INSERM, U707, Paris, France.
PLoS Med. 2010 May 4;7(5):e1000272. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000272.
Outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, especially those of a global nature, require rapid epidemiological analysis and information dissemination. The final products of those activities usually comprise internal memoranda and briefs within public health authorities and original research published in peer-reviewed journals. Using the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic as an example, we conducted a comprehensive time-stratified review of the published literature to describe the different types of epidemiological outputs.
We identified and analyzed all published articles on the epidemiology of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong or Toronto. The analysis was stratified by study design, research domain, data collection, and analytical technique. We compared the SARS-case and matched-control non-SARS articles published according to the timeline of submission, acceptance, and publication. The impact factors of the publishing journals were examined according to the time of publication of SARS articles, and the numbers of citations received by SARS-case and matched-control articles submitted during and after the epidemic were compared. Descriptive, analytical, theoretical, and experimental epidemiology concerned, respectively, 54%, 30%, 11%, and 6% of the studies. Only 22% of the studies were submitted, 8% accepted, and 7% published during the epidemic. The submission-to-acceptance and acceptance-to-publication intervals of the SARS articles submitted during the epidemic period were significantly shorter than the corresponding intervals of matched-control non-SARS articles published in the same journal issues (p<0.001 and p<0.01, respectively). The differences of median submission-to-acceptance intervals and median acceptance-to-publication intervals between SARS articles and their corresponding control articles were 106.5 d (95% confidence interval [CI] 55.0-140.1) and 63.5 d (95% CI 18.0-94.1), respectively. The median numbers of citations of the SARS articles submitted during the epidemic and over the 2 y thereafter were 17 (interquartile range [IQR] 8.0-52.0) and 8 (IQR 3.2-21.8), respectively, significantly higher than the median numbers of control article citations (15, IQR 8.5-16.5, p<0.05, and 7, IQR 3.0-12.0, p<0.01, respectively).
A majority of the epidemiological articles on SARS were submitted after the epidemic had ended, although the corresponding studies had relevance to public health authorities during the epidemic. To minimize the lag between research and the exigency of public health practice in the future, researchers should consider adopting common, predefined protocols and ready-to-use instruments to improve timeliness, and thus, relevance, in addition to standardizing comparability across studies. To facilitate information dissemination, journal managers should reengineer their fast-track channels, which should be adapted to the purpose of an emerging outbreak, taking into account the requirement of high standards of quality for scientific journals and competition with other online resources.
新出现传染病的爆发，特别是那些具有全球性的传染病，需要进行快速的流行病学分析和信息传播。这些活动的最终产物通常包括公共卫生部门内部的备忘录和简报，以及在同行评议期刊上发表的原始研究。以 2003 年严重急性呼吸综合征（SARS）疫情为例，我们对已发表的文献进行了全面的时间分层综述，以描述不同类型的流行病学产出。
我们确定并分析了香港或多伦多 SARS 疫情的所有已发表流行病学文章。根据研究设计、研究领域、数据收集和分析技术对分析进行分层。我们比较了根据提交、接受和发表时间线发表的 SARS 病例和匹配对照非 SARS 文章。根据 SARS 文章发表时间检查了出版期刊的影响因素，并比较了疫情期间和之后提交的 SARS 病例和匹配对照文章的引用次数。描述性、分析性、理论性和实验性流行病学分别占研究的 54%、30%、11%和 6%。只有 22%的研究在疫情期间提交，8%的研究被接受，7%的研究发表。疫情期间提交的 SARS 文章的提交至接受和接受至发表的时间间隔明显短于同期发表的匹配对照非 SARS 文章（p<0.001 和 p<0.01）。SARS 文章与相应对照文章的中位提交至接受间隔和中位接受至发表间隔差异分别为 106.5 天（95%置信区间 [CI] 55.0-140.1）和 63.5 天（95% CI 18.0-94.1）。疫情期间和之后 2 年提交的 SARS 文章的中位引用次数分别为 17（四分位距 [IQR] 8.0-52.0）和 8（IQR 3.2-21.8），明显高于对照文章的中位引用次数（15，IQR 8.5-16.5，p<0.05 和 7，IQR 3.0-12.0，p<0.01）。
大多数关于 SARS 的流行病学文章都是在疫情结束后提交的，尽管这些相应的研究在疫情期间与公共卫生部门有关。为了减少未来研究与公共卫生实践紧迫性之间的差距，研究人员应考虑采用通用的、预先确定的方案和即用型工具，以提高及时性，从而提高相关性，同时还应标准化研究之间的可比性。为了促进信息传播，期刊管理人员应重新设计其快速通道渠道，该渠道应适应突发疫情的目的，同时考虑到对科学期刊高标准质量的要求以及与其他在线资源的竞争。
