The currency and completeness of specialized databases of COVID-19 publications

•Multiple COVID-19 collections were evaluated for both their completeness and currency of COVID-19 literature, using PubMed as a comparator.•The majority of early COVID-19 systematic reviews rely on traditional literature databases suggesting a lack of awareness or comfort with COVID-19 collections.•Per our analysis, most of the COVID-19 collections are comparable to PubMed in both completeness and currency.•This study suggests that COVID-19 collections could replace or at least supplement traditional paywalled databases in systematic reviews.