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Apr 4, 2020
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Press release: Collaboration for COVID-19

Apr 4, 2020

April 2, 2020

COVID-19 is here at alarming speed but at the same time so is the pace of research. The global community is working at breakneck speed on vaccines, tests and a deeper understanding of this new virus. The research output is growing every day. Open Science, as an underlying factor has been proved as the only and essential way forward to share immediately the results for all.

OpenAIRE - in collaboration with the EC and other key EOSC players ELIXIR, EMBL and RDA - is doing its part in this crisis by establishing a COVID-19 Open Research Gateway to provide a single entry point to COVID-19 resources, working closely with (European) disciplinary research infrastructures. This COVID-19 Gateway will leverage OpenAIRE’s long-held experience in gathering and inferring diverse research with a particular topic and will be a fast collaborative exercise in identifying valuable resources from a vast range of scholarly information.

Why it matters: Access to open, free and up-to-date research results are vital in this fight against the virus. Many valuable services exist delivering this information but this can be enhanced by a tool which enables a researcher to see ‘the full picture’ of the research output. This has to be a constantly updated effort which is above all global and interdisciplinary. The research results have to be trustworthy and gathered from well-established databanks and bibliographic sources. And the infrastructure underlying has to be open.

What this means: Any researcher needs a trusted service to be able to see in a glance all the output. OpenAIRE gathers all research results in one place via its live Gateway. This means that anyone, for free, can access articles, datasets, posters, images, software (and other research results) about COVID-19 in one place. Ultimately this encourages interdisciplinary research. 

An example: An epidemiologist is searching for genome data on COVID-19 and also comes across a related dataset. A piece of software also pops up that they didn't know about via the Zenodo community.

The bottom line: We are all in this together. If we work fast and collaboratively we can all play our part in this extraordinary situation by contributing to this Gateway. We are actively looking for volunteers to contribute in their domains to check the data, publications for relevancy - trustworthiness - related datasets. The ongoing curation of the collection is crucial. 

OpenAIRE is also contributing to the RDA Working Group on COVID-19 by helping to deliver guidelines for data sharing.

Zenodo has already established a research community for COVID-19.
This Community is a dedicated space collecting research results that could be relevant for the scientific community worldwide working on the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and SARS-CoV-2. Contents will automatically feed the COVID-19 Open Research Gateway resulting in a single point of entry for all research results.

About OpenAIRE: OpenAIRE is the largest aggregator of European Commission funded research outputs and other national research outputs. It supports Open Science around Europe, and also delivers on-demand services for research communities, content providers and funders. 

OpenAIRE COVID-19 Activities

In detail

We are looking for experts to contribute in our efforts

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