BMC Medicine
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcmed/content
(Accessed 27 Feb 2021)

Following the science? Comparison of methodological and reporting quality of covid-19 and other research from the first wave of the pandemic
Following the initial identification of the 2019 coronavirus disease (covid-19), the subsequent months saw substantial increases in published biomedical research. Concerns have been raised in both scientific and lay press around the quality of some of this research. We assessed clinical research from major clinical journals, comparing methodological and reporting quality of covid-19 papers published in the first wave (here defined as December 2019 to May 2020 inclusive) of the viral pandemic with non-covid papers published at the same time… Across various measures, we have demonstrated that covid-19 research from the first wave of the pandemic was potentially of lower quality than contemporaneous non-covid research. While some differences may be an inevitable consequence of conducting research during a viral pandemic, poor reporting should not be accepted.
Authors: Terence J. Quinn, Jennifer K. Burton, Ben Carter, Nicola Cooper, Kerry Dwan, Ryan Field, Suzanne C. Freeman, Claudia Geue, Ping-Hsuan Hsieh, Kris McGill, Clareece R. Nevill, Dikshyanta Rana, Alex Sutton, Martin Taylor Rowan and Yiqiao Xin
Citation: BMC Medicine 2021 19:46
Content type: Research article
Published on: 23 February 2021