| The current crisis has brought about an unprecedented level of openness in scientific publishing and collaboration. "At the same time, a great deal of relevant scientific information is still behind paywalls," open science experts say. What can the research community do to make relevant information publicly available?

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COVID-19 has us all in its grip. Across the globe, researchers are working on solutions to the crisis that has taken us by surprise. This doesn’t just concern the medical aspects of the crisis: economic and psychosocial aspects are important as well. The social impact of the public measures taken to slow down the spread of the virus is a prime example of this.

Efficient collaboration among researchers and quick and effective sharing of insights are of vital importance. Early and open sharing of publications, datasets, software, code and other scientific material are therefore essential. This requires greater societal awareness about what one can and cannot do with all these types of scientific information. Creating such awareness is a joint responsibility of the scientific community and society at large.

Paywalls still guard essential information

A lot of information that is important for understanding and combatting the outbreak and the major social crisis it has caused, is already openly accessible at the moment. This includes articles in open access journals, preprints, data about the genetic variations of the virus (and its analysis, e.g. Nextstrain) and code used in modeling the spread of the virus. Information that is directly used to advise government and parliament is also increasingly being shared publicly. Examples of this are the RIVM presentation (in Dutch) in the Netherlands and the Imperial College report in the UK.

At the same time, a great deal of relevant scientific information is still behind paywalls. Some examples from the medical field are articles about the availability of medical devices during pandemics, about modeling isolation and vaccination in epidemiology and about (negative or positive) effects of additional administration of oxygen during assisted respiration.

The societal pressure on publishers and companies (for example, Roche) to make information available is mounting. In recent weeks various calls have been made by, among others, research funders and NGOs to publishers to make published research results and protocols freely accessible. A number of publishers have responded positively to that call. However, the way in which literature and sources are made available varies. Often, access is temporary, or sources get a license that enables text & data mining, but not further sharing of the publication itself.

We can do more, but what?

We can do much more to rapidly and reliably make research results publicly available: on aperpetual basis and in line with the open science goals that universities have set for themselves. Over the last years, much has been developed and organized to make open science possible. Concrete steps have been taken regarding the required infrastructure, funding, support, discussions in the disciplinary communities and policy regarding research evaluation and valuation. This means that open science can now become “mainstream”. Not only during the coronavirus crisis but as a lasting change in how we as a society deal with scientific knowledge.

On the designated page “Open Access for COVID-19 and related research” on open access.nl, you can find an overview of specific steps that are taken in the current crisis. It also contains recommendations on what is possible to increase barrier-free availability and use of scientific research, such as retrospectively making publications open access, and sharing preprints. This can be interesting for older research into coronaviruses and viruses in general, but also for many other research disciplines relevant to the crisis. In addition, researchers – and others – can contribute in various ways to collecting and enriching relevant research information. We briefly explain the examples mentioned:

Making articles and chapters open access, retrospectively: “You share, we take care!” When researchers give their university library permission, research articles and book chapters can be shared – in line with Dutch copyright law – on behalf of the researchers, via the institution’s repository, from six months after publication The VSNU project You share, we take care!) . This may be of particular interest for older material on viruses or related topics such as epidemiology, infection control, healthcare, crisis management, mass psychology, communication etc.. Read how this works. Exact implementation may differ per institution.

Sharing early versions of papers: Preprints: When researchers want to share new findings, they can share their paper or book chapter on a preprint-server, before it is peer-reviewed and published with a journal. This is an accepted practice in an increasing number of disciplines. Some good preprint platforms for this are bioRxiv (life sciences), medRxiv (medical), PsyArXiv (psychology) and Open Science Framework (OSF) preprints or Zenodo (both multidisciplinary). The past weeks have already seen a sharp increase in the number of preprints on COVID-19 (Figure 1).