Transparency of COVID-19-related research: A meta-research study.

PLoS One

Department of Conservative Dentistry and Oral Health, Riga Stradins University, Riga, Latvia.

Published: July 2023

AI Article Synopsis

  • The study evaluated the adherence to five key transparency practices (data availability, code availability, protocol registration, conflicts of interest, and funding disclosures) in open access COVID-19 research articles from January 2020 to June 2022.
  • A total of 258,678 articles were analyzed, with 72% yielding full texts; most were research articles, and a significant number disclosed conflicts of interest and funding but showed lower rates for data and code sharing, particularly in review articles.
  • The findings indicated that adherence to transparency practices was highest in articles published in 2022 and varied by journal impact, with less transparent articles being associated with lower citation rates.

Article Abstract

Background: We aimed to assess the adherence to five transparency practices (data availability, code availability, protocol registration and conflicts of interest (COI), and funding disclosures) from open access Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) related articles.

Methods: We searched and exported all open access COVID-19-related articles from PubMed-indexed journals in the Europe PubMed Central database published from January 2020 to June 9, 2022. With a validated and automated tool, we detected transparent practices of three paper types: research articles, randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and reviews. Basic journal- and article-related information were retrieved from the database. We used R for the descriptive analyses.

Results: The total number of articles was 258,678, of which we were able to retrieve full texts of 186,157 (72%) articles from the database Over half of the papers (55.7%, n = 103,732) were research articles, 10.9% (n = 20,229) were review articles, and less than one percent (n = 1,202) were RCTs. Approximately nine-tenths of articles (in all three paper types) had a statement to disclose COI. Funding disclosure (83.9%, confidence interval (CI): 81.7-85.8 95%) and protocol registration (53.5%, 95% CI: 50.7-56.3) were more frequent in RCTs than in reviews or research articles. Reviews shared data (2.5%, 95% CI: 2.3-2.8) and code (0.4%, 95% CI: 0.4-0.5) less frequently than RCTs or research articles. Articles published in 2022 had the highest adherence to all five transparency practices. Most of the reviews (62%) and research articles (58%) adhered to two transparency practices, whereas almost half of the RCTs (47%) adhered to three practices. There were journal- and publisher-related differences in all five practices, and articles that did not adhere to transparency practices were more likely published in lowest impact journals and were less likely cited.

Conclusion: While most articles were freely available and had a COI disclosure, adherence to other transparent practices was far from acceptable. A much stronger commitment to open science practices, particularly to protocol registration, data and code sharing, is needed from all stakeholders.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10370694PMC
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288406PLOS

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