Santo Fortunato, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering professor, is the corresponding author of a paper in the prestigious Nature Human Behavior addressing publishing issues that surfaced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fortunato said that their research, detailed in the paper, “What we should learn from pandemic publishing,” found that less than eight percent of authors of papers on Covid were infectious disease experts. Also, more than 60 percent of Covid papers were coauthored by scientists without expertise on infectious diseases.
“Most people who wrote articles on Covid were not experts,” he said. “That’s both a problem and an opportunity to deal with future crises.”
Fortunato was one of eight co-authors from various institutions, including Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, Northeastern University and Italy’s University of Padova.
The urgency of finding fast solutions to Covid-19 -- which affected policy decision making as well as pandemic science research -- led to the participation of many scientists. Some were experts in the field, some were from other disciplines, and many had little to no infectious disease experience.
The result was an unprecedented amount of media coverage and public debate. There were a large number of Covid-19 articles, many with inaccurate or misleading information.
Experts need to share their knowledge to ensure quality research is conducted, and solutions are implemented. Limited access to experts can undermine research, lead to unethical scientific practices driven by publishing pressures, create public doubt about scientific findings and add unnecessary barriers to practical implementation. A portal where scientists can find each other and team up, a kind of LinkedIn for scientists, could facilitate the creation of effective interdisciplinary teams in the future.
Nature Human Behavior publishes significant research in physical science, biological, health and social disciplines that affect individual and collective human behavior.