Preventing a future ‘infodemic’

Over 60,000 COVID-19-related articles have been published in just shy of 1 year. How can the peer-review and publication processes handle such an ‘infodemic?’ The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated long-standing problems with scientific publication in regard to accessibility, transparency and accountability, according to Ganesh Mani (Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA) and Tom Hope (Allen Institute for AI, WA, USA), in their recent publication in Patterns. The response from the scientific community to the pandemic has been immense, with over 60,000 COVID-19-related publications appearing on a PubMed search (as of 6 October 2020) and spawning what has been termed an “infodemic”...