020 in three major medical journals. We compared the number of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and studies with a control group before and after January 31, 2020, when Covid-19 began garnering international attention.

The number of full-length research studies per issue was not statistically different before and after the Covid-19 pandemic (from 3.7 to 3.5 per issue, p = 0.17). Compared to before January 31, 2020, 0.7 fewer non-Covid-19 studies per issue were published versus after January 31, 2020 (p<0.001), a change that was offset by Covid-19 studies. Among non-Covid-19 studies, 0.9 fewer studies with a control group per issue were published after January 31, 2020, with RCTs contributing to nearly all the decline (p<0.001, p = 0.001, respectively). In the same timeframe, non-Covid-19 studies without a control group and non-Covid-19 studies without randomization experienced relatively small changes that did not meet our threshold for statistical significance (increases of 0.1 and 0.1 per issue, p = 0.80, p = 0.88, respectively).

Using a simple heuristic for assessing research design and lack of generalizability to the general medical literature.

In summary, the increase in Covid-19 studies coincided with a decrease of mostly non-Covid-19 RCTs.