Amplifying the reach of UCL’s expertise to address COVID-19

The open and engaged nature of UCL’s research has extended the application of its expertise to the global COVID-19 pandemic

Since the emergence of the COVID-19 in December 2019, UCL’s efforts have focused on applying the depth and breadth of its cross-disciplinary research and expertise to help humanity recover from the pandemic, and making the world more resilient and equitable in the future.  

The impact of UCL’s expertise has been extended through the university’s commitment to openness and engagement, exemplified by the UCL Covid-19 Research platform on ScienceOpen.com.  

“We were determined to apply the open science ethos in our response to the pandemic, so we became one of the first universities in the world to develop an online platform to make all of our COVID-19 research and data available around the world,” says Dr Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services and UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship).  

This freely available collection lists all UCL published content related to the pandemic, including records for published articles, pre-prints, working papers, data and reports. In its first four months the platform had grown to include nearly 700 items, and had attracted almost 15,000 views. 

““The sharing of research insights and information is crucial to enabling a global response to the current crisis, empowering people, communities and governments to make rational, evidence-based decisions,” says Dr Paul Ayris  

The platform – managed on behalf of the UCL community by UCL Press, the UK’s first fully open access university press – uses metadata to pull in research from a range of outlets, from traditional commercial journals to pre-print servers. Where the research is open access, the platform makes the full text of the publication available.  

“The sharing of research insights and information is crucial to enabling a global response to the current crisis: empowering people, communities and governments to make rational, evidence-based decisions,” adds Dr Ayris.  

Beyond the platform, UCL COVID-19 expertise was amplified through researchers taking a prominent role in advising world leaders and providing expert commentary through the media, on issues as varied as predictions on the virus spread of the virus, panic buying and stockpiling, broadband provision, and the economic and political impact of the pandemic. UCL researchers responded to more than 280 requests for comment in the media during the first nine months of the pandemic.  

Our flagship weekly podcast series, ‘Coronavirus: The Whole Story’, with UCL graduate and broadcaster Vivienne Parry (Zoology 1978) in discussion with a wide range of UCL researchers, analysed the coronavirus outbreak through different lenses, covering history, psychology, social sciences, arts, engineering, economics, law and politics. The UCL COVID-19 Research website described the collaborative nature of our research, both across UCL disciplines and with external partners, and highlighted contributions made by our community in response to the pandemic.