How the COVID-19 pandemic will accelerate change across research & education

The speed and magnitude of this global pandemic have taken the whole world by storm. It has drastically changed how we live, work, learn, socialise and do business. It has forced us to change pace and focus, re-evaluate, re-prioritise, and learn new ways of interacting and sharing information that are likely to remain long after the peak of the present pandemic. Life as we know it has been disrupted, creating with it opportunities for innovation, collaboration, co-creation and rapid experimentation.

From a research perspective, the COVID-19 crisis is accelerating output, knowledge mobilisation and the impact agenda. Opposing voices are being challenged and communities are collaborating across sectors to make an impact on real-world problems. Researchers are experimenting with new forms of publication, there are new digital formats and greater availability and sharing of data, in addition to funder expectations for open access, open research and open peer review.

Publishers support global efforts to fight COVID-19

For us as academic publishers and guardians of knowledge, we have a responsibility to support COVID-19 research efforts and the research community at large, and it has been great to see the sector come together to mobilise this. From our perspective, and knowing time was of the essence, we wanted to see what we could do quickly that was of genuine benefit to our community, so we focused on creating a dedicated coronavirus page where social sciences-related research resources on epidemic response in general can be freely accessed. We keep the page updated with new content and features a link to our latest special issue calls for papers themed around COVID-19 on topics such as:

• The Impact of COVID-19 on tourism
• Inclusive education practice in a Time of Collective Crisis
• Managing Inequalities through a Pandemic

In an effort to get research disseminated quickly that can help us work together in the fight against COVID-19, we launched an Open Access Publishing Fund of £20,000, enabling researchers across the world to publish their research, quickly (usually within a matter of weeks), without any Article Processing Charges. This research will be published fully open access through our Emerald Open Research platform. Articles in this collection include, ‘COVID-19 and employees’ mental health: stressors, moderators and agenda for organizational actions’

In addition, we are actively commissioning new books on this topic, and incorporating chapters relating to the pandemic into upcoming titles, which include: The Gig Economy, Streaming Culture, and Poverty in Britain.
Another important step for us was becoming a signatory on the Wellcome Trust’s statement, which calls for research findings and data related to COVID-19 to be shared quickly and freely.

New content types related to COVID-19

To accelerate the flow of ideas and stimulate debate beyond the research article, we are commissioning content related to the impacts of COVID-19 in a number of formats. We now have COVID-19 opinion pieces on Emerald Open Research such as ‘COVID-19: our last teachable moment’ and blog posts on our coronavirus page including ‘Keeping your project on track during a crisis’ and ‘Digital outcasts & COVID-19’. We are in the process of commissioning a series of podcasts related to the impacts of COVID-19 and that content should be available soon. The podcasts will focus on how research can be applied to solve global challenges and why impactful research is key to understanding the world around us.

Future impact on research & publishing

COVID-19 demonstrates the need to rapidly disseminate trusted research findings, balancing speed with rigourous evaluation so that researchers and policy makers can make decisions that benefit the search for a vaccine coupled with the appropriate societal response. For Emerald, our commitment to interdisciplinary, social sciences-related research means working with our communities to support co-creation and rapid dissemination of their findings, as well as experimenting with new forms of digital content to help them reach beyond research to beneficiary.

Fast track publishing

The COVID-19 crisis emphasises the need for speedier publishing, and there are a number of options that are being explored. One approach, which has been used in several fields for many years, relates to preprints. These are draft articles that are made publicly available prior to formal peer review. Preprints have several benefits such as speed, open access and the potential for immediate feedback, but there are well-known risks around quality control and validation, particularly in medical research. Nevertheless, the ‘need for speed’ in dissemination is well understood.

Another way to speed up publication is to expedite the peer-review process, prior to publication. We recently launched a pilot of a crowd review process with Filestage, which provides a web application that enables easy sharing, commenting and approving of documents in the browser. Reviewers can mark required changes to files directly online, replacing long feedback rounds by e-mail and making the review workflow more efficient. Our objective with this pilot is to rapidly decrease the time to publication without detriment to the quality of the peer review process. The trial has been introduced to some of Emerald’s cases and journals:

• Emerging Markets Case Studies
• International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
• Journal of Islamic Accounting and Business Research

Acceleration of open access publishing

Much like preprints, open access has formed part of the research dissemination landscape for many years. Indeed, open access has been increasing rapidly in recent years, with funders and policy makers increasingly engaged through the introduction of open access mandates. The pandemic is likely to further accelerate open access to scholarly outputs.

In 2019, we launched Emerald Open Research as part of our commitment to accelerate open and sustainable research in the communities we serve. And recently we became a signatory of The Open Scholarship Initiative’s (OSI) Plan A, an international, multi-stakeholder effort to reform the future of scholarly communication. The goals and outputs of this plan are designed to inform and align with UNESCO’s efforts to craft a global recommendation for open science by late-2021.

The publishing sector is heavily engaged in developing new approaches that drive the uptake of open, including: open research (open, transparent, reproducible, collaborative in nature), open access (freely available and reusable), open publishing workflows, new approaches to peer review and data sharing. For Emerald, beyond our commitment to further open research, we pledged to advance the real impact of research, in partnership with our communities. Our Impact Manifesto, launched in 2018, calls for change and leads the publishing charge towards meaningful impact. And through our Impact Services offering, we are helping to support the impact journey and mobilise new engagement with research.  Real Impact remains the cornerstone of our vision.

The rise of interdisciplinary research

Researchers from different disciplines, departments, institutions and countries are coming together to address the most pressing issues of the COVID-19 crisis. This collaborative approach enables researchers with different skills and perspectives to share knowledge and data and avoid duplicating efforts.

nterdisciplinary research has gained momentum in recent years, with some funders making interdisciplinary teams a criterion in their funding decisions. Despite the challenges of interdisciplinary work such as communication and coordination difficulties, it is increasingly seen as a driver of innovation, creating knowledge to solve complex global challenges. We fully support interdisciplinary research and the benefits that come from the power of diverse voices. That’s why in 2019, we launched a new Real Impact Awards category to help interdisciplinary teams achieve real impact in line with addressing the UN’s sustainable development goals.

Interdisciplinary research is undoubtedly on an upwards trajectory and the pandemic will only necessitate that it grows further, to address pressing societal challenges through research and development more effectively.

The pros & cons of remote working

Businesses around the globe have been edging towards more flexible ways of working for some time, and this was true for Emerald even before the advent of COVID-19. Our teams are currently working remotely, and flexible working patterns are becoming the norm, in line with customer and colleague needs. Without doubt this pandemic has been a test for how remote working and distance learning can work on a global scale.

We are now many weeks into the pandemic and businesses have now sampled some of the advantages of remote working such as flexibility, productivity, and time/money savings, but there are cons such as loss of creativity/collaboration and potential for loneliness. Like many other businesses, we are working our way around these barriers through video meetings, wellbeing support and social catch ups, but in the immediate term we continue to miss the benefits created by in-person collaboration and facilitation.

Online education – the big global experiment

When we look at how the pandemic is affecting education, we find that schools and universities have been thrown into the largest global e-learning experiment in history. While it may be tempting to think online education will become the new norm, it’s worth remembering that massive open online courses (MOOCs), once tipped to become the next big thing, had until recently seen a decline in enrolment in some countries. There could be good reason for this – online education can be patchy and is unable to offer the full experience of attending university. However, the current circumstances create new potential for innovation in this area.

What we do know for sure though, is that the international mobility of students is going to be affected for some time, hitting universities and the wider economy that are hugely reliant on those income streams. Despite concerns for the sector, there are opportunities – the technical know-how developed through online teaching and learning, for instance, may become embedded in courses in the future, providing a richer educational experience. In the short-term, as universities look to enrol scarce international students for courses in September, the COVID-19 pandemic could serve as a catalyst for educational innovation.  For Emerald, our top priority remains providing continuous support to our global communities through these unprecedented times of disruption.