Open Access, Open Science, and Coronavirus: Mega trends with historical proportions

• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12289
• Published date: 01 July 2020

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:419–421. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

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  419© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12289

EDITORIAL

Open Access, Open Science, and Coronavirus: Mega trends

with historical proportions

In February 2 020—or “back in t he old days before cor onavirus dis-

ease 2019 (COVID-19),” as it feels now—we were thinking of a s uit-

able hook for an ed itorial about O pen Access and Op en Science.

Fast-forward only a few wee ks, and par ts of the global e conomy

have come to a stands till, national borders have bee n closed, quar-

antines and cur fews have been imp lemented, so cial distanci ng has

become common s ense, and most p eople would be ab le to name

their favorite T V virologist. Which also mea ns that the hook for an

Open Access and O pen Science edi torial suddenl y presented it self

rather forcefu lly in the shape of COVID-19. Most of us are affected

by COVID-19 in a multitude of ways both i n our personal a nd pro-

fessional lives . It has reminded us of the interconne ctedness of the

entire global community, and the common social and economic chal-

lenges facing al l humanity, many of which have been int ensified due

to the economic sl owdown. The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has

also amplifie d various forms of in equity, which whi le playing out

differently in various economic contexts serve as a vivid reminder

of latent forms of discrimination and bias affecting hundreds of mil-

lions of human bein gs across the planet ever y day. In many contexts,

COVID-19 has also elicited hear tbreaking e thical decisio n-making

for politicians, policy makers, administrators, managers, and family

members and we w ill live to think thro ugh and analy ze the reper-

cussions and imp lications of the se for many years to com e. From a

teaching point of view, this certainly raises serious questions regard-

ing the ways in which o ur institutions prepa red decision-makers and

our citizens for thi s type of crisis.

From a research per spective, COV ID-19 is possibly represent a-

tive of the type s of external shock s that we expect to be fa cing much

more frequent ly in the not-too-dista nt future in light of t he series

of grand challenges (Eisenhardt, Graebner, & Sonenshein, 2016;

George, Howard -Grenville, J oshi, & Tihanyi, 2 016), we are confronted

with. Overwhelmed health-care systems, rising unemployment,

spiraling glob al debt, disru pted supply chai ns, and a range of oth er

development s raise urgent que stions in relat ion to degrowth , radi-

cal innovation , or resilience. At the same time, t his type of massi ve

discontinuous change (Winn, Kirchgeorg, Griffiths, Linnenluecke, &

Günther, 2011) also provide s us with unexpected opp ortunities: en-

forced or encour aged changes in tr avel behavior, produc tion, and

consumption patterns result in a sudden reduction in global carbon

emissions and oth er dimensions of our ecologi cal footprint. As suc h,

they have the potent ial to form a punctuated equ ilibrium (Romanelli

& Tushman, 1994) with regard to pro- environment al awareness

and behavior, polic y measures and, m ore generally, par ts of the

transition towa rd a more sustai nable developm ent. One rath er un-

expected ou tcome of the COVID-19 crisis has arguably al ready been

the rapid digit ization of the High er Education se ctor, and there are

other outcomes t hat are still unfolding, a lthough our conscience a nd

consciousness a re not yet able to keep tr ack. All of the se changes

highlight the ne ed for rapid devel opment of solid th eory, practi cal

decision-making models or ethical decision-making guidelines, and

various new tool s that can be useful during t his pandemic, and more

important ly post-pandemic, to be better pr epared for expected fu-

ture outbreaks.

WHY OPEN ACCESS AND OPEN SCIENCE

NOW?

There have been an i mpressive numb er of immediate natu ral sci-

ence initiative s in response to COVID -19. For example, COVID -

19-related Open Access da ta repositori es have been create d (Xu

et al., 2020), mod eling those est ablished for r esearch into the

human genome ( Yozwiak, Schaffn er, & Sabeti, 2015); real-ti me

data visualizat ion tools are prov ided by various ac tors (e.g., Joh n

Hopkins University, 2020; Roser, Ritchie, & Ortiz-Ospina, 2020;

WHO, 2020); and Nature has es tablished an “O pen Peer Review

platform” (Johansson & Saderi, 2020). Closer to (our disciplinary)

home, notewor thy initiatives in clude the “COVID -19 Insights”

series opera ted by a number of busi ness sustain ability net works

(e.g., GRONEN, 202 0) or the Academy of Management Learning &

Education COVID-19 “Call for Questions” pr oposal (AMLE, 2020).

All of these init iatives have in commo n that they aim to make

research more inclusive and more immediately available, and thus

blend into more gen eral developm ents that have be en labeled as

Open Access and O pen Science. Wh ile Open Access re fers to the

free availabilit y of research ou tputs, ty pically in digi tal format,

Open Science goe s beyond that in calling for public a ccessibility of

research data a nd more genera lly a collaborat ive research pro cess

(OECD, 2015). Ultimately, Ope n Access and Open Science are com-

plementary ways of confronting the contemporary for-profit pub-

lishing model as we k now it (Hiltzik, 2020).

In the natural sc iences in part icular, Open Access an d Open

Science have emer ged as mechanisms t o promote quicker, more

collaborative , and more inclus ive knowledge gen eration. In the s o-

cial sciences, the relative lack of these mechanisms—coupled with

an oftentimes p ainstakingly slow pee r review process—amplifies t he