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      An Alert to COVID-19 Literature in Predatory Publishing Venues

      editorial

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          Abstract

          The COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a flood of papers and preprints, has placed multiple challenges on academic publishing, the most obvious one being sustained integrity under the pressure to publish quickly. There are risks of this high volume-to-speed ratio. Many letters, editorials, and supposedly “peer reviewed” papers in ranked and indexed journals were published in a matter of days, suggesting that peer review was either fleeting or non-existential, or that papers were rapidly approved by editors based on their perceived interest and topicality, rather than on their intrinsic academic value. In academic publishing circles, the claim of “peer review”, when in fact it has not been conducted, is a core characteristic of “predatory publishing”, and is also a “fake” element that may undermine efforts in recent years to build trust in science's budding serials crisis. While the world is still centrally focused on COVID-19, the issue of “predatory publishing” is being ignored, or not being given sufficient attention. The risks to the scholarly community, academic publishing and ultimately public health are at stake when exploitative and predatory publishing are left unchallenged.

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          Predatory journals: no definition, no defence

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            Is Open Access

            Review: Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine for Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)

            Abstract Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a rapidly emerging viral infection causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19). Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have garnered unprecedented attention as potential therapeutic agents against COVID-19 following several small clinical trials, uncontrolled case series, and public figure endorsements. While there is a growing body of scientific data, there is also concern for harm, particularly QTc prolongation and cardiac arrhythmias. Here, we perform a rapid narrative review and discuss the strengths and limitations of existing in vitro and clinical studies. We call for additional randomized controlled trial evidence prior to the widespread incorporation of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine into national and international treatment guidelines.
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              Problems with traditional science publishing and finding a wider niche for post-publication peer review.

              Science affects multiple basic sectors of society. Therefore, the findings made in science impact what takes place at a commercial level. More specifically, errors in the literature, incorrect findings, fraudulent data, poorly written scientific reports, or studies that cannot be reproduced not only serve as a burden on tax-payers' money, but they also serve to diminish public trust in science and its findings. Therefore, there is every need to fortify the validity of data that exists in the science literature, not only to build trust among peers, and to sustain that trust, but to reestablish trust in the public and private academic sectors that are witnessing a veritable battle-ground in the world of science publishing, in some ways spurred by the rapid evolution of the open access (OA) movement. Even though many science journals, traditional and OA, claim to be peer reviewed, the truth is that different levels of peer review occur, and in some cases no, insufficient, or pseudo-peer review takes place. This ultimately leads to the erosion of quality and importance of science, allowing essentially anything to become published, provided that an outlet can be found. In some cases, predatory OA journals serve this purpose, allowing papers to be published, often without any peer review or quality control. In the light of an explosion of such cases in predatory OA publishing, and in severe inefficiencies and possible bias in the peer review of even respectable science journals, as evidenced by the increasing attention given to retractions, there is an urgent need to reform the way in which authors, editors, and publishers conduct the first line of quality control, the peer review. One way to address the problem is through post-publication peer review (PPPR), an efficient complement to traditional peer-review that allows for the continuous improvement and strengthening of the quality of science publishing. PPPR may also serve as a way to renew trust in scientific findings by correcting the literature. This article explores what is broadly being said about PPPR in the literature, so as to establish awareness and a possible first-tier prototype for the sciences for which such a system is undeveloped or weak.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Journal of Academic Librarianship
                Elsevier Inc.
                0099-1333
                0099-1333
                16 June 2020
                September 2020
                16 June 2020
                : 46
                : 5
                : 102187
                Affiliations
                Miki-cho Post Office, P.O. Box 7, Ikenobe 3011-2, Kagawa-ken 761-0799, Japan
                Article
                S0099-1333(20)30090-2 102187
                10.1016/j.acalib.2020.102187
                7296304
                ed0fd6dc-0983-4926-a0ab-610eeda91302
                © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                : 1 June 2020
                : 5 June 2020
                Categories
                Article

                editorial oversight,fake,integrity,misinformation,peer review,post-publication peer review

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