High Impact Factor Research Articles

Digital and social media impact of positive versus negative obstetrical randomized controlled trials

We sought to compare the digital and social media attention given to positive versus negative obstetrical (OB) randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in high impact factor (IF) obstetrics and gynecology (OBGYN) and weekly medical journals.

Social media impact of obstetrical randomized controlled trials published in high impact factor journals

We sought to assess the digital and social media attention of obstetrical (OB) randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in high impact factor (IF) obstetrics and gynecology (OBGYN) and weekly medical journals.

High variability in patient reported outcome utilization following hip fracture: a potential barrier to value-based care.

Osteoporotic hip fractures are associated with high levels of morbidity, mortality, and cost, while gains in mortality over the past 30years have been modest. To improve care beyond simple mortality metrics requires identifying and then consistently measuring outcomes that are meaningful to patients and families. The purpose of this study was to review the top-tier hip fracture literature published in the past 30years to determine if there are consensus outcome measures being routinely used and if the rate of reporting clinically meaningful patient-rated outcome measures is improving over time. This was a systematic review and meta-analysis on outcome measures reported in osteoporotic hip fractures. Articles were included if they had been published over the last 30years and were from high impact factor journals. Inclusion criteria were elderly hip fractures, therapeutic or prognostic study, unique and identifiable patients, and included follow-up beyond initial hospitalization. We analyzed study type, inclusion criteria, outcomes reported, and journal specialty orientation. Three hundred eighty-four articles were included in the final analysis. Sixty-seven percent of the articles were therapeutic studies; 33% were prognostic studies. The average number of patients in each study was 435; the average age was 78years. The most commonly reported outcome was mortality, and was present in 79% of studies. There was a high degree of heterogeneity in patient-reported outcome measures, with the most popular score (Harris Hip Score) reported only 14% of the time. Only 6% of articles had all components of essential core outcome sets previously defined in the literature. Despite the apparent advances that have been made in our ability to care for hip fractures, the overall rate of reporting outcomes beyond mortality rate remains low. This lack of consensus represents a major barrier to implementation of value-based care in this patient population.

To blind or not to blind

During this COVID-19 pandemic, I was invited to review several papers from well-reputed and high-impact factor journals. Surprisingly, the review of these papers was not blind, allowing me to know the authors and their institutions.
 
 Not blinding the reviews allows reviewers to decide whether accept or not the task and can predispose the reviewer's final decision. What was more striking for me was to know that some authors do not accept blind reviews.
 
 In our journal, all papers are blindly reviewed by two well-reputed reviewers with expertise in the topic. BLINDLY. Even our copyeditor, who checks and corrects English language mistakes, is blind to the paper's authorship.
 
 Although the time for publishing is sometimes long, the edition process is systematic and thoughtful, even changing or adding some reviewers when necessary. All the process but creating the PDF files is voluntary and free, done by different WFOT members.
 
 In issue 6, we have collected different topic papers; the paper from Recio deserves special mention, as it has belonged to grey literature since 2007. I read this paper in 2008, but I have not been able to contact ANY of the authors till recently Dr. Javier Cespedes found Dr. Marizta Palma that authorized its publication in our journal.
 
 Issue 7 will be the Proceedings of the 7th Meeting of the WFOT that will take place in Bucharest in 2022.
 
 We are now collecting papers for issue 8.

CSR in Management Sciences: Is It “a Road to Nowhere”?

Over the years, the idea of corporate social responsibility has attracted the interest both of practitioners and researchers. While a discourse has occurred in the context of the meaning of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), there is no extensive analysis of the latest contributions. To address this gap, three objectives have been formulated for the purpose of this paper: to analyse development trends in CSR definitions, to assess the applicability of scientific efforts in the above-mentioned area and to demonstrate future research opportunities and threats based on the state-of-the-art in CSR. An organized literature review and bibliometric methods have been proposed based on 55 articles published in the “Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management Journal”, the top ranked periodical with the highest Impact Factor, from its beginnings to January 2021. This research provides a clear overview of the recent CSR trends that are present in the literature, by pinpointing those works that refer to significant characteristics and indicate future trajectories of CSR in a managerial practical context, particularly important for the effectiveness of future CSR-oriented organizational activities. This paper summarises the existing CSR-related knowledge and constitutes the first attempt to investigate the process of the creation and development of the corporate social responsibility concept from its origins to its contemporary multidimensionality.

Economic perspectives on the future of academic publishing: Introduction to the special issue

Economic perspectives on the future of academic publishing: Introduction to the special issue

A internacionalização da produção das diferentes gerações de pesquisadores CNPq de Geografia Física do Brasil

CNPq productivity scholarship holders can be considered elite in terms of scientific production in Brazil. Therefore, it is expected from them a constant pool of high-quality publications. However, nowadays, high-quality research is increasingly understood as getting published in scientific, international, English-speaking journals with a high impact factor. In parallel, it makes sense to expect that the younger generation of CNPq productivity scholarship holders in ​​Physical Geography will present a more internationalized production than the older ones, as the demand for greater internationalization is still recent. Furthermore, the younger ones were educated in a world inclusive academic, more globalized. Therefore, this paper analyzes the production published in scientific journals of all CNPq productivity scholarship holders in the field of Physical Geography between 2016 and 2020 and compares the differences and similarities of the production of the older generation with that of the former younger one. The results obtained demonstrate that there are no major differences between the production of the two generations, being, in general, the oldest most productive, both in national and international articles. This fact shows that the internationalization of Brazilian scientific production in Physical Geography is not a generational challenge. In parallel, the results obtained evidenced two other facts: that half of the scholarship holders work in the Geomorphology and Pedology sub-area and that the level 1 scholarships are heavily concentrated in the older generation.

Risk of bias in observational studies using routinely collected data of comparative effectiveness research: a meta-research study

BackgroundTo assess the completeness of reporting, research transparency practices, and risk of selection and immortal bias in observational studies using routinely collected data for comparative effectiveness research.MethodWe performed a meta-research study by searching PubMed for comparative effectiveness observational studies evaluating therapeutic interventions using routinely collected data published in high impact factor journals from 01/06/2018 to 30/06/2020. We assessed the reporting of the study design (i.e., eligibility, treatment assignment, and the start of follow-up). The risk of selection bias and immortal time bias was determined by assessing if the time of eligibility, the treatment assignment, and the start of follow-up were synchronized to mimic the randomization following the target trial emulation framework.ResultSeventy-seven articles were identified. Most studies evaluated pharmacological treatments (69%) with a median sample size of 24,000 individuals. In total, 20% of articles inadequately reported essential information of the study design. One-third of the articles (n = 25, 33%) raised some concerns because of unclear reporting (n = 6, 8%) or were at high risk of selection bias and/or immortal time bias (n = 19, 25%). Only five articles (25%) described a solution to mitigate these biases. Six articles (31%) discussed these biases in the limitations section.ConclusionReporting of essential information of study design in observational studies remained suboptimal. Selection bias and immortal time bias were common methodological issues that researchers and physicians should be aware of when interpreting the results of observational studies using routinely collected data.

Consumers' choice and preferences of dairy based products

Dairy is a preferred product in most of the households in various forms, ranging from milk, butter, curd to sweets, chocolates, hot beverages, etc. The aim of this study was to investigate the Consumer choice and Consumer preferences towards dairy products. In this study, more than twenty articles were collected and reviewed. Recently published articles were collected from the high impact factor journals consisting of the primary data related to dairy products. Based on this source, the objectives were framed and the results were obtained. The result obtained in this study showed that the major factor influencing the consumer towards dairy was the quality and nutrient content present in it. Socio-demographic characteristics also determined the consumer choices towards dairy-based products, especially the education and income level. And also, price plays a significant role in consumer choice in choosing dairy products followed by promotion in the marketing mix. The examination of consumer choice and preferences determined that quality and nutrient content were the major reason for influencing consumers.

Characteristics and Research Techniques Associated with the Journal Impact Factor and Other Key Metrics in Pharmacology Journals

In the present age, there is intense pressure on researchers to publish their research in ‘high-impact factor’ journals. It would be interesting to understand the trend of research publications in the field of pharmacology by exploring the characteristics of research articles, including research techniques, in relation to the journal’s key bibliometrics, particularly journal impact factor (JIF), the seemingly most mentioned metric. This study aimed to determine the characteristics and research techniques in relation to research articles in pharmacology journals with higher or lower JIF values. A cross-sectional study was conducted on primary research journals under the ‘Pharmacology and Pharmacy’ category. Analysis of 768 original research articles across 32 journals (with an average JIF of 2.565 ± 0.887) demonstrated that research studies involving molecular techniques, in vivo experiments on animals, and bioinformatics and computational modeling were significantly associated with a higher JIF value of the journal in which such contributions were published. Our analysis suggests that research studies involving such techniques/approaches are more likely to be published in higher-ranked pharmacology journals.

Assessing the publication output in the field of forensic science and legal medicine using Web of Science database from 2011 to 2020

The aim of this study was threefold. First, it analyzed the characteristics of the publication outputs for the Legal Medicine (LM) category using the Web of Science (WoS) database during 2011–2020. Second, it discussed the distribution of the papers for the 25 most productive countries/regions in terms of quality and quantity, such as the h-index and GDP per capita. Finally, it investigated the trend and temporal stability of the journal impact factor (JIF) and determined the percentage of the journal self-citations. The findings suggested that the number of papers, the average number of pages of the papers, the average number of cited references in the papers, the average number of authors per paper, the percentage of open access papers, as well as international and domestic collaboration tended to increase regularly. However, the productivity was limited when compared to the whole WoS database, since there was no significant change in the number of the journals. The countries/regions with the highest number of publications were not those that made the most impact in terms of the widespread impact of the publications. The level of international cooperation and the funding for the research had dramatic impact on the visibility of papers. The average JIF has increased significantly while the journal self-citation rates have decreased in a similar way. The journals have had very stable (have not fluctuated) impact factors over time. During the period studied, the journals with the higher impact factors (Q1, Q2) published many more papers than journals with the lower impact factors (Q3, Q4).

Understanding of Islamic Law Enforcement in Some Islamic Countries (Analysis of International Islamic Studies)

This religious law paper discusses the understanding of Islamic law enforcement in several countries or Islamic empires through analysis and review of hundreds of articles published in high-impact factor journals. Our data collection is carried out with a Google search engine on many scientific data-based publications such as Sagepub, Elsevier, Taylor and France, Academic Paper, and Google Books. Furthermore, the study involved the coding system, evaluation, and in-depth interpretation so that we get an understanding to answer the problems of this study. We design this study as a descriptive qualitative study on secondary data. Based on the results and discussion, we summarize the results; among others, several Islamic countries have made it mandatory for Islamic law to be applied as a whole. However, if it is not an Islamic state, the application is on agreed matters, and Muslims are obliged to fight for it gradually through a constitutional route. These findings should be input for the development of Islamic studies and law in the future.

Self-Citation Patterns of Journals Indexed in the Journal Citation Reports

• Except for a very few high-impact journals, almost all journals’ impact factor rankings change when self-citations are excluded from the calculation. • Self-citations are important for non-English speaking academic communities. • Not all journals are equal, and so it is quite problematic to assess them using one formula. • It is important for policymakers to understand the underlying problems related to the impact factor calculation. Self-citation patterns of 1,104 journals indexed in the 2018 edition of the Journal Citation Reports were examined to assess the possibility of underlying rank manipulations. The journals included in this study were all found to have a self-citation rate of more than 25%. Our research shows that by excluding self-citation rates, the rank of journals with a high impact factor are not affected; however, for other journals, the removal of even a single self-citation can cause significant rank changes. Self-citation patterns are typical for local language journals as well as journals from upper-middle-income European countries. Impact factors used in research performance evaluations should be used more carefully, particularly when variables such as journal size, publication language, publisher country, and subject area correlate with self-citation rates.

An Audit of Interim Analyses of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) Published in Three High Impact Factor Medical Journals Over a Seven- year Period (2012-2018).

Interim analysis is an integral component of clinical research and drug development in particular and helps reduce 'time to market' for an intervention or stop further development of unsafe and ineffective interventions. In this audit, we evaluated the extent of use of interim analyses in published RCTs in three leading journals and their impact on regulatory approval. RCTs published in JAMA, NEJM and Lancet in the year 2012 to 2018 were extracted. Each RCT was scrutinized using the filter term 'Interim'. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The factors (therapeutic areas, nature of interventions, source of funding and phases of trials) associated with Interim analysis and its impact on drug approval were analyzed. The majority of RCTs with interim analysis belonged to oncology (27%) and cardiology (17.2%) and were related to drugs (70%). Majority of the RCTs were in phase 3 (56.3%) and funded exclusively by Pharmaceutical industry (36.2%). A total of 2% and 14% studies led to accelerated approval and normal regulatory approval. The choice of alpha spending function was not mentioned in 44.8% studies and 21% studies used O-Brien Fleming method. A total of 18.5% studies were stopped early. The oncology trials, drug as intervention and Phase 3 trials were associated with the conduct of interim analysis which was associated with significantly higher numbers of accelerated and routine regulatory approvals. Majority of the RCTs with interim analysis were from oncology and most did not report a stopping rule. Interventions that were drugs (rather than devices or surgical procedures). and phase 3 trials (relative to other phases of RCTs). were associated with significantly higher number of interim analyses which was also associated with significantly higher number of regulatory approvals.

Trends in Female Plastic Surgery Resident Authorship - Signs of Changing Times?

Gender discrepancies exist in academia for leadership positions, advancement opportunities, and research. As of 2019, the ratio of total male-to-female attending plastic and reconstructive surgeons was 4.8:1. However, the ratio of male-to-female residents in integrated plastic surgery programs fell to 1.3:1, indicating rising female representation. With more balanced gender distributions of residents, the authors sought to determine whether this translates to greater equality of opportunities and achievements. Specifically, this study compares the academic productivity of male and female integrated plastic surgery residents. A list of integrated plastic surgery residency programs was obtained from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education website and ranked by reputation using the Doximity Residency Navigator. Integrated plastic surgery residents from 2019 to 2020 were identified via program websites and social media accounts. Works published during residency were identified through PubMed and Scopus from July 1 of each resident's intern year through August 10, 2020. Demographic variables for residents, including training class and medical school, as well as for programs, including geographic region, Doximity ranking, and medical school affiliation, were collected. Medical schools were ranked according to US News by research. Research productivity was assessed through the number of total research articles with authorship position (first, second, or last), the number of articles published in plastic surgery journals with the highest impact factors (Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Aesthetic Surgery Journal), and H-indices. Chi-Squared tests and Mann-Whitney U-tests were used to make comparisons between male and female residents (α = 0.05). In total, 931 residents in 81 integrated plastic surgery programs were identified, including 534 (57.4%) male and 397 (42.6%) female residents. There were no differences between male and female residents in terms of training year or program geography. Female residents were more likely to come from a top-50 medical school than males (54.7% vs. 48.1%, p = 0.049). There were no significant differences in gender distribution of residents from top-20 programs or programs affiliated with a top-20 medical school. The median (IQR) number of publications in total, and for each gender, was 3 (1-6). There was no difference in the number of total publications by training year by gender, besides the second-year resident class where male residents had a median (IQR) of 2 (1-4) compared to 1 (0-3) (p = 0.028). Male and female residents did not differ with regards to authorship position or proportion of times publishing in top journals. The distribution of H-indices for male residents was slightly higher than female residents (p = 0.003), but the median (IQR) was the same at 3 (1-5). Currently, male and female integrated plastic surgery residents have similar levels of academic productivity. This suggests that female representation is slowly increasing along the pipeline in academia, representing a paradigm shift from previous trends of gender inequality in plastic surgery.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Communication Studies: Bibliometric Analysis

This research aims to examine which issues are mainly carried out in international articles published in journals that direct the field of communication during the COVID-19 pandemic process and how many of these studies are related to COVID-19 through the bibliometric analysis method. For this purpose, the top 20 journals with high impact factors in communication were evaluated according to the Journal Citation Reports (2019) and Scimago Journal & Country Rank (2019) in the Q1 rank. The articles published in the relevant journals between January 1, 2020 - April 20, 2021, have been accessed through the Web of Science database. As a result of the analyses performed using R software, a total of 1613 articles were examined, and it was determined that the number of articles related to COVID-19 was 36. 25 of 36 works on COVID-19 were published in the “Social Media + Society” journal. It was observed that 14 of the first 20 journals did not publish articles on COVID-19. It is seen that 40% of the top 10 authors who published most in the field of communication during the relevant research period were from the University of Amsterdam, and 75% of the authors who worked on COVID-19 were from the University of Zurich. While the main keywords in the communication literature were "social media," "journalism," "news," "Twitter," "Facebook," and "Instagram," the concepts of "social media," "misinformation," and "contact tracing" came to the fore in COVID-19 related studies.

Temporal Trends and Factors Associated With the Inclusion of Patient-Reported Outcomes in Heart Failure Randomized Controlled Trials: A Systematic Review.

BackgroundPatient‐reported outcomes (PROs) are important measures of treatment response in heart failure. We assessed temporal trends in and factors associated with inclusion of PROs in heart failure randomized controlled trials (RCTs).Methods and ResultsWe searched MEDLINE, Embase, and CINAHL for studies published between January 2000 and July 2020 in journals with an impact factor ≥10. We assessed temporal trends using the Jonckheere‐Terpstra test and conducted multivariable logistic regression to explore trial characteristics associated with PRO inclusion. We assessed the quality of PRO reporting using the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) PRO extension. Of 417 RCTs included, PROs were reported in 226 (54.2%; 95% CI, 49.3%–59.1%), with increased reporting between 2000 and 2020 (P<0.001). The odds of PRO inclusion were greater in RCTs that were published in recent years (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] per year, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.04–1.12; P<0.001), multicenter (aOR, 1.89; 95% CI, 1.03–3.46; P=0.040), medium‐sized (aOR, 2.35; 95% CI, 1.26–4.40; P=0.008), coordinated in Central and South America (aOR, 5.93; 95% CI, 1.14–30.97; P=0.035), and tested health service (aOR, 3.12; 95% CI, 1.49–6.55; P=0.003), device/surgical (aOR, 6.66; 95% CI, 3.15–14.05; P<0.001), or exercise (aOR, 4.66; 95% CI, 1.81–12.00; P=0.001) interventions. RCTs reported a median of 4 (interquartile interval , 3–6) of a possible of 11 CONSORT PRO items.ConclusionsJust over half of all heart failure RCTs published in high impact factor journals between 2000 and 2020 included PROs, with increased inclusion of PROs over time. Trials that were large, tested pharmaceutical interventions, and coordinated in North America / Europe had lower adjusted odds of reporting PROs relative to other trials. The quality of PRO reporting was modest.

Research productivity of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) from 2003 to 2020

PurposeThis study aims to examine the quantitative research productivity of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) globally by using the bibliometric approach. The method was applied to articles indexed in the Scopus database to analyze the publication patterns, trends and research productivity of the selected papers.Design/methodology/approachBibliometric analysis is applied to analyze research productivity of IFRS from 2003 to 2020. The method was applied to articles indexed in the Scopus database to analyze the publication patterns and research productivity of the selected papers.FindingsThis study finds that a good number of articles have been published on IFRS, the top five countries are the USA, UK, Australia, Germany and Canada. This clearly shows that developed markets have the highest number of publications on IFRS. This could be as a result of the early adoption of IFRS by those economies and owing to the interest of researchers in those markets. Most of the studies are quantitative in nature; this study indicates that publication on accounting standards is popular as the number of citations is significant; most of the articles have two or more authors and were published in top-ranking journals.Practical implicationsThis study provides up-to-date literature on the global research productivity of IFRS; as a result, it supports the development of policies by the users of this accounting standards. The findings of this study also serve as a reference point for firms and regulators around the world. Given the thoroughness of the methodology of this study, the results make it easier to effectively identify the direction of research on the implementation of IFRS in organizations.Originality/valueThis study provides a more comprehensive bibliometric analysis on the growth of IFRS literature (2003–2020) in the Scopus database; most of the prior studies have covered relatively few areas of focus as well as a fewer number of high impact factor journals. The relevance of this finding is in uncovering different areas of IFRS research productivity globally.

Reply to “Caution in underrepresentation of older adults in clinical trials on COVID-19 vaccines”

We would like to thank Chen et al. for their comments on our recently published paper in Ageing Research Reviews (Veronese et al., 2021). In this reply we would like to answer to the points raised in their letter. Regarding the first question, we decided to run our search only in PubMed/Medline and ClinicalTrials.gov since the phase II-III randomized controlled trials of SARS-CoV 2 vaccines, considering the urgency for interventions to ameliorate the pandemic situation, received a great deal of interest. Therefore, they were usually published in high impact factor journals, reported in PubMed, and their protocols were usually reported in clinicaltrials.gov. However, following the suggestion of Chen et al., we did run a similar search in Web of Science (n = 150 articles) and Embase (n = 121 articles), without finding any possible eligible paper. We also searched, as suggested, the WHO ICTRP registry, which includes also the Chinese clinical trial registry, finding 36 ongoing trials, with two eligible out of them (https://trialsearch.who.int/Trial2.aspx? TrialID=ISRCTN79815558; https://trialsearch.who.int/Trial2.aspx? TrialID=RPCE0354). However, since both trials are still undergoing, it is not possible to know which percentage of older people will be eventually enrolled, therefore there is no need to modify what was already reported in our systematic review. With regard to the concern related to the language limitation, it should be pointed out that, among the completed trials, four out of ten were performed in China, but still they were published in an English language journal (Xia et al., 2020, 2021; Zhang et al., 2021; Zhu et al., 2020). Furthermore, we added the keywords suggested in the second point of the comments to our article: in this case, limiting the search to the 01st May 2021 as done in our systematic review, we found 547 possible eligible papers, but again, no new work was eligible for our analyses. Even if we recognize that adding these specific keywords might increase sensitivity of the search, they are probably of poor specificity in finding out papers that did not use randomized clinical trial as filter, particularly considering that practically all the papers reporting phase II-III trials on vaccination were published in widely known scientific journals. We also appreciate the comments regarding risk of bias and assessment of the quality of the study, which are a mandatory step in a systematic review. However, we would like to point out that the aim of our systematic review was not to investigate the efficacy/safety of COVID-19 vaccination in older people, but to highlight that older people were usually excluded from these studies. Therefore, this evaluation was not necessary, as we did not want to evaluate the quality of the results provided by the studies, but we aimed only at verifying the inclusion of older people. Finally, we are also grateful for the comments regarding the registration of the protocol and the statistical analysis. Regarding the first point, we agree that pre-publishing the protocol is an essential step in publishing a paper, but at the same time we also believe that the protocol structure is so simple in this case (we practically only extracted data regarding age range, asking to the corresponding authors further information when needed) that pre-publishing of the protocol would have not changed anything in the final results. However, we enclose to this letter as supplementary material the protocol. Moreover, the statistical analyses were so elementary that creating a specific paragraph would not represent an added value and we believe that keeping them in the outcomes section is enough for providing the necessary information to the readers to completely understand our work. In conclusion, we would like to thank Chen et al. for their comments that allowed us to confirm the methodological strengths of our paper. Indeed, as reported in this reply, addressing the points raised did not significantly change our results indicating that our work, even if simple, is correct and the conclusions are sound.

Trade-off between urgency and reduced editorial capacity affect publication speed in ecological and medical journals during 2020

While the speed of publication in academic journals has decreased over time, delays in the review process can still cause frustration and damage the authors’ career. During the COVID-19 lockdown, scientists struggled to manage tasks and academic journals announced possible publication delays due to reduced editorial capacity. In this context, COVID-19 research has been somewhat paradoxical, due to societal and editorial pressures for fast publication. We hypothesised that given the urgency of disseminating pandemic-related information, articles on the topic would be published as a priority in 2020. We analysed the submission-to-publication time lag for 5790 articles published between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2020 in eight ecology and eight medical journals. We also analysed patterns in the gender of first and last authors. All 16 journals were international, with relatively high impact factor (between 2.34 and 36.13) and partially or fully open access. Even though articles in general took longer to get published, the speed of publication increased in 2020, as the faster review of 419 COVID-19 articles compensated for the longer submission-to-publication time lag of non-COVID-19 publications. Manuscripts in journals with a higher impact factor and only partial open access took longer to get published during the last three years. In 2020, the ratio of articles with male and female first and last authors remained similar to that in 2019, maintaining the gender bias in scientific productivity. Female scientists, especially when they are providing maternity and other primary care, need more support for their careers, such as relief from teaching duties and adjustments on assessment criteria to access research funding. We advocate that topics besides COVID-19, particularly those that could help to solve other urgent crises, should also benefit from faster publication.