Gestern verkündeten die USA, den Schutz geistigen Eigentums für Covid-19-Impfstoffe aussetzen zu wollen. Wie sieht die Lage für offene Alternativen in der Entwicklung von Impfstoffen aus? Das analysieren Milena Leybold und Leonhard Dobusch: Nicht nur geistiges Eigentum ist wichtig – auch Fragen der Haftung und der Finanzierung sind maßgeblich.

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today’s post features Rukhsana Ahmed, an Associate Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

This post is an update of a previous analysis on quantixed. We have covered publication lag times – the time it takes for a paper go from submitted (received) to accepted and published – a lot on here. It is possible to look at lag times, in R using data from PubMed. Previously my code performed these calculations using an XML file downloaded from the PubMed website.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, different countries are experiencing various restrictions including lockdowns. Some of these restrictions alter our ability to do science: by hindering lab access or taking time away from researchers for homeschooling. So, what impact has the pandemic had on scientific output? One way to look at this – for biology – is to look at newly deposited papers on bioRxiv.

The scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been astounding. Aside from efforts to generate vaccines, the genomic surveillance of the virus has been truly remarkable. For example, the nextstrain project has sequence many SARS-CoV-2 genomes. In fact, the rapid identification of multiple new strains and mutations by diverse groups of scientists has resulted in a nomenclature crisis.

In July 2020, Europe PMC began indexing the full text of COVID-19 preprints. The initiative supported by Wellcome, the UK Medical Research Council, and Swiss National Science Foundation, has now made over 15,300 full text COVID-19 preprints searchable and free to read, alongside peer reviewed articles. Number of full text COVID-19 preprints in Europe PMC by month.

Seit kurzem sind Impfstoffe gegen das Covid19-Virus verfügbar. Bei den Diskussionen um deren Verteilung geht es oft um Produktionskapazitäten. Nach Ansicht von Expert*innen leidet die Zugänglichkeit aber vor allem unter dem Patentschutz, an dem die Pharmafirmen – trotz staatlicher Vorfinanzierungen – stoisch festhalten.

Press release originally published by Simon Fraser University on January 6, 2021 A new SFU-led study finds that almost half of media stories in early 2020 featuring COVID-19 ‘preprint’ research—research that has not yet been peer-reviewed—accurately framed the studies as being preprints or unverified research.

2020 was different for all of us to say the least and only time will tell what this pandemic will mean for our futures – personally and professionally. Science has taken center stage during this year and thus, a lot of issues that were previously only discussed within the community have gained more attention from society. After an eventful year we would like to take a look back at the Elephants in the Lab of the Year.

The database clinicaltrials.gov is a web resource of clinical trials around the world. It has a REST API that gives access to clinical trial data. There are some resources available to interact with this resource using R, such as rclinicaltrials and ClinicalTrialsAPI. We were interested at looking clinical trials for rare diseases and particularly whether this year, COVID-19 had affected these trials.