Leaning in the publishing of articles in scientific journals during the COVID-19 pandemic

Scientific papers are valuable sources of information for scientific study. Apart from the main text, their content holds a notable amount of information. Recently, COVID-19 and related papers have attracted much attention between academic researchers, nonacademic people, and diverse social media. These papers can reveal different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Publication criteria are changing rapidly for science-related coronavirus pandemic, as scientists worldwide conduct research at breakneck speeds to tackle this pandemic(1). During the last pandemic, we dived into the scientific literature to reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers have created so much about COVID-19 related information that has been necessary for public health responses and the speedy development of therapeutic protocols and effective vaccines(2). To date, different therapeutic theories have been presented for treating and preventing COVID-19(3–6). However, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely discouraged people's lifestyle and economic situation. Therefore, many people, including lawmakers and directors from different agencies, have turned to the scientific society for answers regarding actions that need to be taken to control and treat the COVID-19(2). Nevertheless, many scientific studies published concerning the COVID-19; even those reported by prestigious journals fall short on experimental evidence to support their conclusions. Tremendous pressure existed to immediately know more about COVID-19 and how to stop this pandemic. Hence, the aforementioned situation created a unique atmosphere that led editors and reviewers to accept manuscripts that would have never been considered for publication under different conditions. During this pandemic, the piece of unreliable information was reported in journal papers. Some of these journals are prestigious with considerable scientific impact factors. However, publishing this erroneous information was a negative point for these journals and their authors. Still, this erroneous information compared to shared inaccurate information in different electronic media, primarily virtual media, was debatable and valuable. In virtual media, many fortune-tellers were reputed due to sharing different predictions of the future of this pandemic. Many virtual channels shared their false profitable information.