In times of a global pandemic, when the world is fighting a common threat against the clock, cooperation in the scientific community is more important than ever. At some point in the (hopefully) near future, we will have medications and vaccines to combat the virus. And this will be thanks to thousands of scientists working tirelessly around the clock to find a cure.
To help them with their strenuous task, more and more publishers and academic databases have decided to make the research related to COVID-19 freely available to anyone. Some go even further and are making their entire database freely available for a limited period of time.
Publishers recognize their role in the crisis and make COVID-19 content open access
Removing all obstacles to getting access to all information available on COVID-19 is the obvious and right thing to do in this situation. All publishers who recognized their important role in this crisis and reacted immediately deserve credit.
We have put together a list of more than 30 free resources during the pandemic, and we'll update the list on a regular basis. Feel free to leave a comment if you would like us to add a source to the list.
We leave the obvious follow-up question for later: If open access is critical in times of crisis, why is closed access and paywalls the better approach when researchers are fighting everyday crises like cancer, Alzheimer's disease, or climate change?
| Name | Coverage | Valid until | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACM | Computer Science | https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl-access-during-covid-19 | Whole database (~ 4 Mio) | June 30, 2020 | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/c4d41d03-13d6-462d-a73b-a9055b438267-acm.png |
| ACS | various | Collection of articles on Coronavirus research | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/de5f2c0c-067a-495f-a1cf-dcfec3c25eb8-faviconacs.png | ||
| AIP | Physics | Collection of articles on infectious diseases, epidemics, computational epidemiology, and pandemics | March 31, 2021 | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/304cf558-7875-4ed7-9246-31abd3a5ba9f-aip.png | |
| BMJ | Medical | Coronavirus hub with articles and resources on COVID-10 freely available | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/159cde89-f126-4462-9824-f0dea55bc801-bmj.png | ||
| Brill | various | Books and articles on topics such as public health, distance learning, crisis research | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/851cc9b7-ded9-42a9-886e-e34ba0aee0d8-brill.png | ||
| Cambridge University Press | various | https://www.cambridge.org/core/browse-subjects/medicine/coronavirus-free-access-collection | Free access collection (currently 246 articles on April 14) | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/cc669507-40be-469e-9e79-2d7c4846e7bc-index.png | |
| Cell Press | Biomedical | Hub page with content about the outbreak as it appears in Cell Press journals | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/226d78e6-f399-46da-b1bc-cf232913d936-favicon.ico.png | ||
| Clarivate | Analytics | Collection of resources around the Coronavirus | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/db193eab-2089-41a5-9d65-880d8769968b-cla.png | ||
| Cochrane Library | Medical Research | Special Collections, reviews, prioritized updates, COVID-19 Study Register, and other resources | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/6ee46594-f7e6-465f-a1c8-9163097855e5-cl.png | ||
| Dimensions | Research Grants Database | All relevant content on COVID-19 on the Dimensions platform is freely available and can be downloaded. As of April 14 more than 12,000 publications, clinical trials and policy documents | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/7e1ccbde-9c1f-483c-95bf-a6c9011d62ee-dim.png | ||
| Duke University Press | various | https://www.dukeupress.edu/Explore-Subjects/Syllabi/Navigating-Pandemic-Syllabus | Selection of books to be read for free online until June 2020, journal articles free until October 2020 | June 1, 2020 | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/598b812d-3d73-4e11-9c50-d861e2d3f1f8-dup.png |
| Elsevier | Analytics | Free Coronavirus information center including guidelines for clinicians and patients, ~ 20,000 related articles free to access on ScienceDirect | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/07b64352-56b9-4cab-908c-4eeaaec6c7fa-index.png | ||
| Emerald | various | https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/promo/coronavirus.htm | Expert briefings, journal articles, and book chapters related to Coronavirus and the management of epidemics | December 31, 2020 | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/7a755f52-07ae-443c-910d-ccf53c2d28e8-em.png |
| Guilford | Medical and Psychological Research | Whole database | June 30, 2020 | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/54aedf5b-3dfe-465f-91a4-8df0b464c325-guil.png | |
| IEEE | Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics | A collection of COVID-19 related articles is completely free to access for the duration of the crisis | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/ec84ec39-92ac-4e9e-9f47-d5a95352d79b-ieee.png | ||
| IOP Publishing | Physics | https://ioppublishing.org/news/coronavirus-articles-free-to-access-content-from-iop-publishing/ | All relevant published and forthcoming articles in their journals will be made immediately available to PubMed Central (PMC) throughout the duration of the crisis | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/61fbe967-dc55-4a21-b642-277139711953-iop.png | |
| JAMA | Biomedicine | https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/pages/coronavirus-alert | COVID-19 collection with interviews, videos and interactive map | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/80d8499a-7eee-4d1c-bb08-59d8ed346896-index.png | |
| Johns Hopkins | Private Research University | News and information to help advance the understanding of the virus, inform the public, and brief policymakers | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/5b8ca4e5-5819-403f-9c14-525908bae739-jhu.png | ||
| JSTOR | various | Expanded free access for participating institutions & selected journal articles related to COVID-19 free for everyone | June 30, 2020 | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/5c2265cf-a372-4353-a44c-90a518ca83bf-jstor.png | |
| McGraw-Hill Medical | various | 24+ entries on AccessMedicine COVID-19 Central to help teaching and learning online and to share the latest information on the COVID-19 global pandemic | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/a557ff22-ac43-47fc-b060-ec21939f0ca3-mh.png | ||
| Microbiology Society | Microbiology | All journal content | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/ac486866-0722-4e50-b80b-8e2bcab2caa2-ms.png | ||
| MIT Press | various | https://mitpress.mit.edu/blog/articles-understanding-pandemics-and-epidemiology | Selected free articles on pandemics, epidemiology, and other relevant subjects | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/fe09771c-1b59-4187-8308-3207fa15ccaa-mit.png | |
| Muse | Digital Humanities, Social Science | COVID-19 related scholarly content | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/fdc8a1d1-560e-4f58-925c-193182bb8f84-muse.png | ||
| Ovid | Biomedicine | Free access to Ovid Discovery | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/20498fce-f577-4282-a534-b64fe48126de-ovid.png | ||
| Oxford University Press | various | https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/coronavirus?cc=us&lang=en& | Free access to OUP resources on Coronavirus and related topics | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/39a6473f-db7c-4fc8-8496-5cc01cbaf926-index.png | |
| SAGE | various | 150+ articles spanning science, technology, and medicine and in the social and behavioral sciences | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/efffe8b1-4e32-4710-8036-61555adcdca3-sage.png | ||
| Semantic Scholar | Search Engine for Scientific Journal Articles | Free COVID-19 Open Research Dataset, a free resource of over 51,000 scholarly articles, including over 40,000 with full text, about COVID-19 and the Coronavirus family of viruses | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/5b059fd1-8a76-4f7c-a02b-d62e25153c3d-index.png | ||
| Springer Nature | various | https://www.springernature.com/gp/researchers/campaigns/coronavirus | Free to access journal articles, books and additional commentary on the Coronavirus | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/8cea86bf-17ce-4903-a4db-b8c09fd30aa3-index.png | |
| The Lancet | Medical | COVID-19 resource center with free content from across the Lancet journals as it is published | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/efc1d493-098c-4d44-87d7-27e362514481-lancet.png | ||
| The New England Journal of Medicine | Medical | A collection of articles and other resources on the Coronavirus outbreak, including clinical reports, management guidelines, and commentary | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/0880a2c4-e58e-4fb3-bf61-46444df11c6b-nejm.png | ||
| Wellcome | Research Charity, Biomedical | All of their COVID-19 and Coronavirus-related research and publications are freely available | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/e58a6e92-7507-46f6-a78f-37e317f0d131-index.png | ||
| Wiley | various | More than 5,300 Coronavirus-related articles and book chapters | /mount/data/CONTENT/new-ssg/paperpile.com/notion/blog-en/assets/b91dbd77-b14f-41c7-97a5-3597e6a9465d-wiley.png |
