A light in the dark. Open access to medical literature and the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction. This study was designed to evaluate the accessibility of peer-reviewed literature regarding COVID-19 and the ten diseases with the highest death toll worldwide. Method. We conducted extensive searches of studies concerning COVID-19 and other diseases using the Web of Science, and the Google and Google Scholar search engines. Analysis. Open access rates were obtained from the Web of Science database, taking into account different types of publications and research areas. Quantitative analyses based on random samplings were used to estimate the potential increase of open access rates achievable with open archiving of post-prints. Results. The open access rate of COVID-19 papers (89.5%) largely outnumbered that of the ten most deadly human diseases (48.8%, on average). We estimated that most of the gap (70%) could be bridged by making available online, post-print manuscripts. Conclusions. The pandemic represents a real breakthrough, in scientific publishing, towards the goal of health information for all, demonstrating that much greater access to medical literature is possible. The green road may be the best way to bring open access rates of peer review of other major diseases closer to that of COVID-19. However, it needs to be implemented more effectively, combining bottom-up and top-down actions and making the open science culture more widespread.