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What we should learn from pandemic publishing

Nature Human Behaviour volume 8, pages 1631–1634 (2024)Cite this article

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Authors of COVID-19 papers produced during the pandemic were overwhelmingly not subject matter experts. Such a massive inflow of scholars from different expertise areas is both an asset and a potential problem. Domain-informed scientific collaboration is the key to preparing for future crises.

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Fig. 1: The COVID-19 research landscape.

Data availability

All data, code and materials used in the analysis are hosted on OSF. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by Lilly Endowment, Inc., through its support for the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute. The authors were supported in part by the following grants. S.S.: no. FA9550-19-1-0354, US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR); S.V.: no. 1927425, no. 1927418, US National Science Foundation (NSF); S.K.: no. SES2200228 (NSF); S.F.: no. 1927425 (NSF), no. 1927418 (NSF) and no. FA9550-19-1-0354 (AFOSR); M.S.M.: no. R35GM146974, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health. M.C. was supported by a doctoral fellowship from the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Center of the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Satyaki Sikdar, Sara Venturini.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Satyaki Sikdar & Santo Fortunato

  2. Department of Computer Science, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Satyaki Sikdar

  3. Senseable City Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sara Venturini

  4. Department of Mathematics “Tullio Levi-Civita”, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Sara Venturini & Francesco Rinaldi

  5. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Marie-Laure Charpignon

  6. Network Science Institute, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Sagar Kumar

  7. School of Mathematics, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Francesco Tudisco

  8. School of Mathematics, Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila, Italy

    Francesco Tudisco

  9. Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Maimuna S. Majumder

  10. Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Maimuna S. Majumder

Authors
  1. Satyaki Sikdar
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  2. Sara Venturini
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  3. Marie-Laure Charpignon
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  4. Sagar Kumar
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  5. Francesco Rinaldi
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  6. Francesco Tudisco
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  7. Santo Fortunato
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  8. Maimuna S. Majumder
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Santo Fortunato or Maimuna S. Majumder.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures 1-3, Supplementary Tables 1-2, Supplementary Sections 1-3 on Dataset, Field of Origin Analysis, and Comparison with other health emergencies.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Data for Fig 1 panels (a) and (b) are in separate sheets. Raw counts are also reported separately.

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Sikdar, S., Venturini, S., Charpignon, ML. et al. What we should learn from pandemic publishing. Nat Hum Behav 8, 1631–1634 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01969-7

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