Equity in science communication and dissemination
Communication is the cornerstone of scientific activities. Science communication refers to active engagement in disseminating knowledge to various stakeholders including scientists, industry, policy makers, and general public. Among scientists, science is communicated and disseminated mainly through research publications, seminars, and conferences. Equitable access to the latest developments in the field is a major pre-requisite of successful science careers. Equity in science communication encompasses inclusive activities reaching to a wide range of participants with different cultural identities and life experiences (Canfield et al., 2020). Current practices require critical evaluation to move towards inclusive science communication practices (Amaro & Mulholland, 2020; Cosgriff, Ebner, & Celi, 2020; Dawson, 2014; Polk & Diver, 2020). Traditionally, seminars and conferences are localised to institutions and the publications are behind pay walls significantly diminishing accessibility. However, during the COVID-19 pandemics, traditional means of science communication were transformed overnight providing significantly more equitable access to the public funded research output.
COVID-19 has revolutionised and democratised publication of new scientific findings with the main objective of solving an immediate health challenge affecting the humankind (Kupferschmidt, 2020). Of note, individual success and corporate profits were completely removed as a factor in science communication. This is evident in the recognition of the need and international agreements to share the interim result, genome sequences, molecular simulations, and findings freely and quickly (Amaro & Mulholland, 2020; Wellcome Trust UK). According to the guidelines, scientists agreed to rapidly and widely share interim and final results with scientific community, make the findings rapidly available on preprint servers such as arXiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and psyarxiv and publish open access. Crucially, open science framework was promoted to ensure equity and reproducibility (Amaro & Mulholland, 2020; Korbel & Stegle, 2020; Wellcome Trust UK). Additionally, several collaborative platforms such as European COVID-19 Data Portal, Crowdfight COVID-19, or data against COVID-19 were developed to connect experts from different fields in a truly cross-disciplinary way. Timely and honest science communication to policy makers and the general public is another learning lesson from the COVID-19. The importance of an open dialogue between the scientific community and the policy makers, often neglected in graduate schools, is also being placed center stage (Berger et al., 2019; Robert et al., 2020).