Reflecting on COVID-19’s impact: Retiring CID & JID editors-in-chief look back

John Heys

5/24/2022 Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email

As they near the end of their distinguished service as editors-in-chief of Clinical Infectious Diseases and The Journal of Infectious Diseases this year, Robert T. Schooley, MD, FIDSA, and Martin S. Hirsch, MD, FIDSA, recently reflected on their respective publications’ experiences during COVID-19 and the future of ID publishing. In this first of two installments of their conversation with Science Speaks, the editors discussed how the journals adapted during the pandemic, practices that emerged out of necessity and concerns about misinformation.

What has it been like leading your publications during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Dr. Martin S. Hirsch: The situation has certainly been interesting and extraordinarily busy in the past two years. I know that’s true for both JID and CID. For JID, the manuscript submissions have doubled, although they’re slowly diminishing now. Because the submissions have doubled, our acceptance rates have gone dramatically down, from about 20% to about 10% now. The increase in submissions has put an enormous strain on our limited office staff as well as the associate editors and the reviewers, but it obviously has been a very busy time.

 

Dr. Robert T. Schooley: I would agree. It’s been one of the busiest times for all of us in the field of infectious diseases these past two years, and the journal operations are no exception. We saw the yearly average rate of submissions go from 3,500 or so to, at the peak, what would have been 10,000 a year. We did that with the same size editorial board. They all had day jobs they were struggling with, institutional demands and family demands, and they did an incredible job keeping up with this onslaught of manuscripts. Our reviewers likewise were all in the midst of this, with demands being made of them by their institutions, hospitals, communities and other constituents as the pace of the pandemic picked up. Our editorial office also worked night and day, and there was a lot of work being done by Oxford University Press behind the scenes to try to keep the production timelines up and going.

What new practices adopted out of necessity by journals during COVID-19 do you see continuing after the pandemic, and which ones do you think will not endure?

Dr. Schooley: Everybody wanted to see information move really quickly, and I understand why. We did as well, but we wanted it to be right. And what this requires is much more rapid throughput for the editing and the reviewing process. I think we’re going to need to figure out how to increase the reviewer pool and to increase the speed with which things go through that pool. We went back to the same people over and over again, and we can’t thank them enough for their willingness to put out for the journals. But I think that’s not sustainable over time.

Dr. Hirsch: We’ve noticed certainly that we’ve had to do faster review times, shortened deadlines for editorials and shortened deadlines for revisions. I think some of these will be maintained over time, so that we get more rapid publication periods in the future. We’ve struggled to balance the significant increase in submissions and the need for rapid review of important COVID-related papers, as other journals have as well. Hopefully, as things ease off in the post-pandemic era, we can take a little more time to do things more thoroughly. Even some of the big journals have made mistakes by too-rushed procedures, and I think that’s not a good idea for the long run. But I think a faster review period certainly is doable, and I think it will persist.

Dr. Schooley: I think one thing that diffuses some of this is the increased use of preprints. A lot of things that are submitted to us have already been up on preprint servers for several weeks. They’re not always right, but they do get the information out so people can look at it. Being right is critical as well, because you can go off on wild goose chases over things that really haven’t been well thought out and that can be incredibly destructive if you sacrifice accuracy for speed.

Dr. Hirsch: Certainly, preprint servers are something that has caught on dramatically in the COVID field and in other ID fields as well. I think much of what appears on these preprint servers is correct and will ultimately become dogma, but some of it is not. What is on them is often immediately picked up by the press, particularly if it’s sensational and new. Often this has been used inappropriately to support one or another view of what’s going on in the pandemic.

We all know that there’s an incessant drive by the press for breaking news, and often there are talking heads that are willing to meet the demands of newscasters for sensationalism. That can lead to a lot of misinformation. We need to be vigilant in contributing rigorous peer review and judicious editorials to try to put this work into proper context and avoid as much misinformation as possible.

Are there additional steps that you think journals should take to address concerns about misinformation in the future?

Dr. Hirsch: I think the key issues are that journals shouldn’t rush to the point of missing things and making errors, and they should be thorough, even though the review process is accelerated.

Dr. Schooley: From the perspective of misinformation and disinformation, we also have to think about what the role of these journals should be. In my view, this shouldn’t be to get in the mud and wrestle with people who are putting out misinformation by engaging them in a conversation that really isn’t scientific. There’s the old saying about when you wrestle with a pig, you get all muddy, and the pig loves it. We should try to publish data that are accurate, and if they refute things that have been out there as misinformation, that’s terrific. But to engage in a mud-throwing activity with people who putting up stuff they know is wrong just legitimizes some of the things that they’re trying to argue about.

In the second part of their conversation with Science Speaks, Drs. Schooley and Hirsch highlight broader trends in ID publishing, how scientific publications can help us prepare for the next pandemic and topics they expect will get more attention in the years ahead.