Message from Dr. Ujjwal Rao

MBBS, PhD, M.Phil, MHM, DMLE
( Senior Clinical Specialist ELSEVIER )

Dear Patron,

In these extraordinary times, with the novel coronavirus, now called “SARS-CoV-2” and the disease it causes “Coronavirus Disease 2019” (COVID-19), being declared a global pandemic, coupled with technology’s ability to rapidly mine and analyze medical data on a global scale, the opportunities and challenges for frontline healthcare providers are significant.

An Open Access letter has been sent on Friday, March 13, 2020 by the science ministers and chief science advisors from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States asking publishers to voluntarily make all COVID-19-related research and data immediately available to the public.

I want to share with you some of the critical engagements and commitments that Elsevier has made over the past few weeks:

  • Elsevier launched its free COVID-19 Information Center  on January 27th 2020, and populated it with over 19,500 articles and additional content from our experts. The portal is regularly updated with new research from across our journals, including The Lancet and Cell. The site is approaching half a million unique visitors and over a million downloads of Lancet articles alone.
  • In addition to research as well as reference textbooks published by Elsevier, we’ve also compiled research papers published by organizations such as NEJM, JAMA, and BMJ that are available for free in a single location (Press release)

For quick reference, below is a list of links to important articles, guidelines, patient handouts and FAQs available on Elsevier’s Novel Coronavirus Information Center:

  1. Clinical Synopsis of COVID-19
  2. Frequently Asked Questions based on the recommendations made by the CDC and WHO for nurses and patients
  3. Patient Education document “Novel Coronavirus Infection”: Plain language to support shared decision-making between patients and healthcare providers
  4. The Lancet COVID-19 Resource Centre brings together new 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) content from across The Lancet journals as it is published.
  5. Early-stage research on the coronavirus via preprints are also available on Elsevier’s SSRN Coronavirus and Infectious Disease Research page.
  6. An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time
  7. A 3D information video from 3D4Medical for patients explaining COVID-19.
  8. Articles on epidemiology, clinical features and imaging findings:

‒      Radiological findings from 81 patients with COVID-19 pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study

‒      Clinical course and outcomes of critically ill patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a single-centered, retrospective, observational study

‒      Epidemic Characteristics of 2019-nCoV in China, Jan 23, 2020-Feb 11, 2020

     9.  Cell Press is also providing free-to-access content about the outbreak as it appears in Cell Press journals on its Coronavirus Resource Hub. More recent articles include:

‒    The Novel Coronavirus Outbreak: What We Know and What We Don’t ‒    Bat-Origin Coronaviruses Expand Their Host Range to Pigs ‒    Molecular Evolution of Human Coronavirus Genomes

Elsevier has also made all its research and data content on its COVID-19 Information Center available to PubMed Central, the archive of biomedical and life science at the US National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine, and other publicly funded repositories globally, such as the WHO COVID database, for as long as needed while the public health emergency is ongoing. The International Association of STM Publishers, which Elsevier is a member of, has compiled a list of COVID-19 related information sites from its member publishers on its Coronavirus (COVID-2019) page.

The Information Center is updated daily with the latest research information on the virus and includes links to more than 19,500 freely available articles accessible via Elsevier Connect and Clinical Key®, the medical knowledge search engine and tool used by clinicians around the world seeking the most current reference and research information.

We will continue to provide periodical updates as necessary and when more information has been added.

As we enter the next phase of this pandemic, we encourage you to fully utilize Elsevier’s latest evidence-based information to contain this outbreak as early as possible, reducing the burden of its morbidity and preventing any further mortality.

 Thank you.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ujjwal Rao MBBS, PhD, M.Phil, MHM, DMLE

Senior Clinical Specialist ELSEVIER

u.rao@elsevier.com

www.elsevier.com