The Radiology Scientific Expert Panel

Abstract

In this issue of Radiology, Dr Jeff Kanne and co-authors present their updated information for radiologists regarding COVID-19 (1), presenting a brief synopsis of the imaging literature on COVID-19 in relationship to use of chest CT. The basis for this inaugural Radiology Scientific Expert Panel statement was an extraordinary number of research manuscripts submitted over the last several weeks on novel coronavirus (nCoV) emerging from Wuhan, China, later renamed COVID-19.With the emergence of chest CT to detect COVID-19 infection, Radiology has received more than 230 manuscripts on COVID-19 alone in the past 4 weeks. To put these numbers into perspective, we receive that number of manuscripts on all topics throughout the entire field of radiology over a typical 4 week period.The standard academic peer process of publication is slow; authors know time from submission to publication can take 6-12 months. Although this journal has developed methods to shorten the time to publication for priority topics (called "fast track"), prior Radiology publications on Ebola or SARS infections still took up to 3 months to appear online.We determined that our existing processes for publication were insufficient to rapidly respond to a fastprogressing infectious disease. At the same time, we saw a more than 10-fold increase in reviewer and editorial staff burden for manuscripts on COVID-19. In response, our editorial board developed and put in place new processes for rapid editorial and peer review for COVID-19 manuscripts, along with daily briefings of editorial board, publication, and marketing staff.Beginning in June 2019, our Radiology editorial board retreat focused on a gap in our field pertaining to emerging areas of radiologic imaging. There is often insufficient information in the literature for wellformed medical guidelines, and niche topics-of critical importance to developing fields-may flounder due to lack of consensus or guidelines. Our editorial board conceived of a Radiology Scientific Expert Panel to take on such topics.

Chest CT Imaging Signature of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Infection

“…Importantly, some journals provide so-called "ultra-rapid" peer review services (within 24 hours) for COVID-19-related research. 42 It has been reported that such a service may result in a series of high-quality research publications with downloads that are 6 to 30 times greater than the average articles that are published in the same journal and that several of these COVID-19 publications have been in the top two or three trending articles on PubMed. 42 However, the results of the present study challenge the claim that only high-quality research is published with such a policy.…”

“…42 It has been reported that such a service may result in a series of high-quality research publications with downloads that are 6 to 30 times greater than the average articles that are published in the same journal and that several of these COVID-19 publications have been in the top two or three trending articles on PubMed. 42 However, the results of the present study challenge the claim that only high-quality research is published with such a policy. In fact, the results indicate the lack of a solid scientific foundation for chest CT scanning in COVID-19 and the need for more highquality studies.…”

What's New in the Korean Journal of Radiology in 2021

“…The time reduction was because most of the increase was due to submissions about COVID-19. We offered them a fast-track review considering the urgency of the topic while maintaining the scientific rigor of the review process, as other journals seem to have done [21]. The fast-track review was an unprecedented challenge to the journal.…”

Assessing the Value of Diagnostic Tests in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

“…By April 25, 2020, about 4 months from the beginning of this pandemic, more than 6200 studies on COVID-19 appeared on PubMed. Highly respected journals are certainly receiving hundreds of COVID-19–related submissions, trying to react with new and efficient review processes ( 8 ). But even the best available published research may be full of uncertainty and unknowns ( 9 ).…”