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AbstractThis article reassesses what has been called ‘the puzzle of distribution’: why did some drugs rapidly emerge as global consumer goods in the era of the Columbian Exchange, whereas others remained restricted to regional centres of usage? I argue here that the early modern concept of transplantation allows us to approach the puzzle of distribution from a novel perspective. Early modern intoxicants were not disaggregated, free-floating commodities. Their consumption and trade took place within a larger constellation of social codes, cultural practices, ecologies, and built environments. Psychedelic compounds such as peyote and ayahuasca serve here as case studies for examining how the globalization of drugs involved far more than the transport of the substances themselves. Despite their centrality to numerous societies throughout the pre-Columbian Americas, the larger ‘assemblage’ of material cultures, cultural assumptions, and religious meanings that accrued around these substances made it difficult for them to follow the same paths as commodified drugs like cacao or tobacco.

AbstractMethodological mistakes, data errors, and scientific misconduct are considered prevalent problems in science that are often difficult to detect. In this study, we explore the potential of using data from Twitter for discovering problems with publications. In this case study, we analyzed tweet texts of three retracted publications about COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019)/SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) and their retraction notices. We did not find early warning signs in tweet texts regarding one publication, but we did find tweets that casted doubt on the validity of the two other publications shortly after their publication date. An extension of our current work might lead to an early warning system that makes the scientific community aware of problems with certain publications. Other sources, such as blogs or post-publication peer-review sites, could be included in such an early warning system. The methodology proposed in this case study should be validated using larger publication sets that also include a control group, i.e., publications that were not retracted.

“COVID” which stands for corona virus disease, has become the world’s most infamous acronym. Previous analysis of acronyms in health and medical journals found a growing use of acronyms over time in titles and abstracts, with “DNA” as the most common. Here we examine acronyms in the pandemic year of 2020 to show the dramatic rise of COVID-related research. “COVID” was over five times more frequently used than “DNA” in 2020, and in just one year it has become the sixth most popular acronym of all time, surpassing “AIDS”, “PCR” and “MRI”. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The Yule-Simpson paradox refers to the fact that outcomes of comparisons between groups are reversed when groups are combined. Using Essential Sciences Indicators, a part of InCites (Clarivate), data for countries, it is shown that although the Yule-Simpson phenomenon in citation analysis and research evaluation is not common, it isn't extremely rare either. The Yule-Simpson paradox is a phenomenon one should be aware of, otherwise one may encounter unforeseen surprises in scientometric studies. ispartof: SCIENTOMETRICS vol:126 issue:4 pages:3501-3511 ispartof: location:Switzerland status: published

Scholars all over the world have produced a large body of COVID-19 literature in an exceptionally short period after the outbreak of this rapidly-spreading virus. An analysis of the literature accumulated in the first 150 days hints that the rapid knowledge accumulation in its early-stage development was expedited through a wide variety of journal platforms, a sense and pressure of national urgency, and inspiration from journal editorials.

This commentary identifies and characterizes correction and erratum in COVID-19 publications with a scientometric approach by considering their rate of growth, reasons for correction, the time-span between publishing the original and corrected versions, as well as their citation status in four questions. It also suggestions to solve the current issues regarding indexing, retrieving, publishing, and research evaluation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has vast global consequences. Yet, effective mitigation strategies and economic and medical outfall differ extensively across the globe. It is currently unclear how well researchers from all continents are represented in the unsolicited and solicited publications. A literature review was performed in SCOPUS on COVID-19 oriented publications in the four most impactful medical journals. These included the British Medical Journal, Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. We identified 809 eligible publications out of identified 924 records. The vast majority of publications on COVID-19, in the four can be considered European (47.7%) or North-American (37.3%) research. Chinese reports were relatively common (8.8%); however, reports from other Asian countries (3.2%) were minimal. Research from the African (1.0%) and South-American continents (0.6%) was rarely published in these journals. These observations are not surprising, as they reflect global academic publishing. However, involving all continents into COVID-19 research is important as COVID-19 management strategies and societal and economic consequences differ extensively across the globe. We see an important role for medical journals in encouraging global voices through solicited articles, to ensure a weighted research and humanitarian response. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11192-020-03730-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

In recent months the COVID-19 (also known as SARS-CoV-2 and Coronavirus) pandemic has spread throughout the world. In parallel, extensive scholarly research regarding various aspects of the pandemic has been published. In this work, we analyse the changes in biomedical publishing patterns due to the pandemic. We study the changes in the volume of publications in both peer reviewed journals and preprint servers, average time to acceptance of papers submitted to biomedical journals, international (co-)authorship of these papers (expressed by diversity and volume), and the possible association between journal metrics and said changes. We study these possible changes using two approaches: a short-term analysis through which changes during the first six months of the outbreak are examined for both COVID-19 related papers and non-COVID-19 related papers; and a longitudinal approach through which changes are examined in comparison to the previous four years. Our results show that the pandemic has so far had a tremendous effect on all examined accounts of scholarly publications: A sharp increase in publication volume has been witnessed and it can be almost entirely attributed to the pandemic; a significantly faster mean time to acceptance for COVID-19 papers is apparent, and it has (partially) come at the expense of non-COVID-19 papers; and a significant reduction in international collaboration for COVID-19 papers has also been identified. As the pandemic continues to spread, these changes may cause a slow down in research in non-COVID-19 biomedical fields and bring about a lower rate of international collaboration. Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, 11 tables

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, induced a global pandemic for which an effective cure, either in the form of a drug or vaccine, has yet to be discovered. In the few brief months that the world has known Covid-19, there has been an unprecedented volume of papers published related to this disease, either in a bid to find solutions, or to discuss applied or related aspects. Data from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, and Elsevier’s Scopus, which do not index preprints, were assessed. Our estimates indicate that 23,634 unique documents, 9960 of which were in common to both databases, were published between January 1 and June 30, 2020. Publications include research articles, letters, editorials, notes and reviews. As one example, amongst the 21,542 documents in Scopus, 47.6% were research articles, 22.4% were letters, and the rest were reviews, editorials, notes and other. Based on both databases, the top three countries, ranked by volume of published papers, are the USA, China, and Italy while BMJ, Journal of Medical Virology and The Lancet published the largest number of Covid-19-related papers. This paper provides one snapshot of how the publishing landscape has evolved in the first six months of 2020 in response to this pandemic and discusses the risks associated with the speed of publications.

AbstractWorking papers or preprints have become an important part in the scientific landscape. Such papers present research before (potentially) being published in refereed journals. But is every working paper finally published in a journal? We answer this question for four major working paper series in economics. Based on linked data in RePEc and a random sample we provide an estimate of 66.5% of more than 28,000 investigated working papers that are published in a journal. About 8% are released as a book chapter. For the remaining 25.5% we find no evidence for what happened to the article.