Resources for Researchers During A Global Health Crisis

By Allison Leung, Publisher at SAGE Publishing

It has been said many times, but it bears repeating. We are living through an unprecedented time. The impact of COVID-19 has affected all of us differently. I am incredibly lucky to still have my job, and I am grateful that most of my journals and editors are minimally affected. There are even times during the day when I can almost forget what is happening. But much of the time, I am sad and anxious about the uncertainty of the world.

However, despite the anxiety and uncertainty, this global crisis has reinforced for me the importance of research and how vital our academic community is. I’ve never been prouder to work for an organization committed to the dissemination of research in all of its forms.

As the manager of SAGE’s preprint server, Advance, I feel particularly proud to be able to offer social science and humanities authors a way to immediately share their early research relating to this current global health crisis. Preprints, if you aren’t familiar, are early versions of manuscripts that are shared online ahead of peer review. One of the many advantages of preprints is that authors can rapidly share their work – an especially crucial benefit right now.

Advance has just started to receive papers covering several facets of the COVID-19 pandemic, from transportation research to remote collaboration to public health concerns among older adults in Sri Lanka. We hope authors will continue to consider posting their early research on preprint servers, like Advance, so that their work can be shared as swiftly as possible.

This crisis is evolving quickly, and here at SAGE, we are committed to doing what we can to support our research community during this difficult time. We’ve put together several resources already, including free online teaching resources and materials on how to get published. But we would love to hear from you, our research community. What other resources and support do you need during this time? 

I would also encourage you to check out our author gateway to see an up-to-date list of resources available to help support your research and publishing activity during this challenging time. You can read SAGE’s public statement on how we are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, check out our collection of freely available research relating to the pandemic and our hub on Social Science Space looking at the social and behavioral response to the coronavirus.

These may be challenging times, but I’m confident we will get through them and come out stronger on the other end.