[GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge: recommending a positive approach

[Heather Morrison]

COVID-19 is a pandemic that is in the process of infecting and killing many people around the world. The immediate priority needs to be slowing the spread, understanding the virus, finding treatments and a vaccine.

COVID-19 is also an opportune case study in areas relating to open access and sharing of knowledge. I have already shared some approaches; here are a few more thoughts.

Treatments and vaccines are already under development. This is a great time to point out that we would all benefit more if these are not patented. If everyone in another country gets vaccinated, we don't need to worry about their citizens infecting ours. If another country gets their local outbreak under control, this reduces the risk for us.

One type of dangerous closure in this situation is when people suppress information about the illness, probably for such reasons as to save face or to avoid economic problems. This appears to have happened with more than one government, and anecdotally I have heard that hospitals are suppressing medical professionals' information about lack of supplies and equipment. There are approaches to improve this situation arising from the open government movement, which is meant to include protection for whistleblowers. Can we get better at making it easy for people to decide to share information openly?

Is the glass half empty or half full? We can point out that about half the PubMed articles on coronavirus are freely available, laud this as positive, and encourage people to free up the other half. I think this approach would be more likely to win converts to OA and get resources freed up than lamenting about the glass being half full, or worse, ignoring the fact that it's half full and lamenting the glass being empty.

my two bits,


Dr. Heather Morrison

Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa / Cross-appointed to communication

Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project

sustainingknowledgecommons.org

Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca

https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706

[On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]
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