Disciplines

Rapid Reviews\Infectious Diseases publishes peer reviews of infectious disease preprints covering a broad range of disciplines. The disciplines are 1) Public Health 2) Social Sciences and the Humanities 3) Biological & Chemical Sciences 4) Physical Sciences & Engineering and 5) Medical Sciences. The editorial office is divided into teams covering these domains—each reviewing preprints and securing peer reviewers for their respective disciplines (within which live many subdisciplines). This helps satisfy our aims to examine infectious diseases from a multidisciplinary lens, organizing the curation of reviews for our readers and collaborators.

The structure also helps to provide an internal structure for our editorial office to rapidly sift, pitch and get peer review for preprints; and a model within which to support mentoring of junior researchers and science communicators. While preprints are peer reviewed by the same scholars and experts one would expect at a traditional peer review journal, our domains rely on dozens of apprentices and student mentors (i.e., MPH and PhD students) who have a range of research backgrounds, the most important skill for this domain is an interest and capacity to critically assess the implications of research and how topics fit into the broader (social and epidemiological) dynamics of the pandemic and ongoing public conversation. Student teams are composed of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from a wide range of academic institutions, including UC Berkeley, UCSF, MIT, Duke, and Georgia Tech. In 2023/24 we have also launched student teams in India, Mexico, Vietnam and Rwanda. While there is no formal educational requirement, team members typically have technical training in one core discipline and apply this expertise to our weekly multidisciplinary discussions.

Mission: The mission of the Public Health, Humanities and Social Sciences domain is to curate the most up-to-date research across a wide range of social science and public health disciplines—from anthropology to psychology to law to infectious disease modeling—to shed light on the multifaceted ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigation approaches.

Philosophy: The Public Health and Social Sciences domain embraces multi-disciplinarity and a broad definition of applicable research. While we aim to track and engage the most cutting edge work on public health mitigation strategies and the latest research on infectious disease epidemiology (to inform policymaking and ongoing research efforts), we also review manuscripts across humanities and social sciences that reflect, critically assess and archive the wide-ranging social implications of this unprecedented pandemic. We aim to select preprints that will directly contribute to ongoing public conversations, inform future research, highlight important findings and expose the social and epidemiological effects of the pandemic across geographies and contexts.

Topic Areas: 

• Infectious Disease Epidemiology

• Infectious disease modeling

• Patient outcomes and Infection Fatality Ratios

• Economic implications of the pandemic

• Effects of public health mitigation strategies

• Public policies to mitigate consequences of the pandemic

• Social epidemiology and disparities in incidence, morbidity and mortality

• Psychological and mental health ramifications of pandemic

• Vaccine rollout strategies, uptake and hesitancy

• Social media, misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19

Mission: The mission of the Medical Sciences domain is to curate the most up-to-date information for clinicians and researchers to make decisions to better care for patients and understand the emerging pandemics.

Philosophy: The Medical Sciences domain believes that manuscripts across the spectrum - from bench to bedside to policy - can inform and significantly influence the care of patients. Our particular focus is on the direct application of these research areas on the prevention, treatment, and impact of disease for patients and the medical system. Unique to among RR:C19’s domains, we also review non-medical (e.g., policy, modeling, in vitro, etc.) pre-prints focusing on patients, the medical system, or its health workers.

Participating in the Medical Sciences domain does not require a medical degree or any other terminal graduate degree. We cherish an enthusiasm and passion for reading scholarly literature, providing a critical perspective, and being a team player. If there is COVID literature in your subject area, we'd greatly welcome your perspective! All we ask is interest in the subject matter and willingness to reach outside one's domain of expertise.

Topic Areas:

• Testing and diagnostics

• Variants of concern and immunity

• Therapeutics and treatments

• Prevention and vaccines

• Personalized medicine

• Seroprevalence, monitoring, and reinfection

• Medical workforce and occupational health

• Anything else that’s considered medicine or healthcare-related!

Mission: The Biological & Chemical Sciences and Physical Sciences & Engineering domains curate the most impactful \ preprints relevant to the natural sciences and engineering disciplines. In these efforts, we look to offer educational resources to the public, policymakers, and STEM professionals, alike.

Philosophy:  We have a very diverse group of volunteers, many of whom have no previous experience in infectious disease or virology. Frequently our discussions involve people from disparate backgrounds collaboratively synthesizing a consensus. For example, our infectious disease specialist will reach out to our computer science expert and ask whether the computational methods are sound and appropriately rigorous (or vice versa). If there is COVID literature in your subject area, we'd greatly welcome your perspective! All we ask is interest in the subject matter and willingness to reach outside one's domain of expertise.

Topic Areas:

• Host-pathogen interactions

• Disease pathogenesis

• Evolutionary virology

• Spillover events and reverse zoonosis

• Vaccine design

• Drug repurposing

• Immunomapping

• Novel infection models

• Personalized medicine

• Diagnostic Technologies

• In silico drug screening and drug repurposing

• Wastewater detection

• PPE design and sterilization

• Machine learning-based epidemiological models