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<h1 class="css-19v093x">Viral Open Access in Times of
Global Pandemic</h1>
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<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-1q5ec3n">Vincent
W.J.</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">punctumbooks.pubpub.org</div>
<div class="css-zskk6u">4 min</div>
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<p>Let’s recap.</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/">initial
report</a> of the WHO on an outbreak of
pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei province, China,
dates to December 31, 2019. The first
articles in medical journals appear in
mid-January, for example in the open-access
<a
href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.01.009"><em>International
Journal for Infectious Diseases</em></a>.
Rather than wait for publishers to release
publicly funded knowledge to the public, a
massive online archiving project publicly <a
href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3b3v5/archivists-are-bypassing-paywalls-to-share-studies-about-coronaviruses">released</a>
more than <a
href="https://the-eye.eu/public/Papers/CoronaVirusPapers/">5,000
unpaywalled articles</a> on coronaviruses
on Sci-Hub in the same month.<span
data-count="3" data-value="<p>This
is a good example of <a
href="http://syllabus.pirate.care/session/techandcorona/">“pirate
care.”</a></p>"
data-node-type="footnote">3</span> On
January 30, 2020 the WHO <a
href="https://app.getpocket.com/read/2921065421">declared</a>
a global health emergency.</p>
<p>On January 31, a <a
href="https://wellcome.ac.uk/press-release/sharing-research-data-and-findings-relevant-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak">statement</a>
was published on the website of the Wellcome
Trust, in which a number of publishers and
journals, including publishing oligopolists
Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Taylor and
Francis, agreed that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>all peer-reviewed research publications
relevant to the outbreak are made
immediately open access, or freely
available at least for the duration of the
outbreak</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The term “COVID-19” was <a
href="https://www.todayonline.com/world/wuhan-novel-coronavirus-named-covid-19-who">announced</a>
on February 11, and on March 11 the WHO <a
href="https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020">declared</a>
the COVID-19 public health crisis a
“pandemic.” Two days later, on March 13,
chief science advisors from twelve countries
released a <a
href="https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/covid19-open-access-letter.pdf">statement</a>,
<a
href="http://listserv.crl.edu/wa.exe?A2=LIBLICENSE-L;23fe98a3.2003&FT=&P=&H=&S=">relayed</a>
by the Office of Science and Technology
Policy of the White House, urging
“publishers to voluntarily agree to make
their COVID-19 and coronavirus-related
publications, and the available data
supporting them, immediately accessible in
PubMed Central<span data-count="4"
data-value="<p><a
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/">PubMed
Central</a> is a freely accessible
database for medical papers managed by the
NIH.</p>" data-node-type="footnote">4</span>
and other appropriate public repositories.”</p>
<p>In response, several of the signatories of
the January 31 declaration, including the
oligopolists, <a
href="https://wellcome.ac.uk/press-release/publishers-make-coronavirus-covid-19-content-freely-available-and-reusable">agreed</a>
to further make “all of their COVID-19 and
coronavirus-related publications, and the
available data supporting them, immediately
accessible in PubMed Central (PMC) and other
public repositories.”</p>
<p>The Wellcome Trust statement raises the
fascinating question concerning what type of
research is exactly “relevant” to the
outbreak. As the outbreak of the COVID-19
pandemic is not only tied to the DNA of the
SARS-CoV-2 virus, its protein structures,
and the way interacts with the human body,
but also the field of medicine, and
therefore also healthcare, and healthcare
funding, and health education, and thus also
much broader questions of state
organization, economic structures,
educational resources – in brief, all the
ways in which humans have ordered the world.
If we want to come to a full <em>understanding</em>
of the outbreak, <em>all</em> peer-reviewed
research in medical, STEM, social science,
and the humanities is potentially “relevant”
and should therefore be made open. But that
is certainly not how Elsevier c.s. see it.</p>
<p>Then there is also the question of what
“duration” means here. The outbreak started
officially when the WHO declared it a public
health concern on January 30, and for-profit
publishers acted a day later. But when will
that end? When is all this research that is
not temporarily released to the public going
back behind lock and key? If <a
href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/coronavirus-outbreak-seasonality-not-disappear-2020-2">predictions</a>
that COVID-19 may become endemic to the
human population and circulate on an annual
basis like the flu becomes reality, its
duration is indefinite, but the free access
to medical research most certainly won’t be.
As HIV/AIDS researchers have long known,
even though a pandemic may claim millions of
victims, the paywall remains shut as long as
the spotlight isn’t on.</p>
<p>The criminal hypocrisy of the publishing
industry’s current professions of minimal
decency becomes clear once you check the
archive of the Wellcome Trust and find
similar calls for open access concerning the
<a
href="https://wellcome.ac.uk/press-release/sharing-research-findings-and-data-relevant-ebola-outbreak-democratic-republic-congo">Ebola
epidemic</a> of 2018 and the <a
href="https://wellcome.ac.uk/press-release/statement-data-sharing-public-health-emergencies">Zika
outbreak</a> in 2016. In neither case do
we find the compassionate and understanding
signatures of Elsevier, Springer Nature,
Taylor and Francis, or many others. One gets
the impression that only now that a disease
affects the Global North, suddenly open
access is something of a moral obligation,
an obligation that was not so urgently felt
when tens of thousands died in Africa. The
position of academic for-profit publishers
is therefore clear: the deaths of some are
more problematic (for their bottom line and
“reputation”) than others.</p>
<figure
data-url="https://assets.pubpub.org/axnyos0w/51584605033538.jpg"
data-align="center" data-size="100"
data-node-type="image"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
<p>Opening access went properly viral when
schools and universities closed down in the
Global North. Suddenly, also non-medical
research was made freely accessible.
Cambridge University Press <a
href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/textbooks">opened
up</a> its textbooks “until the end of May
2020”; more than 75 publishers made their
publications <a
href="https://www.proquest.com/blog/pqblog/2020/Coronavirus-Impacted-Libraries-Get-Unlimited-Access-to-Ebook-Central.html">freely
accessible</a> to any institution with a
ProQuest account “through mid-June”; Harvard
University Press made its Loeb Classical
Library <a
href="https://twitter.com/HarvardUPLondon/status/1239924881023737858">freely
available</a> to school and libraries
“until June 30”; and several university
presses made their books <a
href="https://about.muse.jhu.edu/resources/freeresourcescovid19/">freely
available</a> on Project MUSE until May 31
or June 30, 2020.<span data-count="5"
data-value="<p>So apparently
publishers think that this is all going to
be over (in the Global North) by June or
July.</p>" data-node-type="footnote">5</span>
Again, only now that school children and
students in the Global North are confronted
with a limited access to physical learning
materials – a daily problem for millions of
students around the globe – it appears
possible to open up those precious digital
files.</p>
<p>As with the temporary opening of access to
COVID-19-related articles, the academic
presses offering “discretionary”
unpaywalling – to a random subset of their
catalogs with unknown or poorly argued
relevance for the <a
href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/03/18/live-updates-latest-news-coronavirus-and-higher-education">catastrophe</a>
that has <a
href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Coronavirus-Is-Upending/248175?cid=cp275">hit</a>
our education systems – are doing nothing
but engaging in last-minute, haphazard PR,
hoping that the realization that publicly
funded knowledge is inaccessible to most of
us will not dawn too soon on the anxious tax
payer, confronted with their restless child
at home or scrambling to assemble an
impromptu online “learning experience.”</p>
<p>It is not only in times of crisis that
publicly available knowledge can save lives.
It always has this potential, and it’s our
choice.</p>
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