This post by roundtable panellist Joshua Gans was originally published in May by The Conversation This is the seventh post in a six-week series: Rapid or Rushed? exploring rapid response publishing in covid times. As part of the series, there will be a virtual roundtable on Friday 6th November, 1.30pm featuring Professor Joshua Gans (Economics in the Age of … Continued
Category: COVID-19
Read an exclusive extract from Richard Horton’s The COVID-19 Catastrophe
This post is an exclusive extract from Chapter Three of Richard Horton’s, Editor-in-Chief of leading medical journal The Lancet, recent book The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again. Polity Press. This is the seventh post in a six-week series: Rapid or Rushed? exploring rapid response publishing in covid times. As … Continued
The Pandemic Needs an Information Solution
This is the sixth post in a six-week series: Rapid or Rushed? exploring rapid response publishing in covid times. As part of the series, there will be a virtual roundtable on Friday 6th November, 1.30pm featuring Professor Joshua Gans (Economics in the Age of COVID-19, MIT Press) and Richard Horton (The COVID-19 Catastrophe, Polity Press and Editor of The … Continued
The COVID-19 crisis has confirmed that a strong knowledge system is key to a just, peaceful and sustainable world
COVID-19 has highlighted the need to work with researchers all around the world at the same time that it has also exposed the inequalities in the global research and knowledge system. In this piece, John Young from the International Network for Advancing Science and Policy (INASP) reflects on the importance of an equitable knowledge system as … Continued
School’s back: How the neoliberal “privatization of risk” explains the deadly decision to re-open campuses
There have been at least 130,000 cases and at least 70 COVID related deaths at American colleges and universities since the pandemic begun. Yet, university campuses reopened in the Fall and continue as though the status quo must be maintained at all costs. Zachary Kaiser argues that this is reflective of the neoliberal privatisation of risk that … Continued
Three lessons COVID-19 has taught us about Open Access publishing
This post is part of a six-week series: Rapid or Rushed? exploring rapid response publishing in covid times. COVID-19 has seen an unprecedented focus on research and an acceleration in the availability of its outputs. But this open approach shouldn’t be an exception. Robert Kiley, Head of Open Research at Wellcome, outlines three lessons for … Continued
Policymaking in a pandemic must be decisive, transparent and inclusive
In a pandemic, policymakers have to deal with uncertainty and rapidly evolving information. Ramathi Bandaranayake and Merl Chandana use examples from COVID-19 to draw guidance for how policymakers might respond to these challenges. They argue that Quick, decisive, transparent and inclusive policy is key to successfully responding to pandemics and their socioeconomic effects. Responding … Continued
If university campuses close, can everyone learn from home? What happens when the home becomes the classroom in India
The reorganisation of work lives bought about by the pandemic has also been met with a reorganisation of domestic space as the site where work now takes place. For Higher Education, this means that homes have now become classrooms. However, the fundamental premise of successful online education is the access to both electricity supply and an … Continued
COVID-19 has profoundly changed the way we conduct and share research. Let’s not return to business as usual when the pandemic is over!
COVID-19 has led to rapid and open sharing of research outputs. But will this new, radically open research communications paradigm result in permanent change? Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) executive board members, Kathleen Shearer, Eloy Rodrigues, Bianca Amaro, Wolfram Horstmann, William Nixon, Daisy Selematsela, Martha Whitehead and Kazu Yamaji, argue that the new research … Continued
Are preprints a problem? 5 ways to improve the quality and credibility of preprints
Preprints are research reports have that have not yet been peer reviewed and accepted for publication. They have increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, high profile discredited studies have led to concerns that speed has been prioritized over the quality and credibility of evidence. Joeri Tijdink, Mario Malicki, Lex Bouter and Gowri Gopalakrishna argue … Continued