How to Read a Coronavirus Study, or Any Science Paper

ab1630's bookmarks 2020-06-01

Summary:

"A lot of people are reading scientific papers for the first time these days, hoping to make sense of the coronavirus pandemic. If you’re one of them, be advised the scientific paper is a peculiar literary genre that can take some getting used to. And also bear in mind that these are not typical times for scientific publishing. It is hard to think of another moment in history when so many scientists turned their attention to one subject with such speed. In mid-January, scientific papers began trickling out with the first details about the new coronavirus. By the end of the month, the journal Nature marveled that over 50 papers had been published. That number has swelled over the past few months at an exponential rate, fitting for a pandemic. The National Library of Medicine’s database at the start of June contains over 17,000 published papers about the new coronavirus. A website called bioRxiv, which hosts studies that have yet to go through peer review, contains over 4,000 papers. In earlier times, few people aside from scientists would have laid eyes on these papers. Months or years after they were written, they’d wind up in printed journals tucked away on a library shelf. But now the world can surf the rising tide of research on the new coronavirus. The vast majority of papers about it can be read for free online...."

Link:

https://www.nytimes.com/article/how-to-read-a-science-study-coronavirus.html

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ab1630's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.impact oa.lay oa.gratis oa.medicine oa.preprints oa.versions

Authors:

Carl Zimmer

Date tagged:

06/01/2020, 19:45

Date published:

06/01/2020, 06:42