New Journal to Publish Reviews of COVID-19 Preprints

The open access publication will use AI to identify the most pressing manuscripts in need of peer review.

Written byAmanda Heidt

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COVID-19, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, peer review, journal, preprint, coronavirus, artificial intelligence

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MIT Press announced today (June 29) that it will be launching a new journal called Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 with the explicit purpose of reviewing preprint articles published about the pandemic.

Servers such as bioRxiv and medRxiv offer researchers an opportunity to quickly publish results and get feedback before their reports undergo peer review.

“Preprints have been a tremendous boon for scientific communication, but they come with some dangers, as we’ve seen with some that have been based on faulty methods,” Nick Lindsay, the director of journals at the MIT Press, tells STAT. “We want to debunk research that’s poor and elevate research that’s good.”

For instance, STAT reported in February on the withdrawal of a paper published on bioRxiv that suggested SARS-CoV-2 had been engineered from HIV, while an influential preprint on the use of ivermectin for COVID-19 was removed amid a scandal involving the company ...

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covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, pandemic, preprint, research, journal, peer review

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Amanda Heidt
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Amanda first began dabbling in scicom as a master’s student studying marine science at Moss Landing Marine Labs, where she edited the student blog and interned at a local NPR station. She enjoyed that process of demystifying science so much that after receiving her degree in 2019, she went straight into a second master’s program in science communication at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Formerly an intern at The Scientist, Amanda joined the team as a staff reporter and editor in 2021 and oversaw the publication’s internship program, assigned and edited the Foundations, Scientist to Watch, and Short Lit columns, and contributed original reporting across the publication. Amanda’s stories often focus on issues of equity and representation in academia, and she brings this same commitment to DEI to the Science Writers Association of the Rocky Mountains and to the board of the National Association of Science Writers, which she has served on since 2022. She is currently based in the outdoor playground that is Moab, Utah. Read more of her work at www.amandaheidt.com.
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