The abstract is known to be a promotional genre where researchers tend to exaggerate the benefit of their research and use a promotional discourse to catch the reader's attention. The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted intensive research and has changed traditional publishing with the massive adoption of preprints by researchers. Our aim is to investigate whether the crisis and the ensuing scientific and economic competition have changed the lexical content of abstracts. We propose a comparative study of abstracts associated with preprints issued in response to the pandemic relative to abstracts produced during the closest pre-pandemic period. We show that with the increase (on average and in percentage) of positive words (especially effective) and the slight decrease of negative words, there is a strong increase in hedge words (the most frequent of which are the modal verbs can and may). Hedge words counterbalance the excessive use of positive words and thus invite the readers, who go probably beyond the ‘usual’ audience, to be cautious with the obtained results. The abstracts of preprints urgently produced in response to the COVID-19 crisis stand between uncertainty and over-promotion, illustrating the balance that authors have to achieve between promoting their results and appealing for caution.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 危机期间预印本摘要中的过度宣传和谨慎


众所周知，摘要是一种促销类型，研究人员倾向于夸大其研究的好处并使用促销话语来吸引读者的注意力。 COVID-19 大流行引发了深入的研究，并随着研究人员大量采用预印本而改变了传统出版业。我们的目的是调查危机以及随之而来的科学和经济竞争是否改变了摘要的词汇内容。我们建议对为应对大流行而发布的预印本相关的摘要与最近的大流行前时期产生的摘要进行比较研究。我们发现，随着积极词（特别是effective ）的增加（平均和百分比）和消极词的略有减少，模糊词的数量急剧增加（其中最常见的是情态动词can和may ） 。模糊性词语抵消了过度使用积极词语，从而邀请可能超出“通常”受众的读者对所获得的结果保持谨慎。为应对 COVID-19 危机而紧急制作的预印本摘要介于不确定性和过度宣传之间，说明了作者必须在宣传其成果和呼吁谨慎之间取得平衡。