Scholarly Publishing in the Wake of COVID-19

Abstract

The speed at which the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe and the accompanying need to rapidly disseminate knowledge have highlighted the inadequacies of the traditional research/publication cycle, particularly the slowness and the fragmentary access globally to manuscripts and their findings. Scholarly communication has slowly been undergoing transformational changes since the introduction of the Internet in the 1990s. The pandemic response has created an urgency that has accelerated these trends in some areas. The magnitude of the global emergency has strongly bolstered calls to make the entire research and publishing lifecycle transparent and open. The global scientific community has collaborated in rapid, open, and transparent means that are unprecedented. The general public has been reminded of the important of science, and trusted communication of scientific findings, in everyday life. In addition to COVID-19-driven innovation in scholarly communication, alternative bibliometrics and artificial intelligence tools will further transform academic publishing in the near future.

Fig. 1

The research/publishing life cycle.

Fig. 2

The impact of COVID-19 on scholarly publishing.

Fig. 3

Posting an Advances in Radiation Oncology paper on Sina Weibo.