In my last article I explained how Research4Life removes barriers to access to scientific research literature for many thousands of academics, educators and policy-makers in lower and middle-income countries. I said that “this year, more than any other, has illustrated how vital such authoritative content is to support collaborative research programmes and to achieve maximum inclusion and impact.” Efforts to improve the diversity and equity of scientific research endeavours are enhanced when all participants have equal access to the “tools of the trade”, be they peer-reviewed journals, data-sharing platforms, analytical software or online communication systems.

While the shift to home-working forced by the Covid-19 pandemic was disruptive for most of us, for those in developing countries without access to low-cost and widely embedded domestic broadband networks, it was potentially catastrophic. Even with the availability of mobile devices for internet access, networks were under enormous pressure. With offices, universities and libraries closed, access to physical and even digital collections and resources became hugely challenging; services based on institutional registration and administration, such as Research4Life, had to adapt quickly, as did their users!

I asked the Research4Life Helpdesk to reflect on how the Covid-19 pandemic affected usage (and users) of the platform and what actions were taken to try to minimise the impact on vital research activities in countries where such programmes are fragile at the best of times.
From the earliest days of the pandemic, when it became clear that remote working would become the norm, active librarians started communicating about enabling remote access for their communities. They began contacting the Helpdesk to find out what was permitted and whether their tools (proxy, VPN, other) would work with the standard Research4Life authentication system.

Sadly, not all institutions were able to adapt as quickly. Many desperate users started communicating directly because they were away from campus, their institutional Research4Life contacts were unreachable and they needed access.

Worryingly, institutions in countries where access is contingent on payment of a modest annual fee began reporting they could not pay due to the Covid-19 pandemic economic impact or simply because they no longer had access to their institution’s administrative systems. Publishers willingly agreed to waive fees in these cases through to the end of 2020, in order not to disrupt access, but this had a huge knock-on effect on the income received during the year, underlining the fragility of the Research4Life business model.
The Research4Life core team proactively reached out to publishers about offering additional content, particularly digital backfiles, and some publishers responded positively to this request. Others reviewed their excluded countries lists early and reinstated some countries in the middle of the year.

Fortunately, the Research4Life Capacity Development team had already shifted its focus to the preparation and delivery of online training materials and courses; the Research4Life MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) has now run 4 “editions”, attracting several thousand participants. While we hope to resume face-to-face training when circumstances allow, the pandemic has fast-tracked the transition to more virtual outreach and training, and a full programme of webinars and social media promotions is now in place.

It is too soon to analyse the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on usage of Research4Life and all of the content it makes available, particularly with so many variables at play. Inevitably we are likely to discover that usage has more or less disappeared in some areas where off-campus access to online services is non-existent or prohibitively expensive. In others, however, home-working may have stimulated greater reliance on digital resources and enabled users to participate in global seminars and conferences that would have been out of reach as physical events. Our own General Partners’ Meeting, held virtually over 2 days in July 2020, was attended by many more partners than usual, and hundreds of participants from across Research4Life’s 125 eligible countries have tuned in to our webinars and signed up to our social media channels.

Perhaps of most significance in this most unusual of years was the launch, towards the end of 2020, of Friends of Research4Life, a fund-raising vehicle to enable the generation of much-needed income to strengthen and increase awareness of Research4Life, its huge collection of authoritative content and its wide-ranging capacity building resources. As we saw in 2020, those institutions with the greatest need for access to knowledge can often be those which face the greatest difficulties at a time of crisis, so securing a reliable source of funds to further the work of Research4Life is more important than ever. The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the enormous benefits of global collaboration in scientific research, but it has also highlighted some of the underlying inequities which risk progression towards the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals.

While we all can hope there won’t be another pandemic soon, hopefully the lessons learned from this past year will enable everyone to more robustly and rapidly respond the next time.

Learn more about Research4life