The World's Leading Journal, Lancet Publishes Collaborative Research Articles Between Dinkes and Eijkman-Oxford

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in various parts of the world is not even close to being over. No wonder, research after research keeps being pushed to become the basis for policy making from a protracted pandemic period. One of them is a joint study conducted by researchers from the Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Research Unit (Jakarta EOCRU), Jakarta Health Agency (Dinkes), University of Oxford (UK), and Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (Vietnam). The research article was successfully published in the world renowned health journal, the Lancet.

To conduct a publication on the Lancet, our article must go through a review process from the editorial team

Jakarta Dinkes Head Widyastuti explained, the research aimed to study the clinical characteristics and deaths related to COVID-19 in patients who are hospitalized at all COVID-19 referral hospitals in Jakarta, from March 2 to July 31. It made use of the data from the epidemiological investigation of COVID-19 conducted by epidemiologists, surveillances and other health workers in Jakarta.

"Prior to research execution, we first compile a cooperation agreement and submit an ethical due diligence to the Health Ministry's Health Research and Development Agency (Litbangkes), in which the ethical test is done by the EOCRU. After receiving ethical approval, the EOCRU and the Health Office research teams jointly analyzed and interpreted the data to be written in the form of international standard scientific articles. Further, the journal submission and revision processes were carried out jointly, in coordination with the lead author from EOCRU," she expressed, as quoted by Jakarta PPID's release.

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She went on to say that the scientific article could be published in cooperation of a number of parties. They were Jakarta EOCRU main authors, Henry Surendra and Iqbal Elyazar, together with a number of Jakarta EOCRU researches; Jakarta Dinskes Head, Widyastuti; Disease Prevention and Control Division Head, Dwi Oktavia; Information and Public Relations Data Division Head, Verry Adrian; and Epidemiological Surveillance and Immunization Division Head, Ngabila Salama; and Oxford University network of clinical research units in Vietnam.

In research and journal writing, the agency was tasked with collecting, verifying and processing initial data on the epidemiological investigation of the COVID case in Jakarta. Then interpreting the findings and reviewing the manuscripts with researchers from the EOCRU, ensuring the use of data is in accordance with the article written in the agreement signed by both parties, as well as approving the manuscript final draft before it was sent for review by the Lancet editorial team.

As for the information, the Lancet is one of the leading health journals in the world. Publishing in the Lancet was no easy matter yet only a handful of articles were successfully accepted for publication in the Lancet journal (about 5% of the total articles reviewed). Aside that, the publisher of the Lancet journal is Elsevier, one of the leading scientific journal publishers in the world.

"To conduct a publication on the Lancet, our article must go through a review process from the editorial team before being sent to 3 reviewers who are experts in the fields related to our research. We submitted this article last November. After passing through a revision, the article was only accepted by them for publication on February 1, and is now finally accessible to the public," he explained.

She expressed this research was one of the largest in a developing country, and the largest in Southeast Asia, analyzing clinical characteristics and mortality related to COVID-19 in hospitalized patients. Hopefully it could become the basis for formulating pandemic management policies in Indonesia.

"The findings regarding the high mortality rate in children under five years can be the basis for further research to understand the risk factors and impact of COVID on children in Jakarta and other regions in Indonesia. We also hope it can become a reference for similar research in other developing countries," she uttered,

So the public may access the scientific via the site/link; thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6065(21)00017-1/fulltext.