A Bibliometric Assessment of Backdated COVID-19 Papers

This study identifies documents in the Web of Science on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 published prior to 2020. Even though these terms were coined by WHO in February 2020, 13 documents were identified as having been “backdated”. The number of backdating and date errors in publication data is relatively low and does not seem to affect the major journals and the most important articles. Nevertheless, scientific rigor also implies correct publication dates. This analysis also underlines the importance of the choice of keywords, and emphasizes the shared responsibility of journals, publishers and database providers for ensuring quality control in the publication process.