Read the full post from PLOS.
For the past three years, scientists have been going to school in a giant lab whether they realized it or not. The pandemic placed research in the spotlight like never before. We saw global scientific collaboration on an unprecedented scale. Across countries and disciplines, thousands of experts focused urgently on a single problem, that of COVID-19.
This forced some key breakthroughs for Open Science as everyone rose to the challenge:
- Information previously locked behind paywalls, even though much of it was publicly funded, was opened to scientists globally.
- Many of the usual imperatives of the dysfunctional academic credit system were set aside as results and data were shared immediately.
- Preprints and other online sharing become the norm when the delay of even a few weeks to publication could mean lives lost.
- Hundreds of clinical trials were launched, bringing together labs and hospitals around the globe.
- The usual secrecy and hoarding of data that might lead to grants and promotions was eroded by the urgency of the moment.
All of this happened because it was a matter of survival experienced urgently and simultaneously by societies around the world. But the fundamental flaws of traditional research practices and sharing were also laid bare by the pandemic. And they perfectly illustrate the imperatives of Open Science at global scale.
The lessons learned by all of us should light a better path forward. What became possible during the pandemic should become the norm, not the exception.
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