After identifying inappropriate results or interpretations in a published paper, there is no easy mechanism to inform the research community about those issues.

Difficult to efficiently inform the research community about inappropriate results/findings

There are many repetitions and contradictions in the disseminated information.

Repetition and contradiction in collaborative research

When a review paper is published, all its content stays constant and will not be updated until another review paper completely covers it and makes it obsolete.

Published papers are static and don't get updated dynamically

In a collaboration between researchers from different disciplines A and B, most of the time, it is difficult for experts in A to study papers about B.

Difficulties of multidisciplinary research collaboration 

Dissemination of fast and rapidly reviewed papers makes researchers self-judge and screen most of the studies on their own, which is extremely time-consuming.

Time-consuming to self-judge many rapidly released papers

About 20% of the journals are still for subscribers only, which makes OS (Open Science) difficult.



Marketing and subscription fees of journals

Career trajectories are tied to publishing in prominent journals.

Personal ambitions and carrier incentives

Flaws in the published journal papers

There is a barrier between researchers and the public audience when it comes to communicating findings and research. 

Difficulty Informing the Public

Researchers face a number of challenges while using the current tools.
- Inaccuracy: The research tools do not return accurate results, and have to be verified by a medical worker.
- Inability to adopt: The researchers are unwilling to spend time on learning a new tool. 
- User friendly: The tools that exist are not very easy to use. 

Challenges with current research tools

References for Barriers to COVID-19  Research

Repetitive, false and contradictory content is being generated, which is difficult to manage and wastes time and energy.


Repetitions and contradictions topic sprint findings

Fighting against a pandemic spread requires large-scale collaboration between researchers from multiple disciplines

Finding a Consensus (problems in interdisciplinary work) topic sprint findings

As many scientists pivot to research about COVID-19, the number of related studies being published continuously grow. 

Some critical questions to look deeper into would be:
- What problems are scientists having with staying informed about recent studies?
- How are scientists coping with these problems? 
- What troubles are they facing with organizing all of the knowledge? 
- Are they organizing the knowledge in ways that are useful or possibly counterproductive

Scientists are drowning in COVID-19 papers (cognitive overload) topic sprint findings

tweets about literature or literature (Science COVID Info)

 communicating with public and politicians (Science COVID Info)

tools and methods that are helping (Science COVID Info)

Researchers have expressed concerns regarding the lack of efficient mechanisms to communicate their criticisms to the broader scientific community, which can result in valuable input and corrections being lost.

Difficulty Communicating Scientific Criticisms

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, preprint servers have played a significantly larger role due to the urgent need for researchers to share their findings. Because traditional publication takes time, more researchers are utilizing preprint servers to achieve critical fast dissemination, often advertising their non-peer-reviewed papers on social media platforms like Twitter. However, this highlights pre-existing concerns regarding the lack of a formal peer-review process prior to publication. There is an inevitable risk that non-peer-reviewed papers may disseminate unsound science, which is exceptionally consequential in COVID-19 research because it directly affects life-and-death public health outcomes.

Increased Role of Preprint Servers in COVID-19 Research

The vast amount of rapidly released information and research papers during the COVID-19 pandemic imposes a cognitive overload on researchers. This abundance of literature makes it very difficult to figure out the novelty of a new study.

Cognitive Overload in Assessing the Novelty of New COVID-19 Studies

Collaborative research during the COVID-19 pandemic faced several significant barriers. These challenges included the time-consuming nature of self-judging rapidly released papers, cognitive overload, repetition and contradiction in studies, and the static nature of published papers. Multidisciplinary collaboration was difficult, and there were issues with informing the research community about inappropriate findings. Additional obstacles involved the increased role and risks of preprint servers, marketing and subscription fees of journals, personal career incentives, and difficulties in effectively informing the public.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Google

1. The pandemic has caused about 30% decrease in GDP in the USA (Azoulay, P., & Jones, B. (2020))
2. About 80% of on-site researching was canceled because of social distancing(Wigginton 2020)
3. Scientists and researchers are frustrated with reviewing literature during the pandemic.
4. Wildlife in Africa is threatened as a result of consequential financial problems of lower tourism spending and donor funding (Lindsey 2020).
5. Economical and financial problems may improve exposure to and consumption of wild animals, and increase future pandemic risks (Di Marco 2020)
6. Food Security. "COVID-19-related hunger may
well kill more people than direct infection."(Food2020 Nature)
7. Psychosocial health and obesity epidemic as a side effect of lockdown during pandemic is also apprised(Clemmensen 2020 Nature).

Importance of technical solutions to fight against COVID-19

Many existing technologies and practices have been improved and optimized for larger scale operations, including:

- Contact Tracing
- Telehealth (Telemedicine)
- Big Data
- Barriers to Collaborative COVID-19 research

Focuses of Health Information Technology and COVID-19

Azoulay, P., & Jones, B. (2020). Beat COVID-19 through innovation.

Beat COVID-19 through innovation

Di Marco, M., Baker, M. L., Daszak, P., De Barro, P., Eskew, E. A., Godde, C. M., ... & Karesh, W. B. (2020). Opinion: Sustainable development must account for pandemic risk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(8), 3888-3892. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2001655117

Opinion: Sustainable development must account for pandemic risk

Food in a time of COVID-19. Nat. Plants 6, 429 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-020-0682-7

Food in a time of COVID-19

Clemmensen, C., Petersen, M. B., & Sørensen, T. I. (2020). Will the COVID-19 pandemic worsen the obesity epidemic?. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 1-2.

Will the COVID-19 pandemic worsen
the obesity epidemic?

Alternative technologies and platforms have been utilized to help researchers navigate and validate literature during the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include:

1. Science Rapid PREreview (outbreaksci.prereview.org)
2. Pubpeer journal club (pubpeer.com)
3. 27 active Twitter-Based Journal Clubs
4. Retraction Watch (retractionwatch.com), which tracks retracted papers. For instance, 30 papers about COVID-19 were retracted after being cited 1,410 times, at an estimated cost of US\$425,000 per article.

Alternative technologies to help fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

Lindsey, P., Allan, J., Brehony, P., Dickman, A., Robson, A., Begg, C., ... & Flyman, M. (2020). Conserving Africa’s wildlife and wildlands through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1275-6

Conserving Africa’s wildlife and wildlands through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond

Wigginton, N. S., Cunningham, R. M., Katz, R. H., Lidstrom, M. E., Moler, K. A., Wirtz, D., & Zuber, M. T. (2020). Moving academic research forward during COVID-19. Science, 368(6496), 1190-1192. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc5599

Moving academic research forward during COVID-19

Barriers to COVID-19 Collaborative Research

Contact tracing is used by health departments to prevent the spread of infectious disease. In general, contact tracing involves identifying people who have an infectious disease (cases) and people who they came in contact with (contacts) and working with them to interrupt disease spread. This includes asking people to isolate and their contacts to quarantine at home voluntarily. Contacts are also asked to monitor their symptoms daily, e.g., temperature checks, self-assessments based on common symptoms, and to get tested if any symptoms develop during their isolation.

What is Contact Tracing?

Telehealth are health-related services and information through electronic communication technologies to help patients with or people influenced by COVID-19. It allows long-distance patient and clinician care, education, and monitoring. Telemedicine is sometimes used as a synonym, or is used in a more limited sense to describe remote clinical services, such as diagnosis and monitoring. 

Telehealth (telemedicine) and COVID-19

Many countries are using social media as a way to guide the general public through this pandemic. These forums (such as WhatsApp in Singapore) can help the government provide easily accessible updates and guidelines in each stage of the virus as it impacts society. 

Social Media and COVID-19

This can be done via contact tracing as people adapt to the "new normal".  This allows  clinical personnel to recognize infection hotspots and notify personnel of of possible new cases. This method is used to slow down and the pandemic and plauteau the curve.

Digital Monitoring

Big data is a field that analyze data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing application software or manpower. In the pandemic of Covid-19, many countries have turned to this field to minimize the impact of the pandemic by analyzing and evaluating the possibility of certain people to be infected. Hospitals and care facilities can then be alerted beforehand, and the likelihood of an undetected outbreak is reduced.

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