In December 2019, the unprecedented newly emerging coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first identified. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the disease a pandemic, which posed a severe challenge for the mankind. At the beginning of the outbreak, the origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is the causative agent of COVID-19, mode of transmission, prevention and control, diagnosis and treatment all remained unknown. What\'s worse, the disease spread rapidly and widely. The whole world was in panic. Policymakers across the globe had to make quick decisions to defeat the virus under high uncertainty. Governments, academia, researchers and public health infrastructures around the world were not well-prepared for such a pandemic, and academic journals were also faced with the enormous task of rapidly communicating research findings on COVID-19 while maintaining scientific vigor and integrity of the published studies. Rapid dissemination of the most up-to-date scientific discoveries is of great importance in the current COVID-19 pandemic; thus, the global scientific publication community has adapted to expedite the publication of important and time-sensitive COVID-19 studies.