COVID-19: IMPACTS ON INFORMATION ORGANIZATION, TRANSMISSION AND USE [ARTICLE]

Abstract

The ways in which scholarly research outputs have been organized and disseminated have undergone some complete changes in the last decade, notably through the expansion of open access and the increased availability of such information outside of existing publishing channels. The crises related to COVID-19 and the demand for critical data and research findings needed to inform medical responses and public health and public policy decisions have increased the speed with which information has traveled along more traditional paths. However, they also resulted in a substantial shift to new paradigms of information organization and sharing, as well as some improvement in international collaborations. This shift is not entirely new. Researchers tackling the challenges of earlier health crises (e.g., those engaged with mitigating the health impacts of the 1918 Influenza) have called for changes in the way information is organized and shared, as well as for greater collaboration among nations and institutions...