Apex CoVantage Supports the Launch of PLOS Collection, Open Source Scientific Articles and Research Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic
Apex CoVantage is honored to be a partner in the effort led by the Public Library of Science (PLOS) in producing and releasing over 150 scientific articles covering the development of the COVID-19 pandemic. This initiative, which began by fast-tracking submissions in January 2020, echoed the requests of science leaders asking that the publishing community make their content regarding Covid-19 open and re-usable. Already, these contributions have been included in the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health updates for Covid-19.
PLOS is a nonprofit open-access science, technology and medicine publisher with a library of open-access journals and other scientific literature under an open-content license. For many years, Apex CoVantage has worked closely with PLOS to streamline their scientific journal publishing workflow.
As the non-profit organization declared in their official announcement of the PLOS Collection, “Open Access and Open Science are critical, especially in times of crisis. The COVID-19 outbreak shows how important it is for medical professionals, scientific experts, and every member of the public to have immediate access to the latest science.”
In addition, more than 30 leading publishers have committed to making all of their COVID-19 and coronavirus-related publications, and the available data supporting them, immediately accessible through public repositories, in an effort to help to support the ongoing public health emergency response efforts.
Veronique Kiermer, Chief Scientific Officer at PLOS, said: “Open Access and Open Science are critical, especially in times of crisis. PLOS already supports, and calls on others to support, research being shared such that it can be centrally text- and data-mined, and also versioned in places where it will be most conveniently discovered by those tackling this crisis in real time.”
Apex early on saw the potential disruption that could be caused by lockdown responses to Coronavirus. Apex upgraded its Business Continuity Plan in early March to enable 100% of its workforce to work from home. In the weeks prior to India’s 21-day lockdown, Apex load-tested the system to ensure we were ready to keep PLOS and our other publisher partners online. We are proud to support the expedited publication of these scientific journals, shared as open source in an effort to assuage public fears or spur government action and collaboration throughout the scientific community.
For more details on where to access this information, visit PLOS Covid-19 Collection here.