PeerJ in Review 2020: Top articles of the year

As 2021 begins, we thought we would take the opportunity to look back at some of the especially noteworthy papers we published in 2020.

In 2020, PeerJ published our 10,000th peer-reviewed article. Thanks to our engaged community of editors, reviewers and authors for making this all possible.

Here is a look at some of the most downloaded, tweeted and cited articles of the year.

Top 10 Most Downloaded articles of 2020

Skull and skeletal reconstructions of Allosaurus jimmadseni.

1. Cranial anatomy of Allosaurus jimmadseni, a new species from the lower part of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Western North America

2. Towards a blockchain-based certificate authentication system in Vietnam

3. Differentially expressed genes related to oxidoreductase activity and glutathione metabolism underlying the adaptation of Phragmites australis from the salt marsh in the Yellow River Delta, China

4. A high-resolution growth series of Tyrannosaurus rex obtained from multiple lines of evidence

5. The body plan of Halszkaraptor escuilliei (Dinosauria, Theropoda) is not a transitional form along the evolution of dromaeosaurid hypercarnivory

Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on the mental health status

6. Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on the mental health status of undergraduate medical students in a COVID-19 treating medical college: a prospective longitudinal study

7. Effectiveness of slightly acidic electrolyzed water on bacteria reduction: in vitro and spray evaluation

8. Adaptations of data mining methodologies: a systematic literature review

9. Hemogram data as a tool for decision-making in COVID-19 management: applications to resource scarcity scenarios

10. Notes on the cheek region of the Late Jurassic theropod dinosaur Allosaurus

Incompletely preserved left maxilla of UMNH VP 9216, Allosaurus fragilis, showing details of the posterior process.

Top 5 Most Tweeted articles of 2020

Two dentaries of the same individual of Canis chihliensis.

1. Hypercarnivorous teeth and healed injuries to Canis chihliensis from Early Pleistocene Nihewan beds, China, support social hunting for ancestral wolves

2. Transitional evolutionary forms in chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaurs: evidence from the Campanian of New Mexico

3. Cranial anatomy of Allosaurus jimmadseni, a new species from the lower part of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Western North America

4. An eye for a tooth: Thylacosmilus was not a marsupial “saber-tooth predator”

Comparison of sabre-tooth skull morphologies.

5. The reuse of public datasets in the life sciences: potential risks and rewards

Top 10 Most Cited articles of 2020

1. Morpho-physiological traits, biochemical response and phytoextraction potential of short-term copper stress on kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) seedlings

2. RIdeogram: drawing SVG graphics to visualize and map genome-wide data on the idiograms

3. Computational analysis of microRNA-mediated interactions in SARS-CoV-2 infection

4. Endosymbiotic adaptations in three new bacterial species associated with Dictyostelium discoideum: Paraburkholderia agricolaris sp. nov., Paraburkholderia hayleyella sp. nov., and Paraburkholderia bonniea sp. nov

5. Epitope-based chimeric peptide vaccine design against S, M and E proteins of SARS-CoV-2, the etiologic agent of COVID-19 pandemic: an in silico approach

6. Air transportation, population density and temperature predict the spread of COVID-19 in Brazil

Structural similarities of SARS-CoV2 S1-NTD and human Gal-3

7. A potential role for Galectin-3 inhibitors in the treatment of COVID-19

8. The Global Museum: natural history collections and the future of evolutionary science and public education

9. Element concentrations in pelagic Sargassum along the Mexican Caribbean coast in 2018-2019

10. Modelling fatality curves of COVID-19 and the effectiveness of intervention strategies