In times of public crises, including the current Covid-19 pandemic, rapid dissemination of relevant scientific knowledge is of paramount importance. The duration of scholarly journals’ publication process is one of the main factors hindering quick delivery of new information. While proper editorial assessment and peer review obviously require some time, turnaround times for medical journals can be up to several months, which is undesirable in the era of a crisis. Following initiatives of medical journals and scholarly publishers to accelerate their publication process, this study assesses whether medical journals have indeed managed to speed up their publication process for Covid-19 related articles. It studies the duration of 14 medical journals’ publication process both during and prior to the current pandemic. Assessing a total of 669 articles, the study concludes that medical journals have indeed drastically accelerated the publication process for Covid-19 related articles since the outbreak of the pandemic. Compared to articles published in the same journals before the pandemic, turnaround times have decreased on average by 49%. The largest decrease in number of days between submission and publication of articles was due to a decrease in the number of days required for peer review. For articles not related to Covid-19, no acceleration of the publication process is found. While the acceleration of journals’ publication process is laudable from the perspective of quick information dissemination, it also raises concerns relating to the quality of the peer review process and the quality of the resulting publications.

中文翻译：

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大流行出版：医学期刊大大加快了Covid-19的出版过程

在包括当前的Covid-19大流行在内的公共危机时期，迅速传播相关科学知识至关重要。学术期刊发表过程的持续时间是阻碍新信息快速传递的主要因素之一。尽管适当的编辑评估和同行评审显然需要一些时间，但医学期刊的周转时间可能长达数月，这在危机时代是不可取的。在医学期刊和学术出版商采取主动行动以加快其出版过程之后，本研究评估了医学期刊是否确实设法加快了与Covid-19相关文章的出版过程。它研究了当前大流行期间和大流行之前14种医学期刊发表过程的持续时间。总共评估669条，该研究得出的结论是，自大流行爆发以来，医学期刊确实大大加快了Covid-19相关文章的出版过程。与大流行前相同期刊上发表的文章相比，周转时间平均减少了49％。文章提交和发表之间的天数减少最多的原因是同行评审所需的天数减少。对于与Covid-19不相关的文章，未发现加快发布过程。从信息快速传播的角度来看，期刊出版过程的加速值得称赞，但同时也引起了同行评议过程质量和最终出版物质量的担忧。