Science leaders ask publishers for access to monkeypox research

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and science leaders from around the world are calling on scientific publishers to immediately make any monkeypox-related research and data their journals publish freely available to help contain the spread of the virus.

Cases of monkeypox were first reported in May from multiple countries that had not been affected before, an unprecedented outbreak of a disease that had largely been restricted to a few countries in Africa. Since then the virus has spread to more than 70 countries and more than 25,000 cases have been reported. “Given the urgency of the situation, it is particularly important that scientists and the public can access research results and data as soon as possible,” OSTP officials write today in an open letter co-signed by science and technology leaders and advisers from 19 countries. Publishers should enable free access to relevant publications and place them in public repositories, the letter says. (For a similar appeal related to COVID-19 research in March 2019 , science leaders noted PubMedCentral as one such repository.)

“Open access to all data and research is vital,” says Yale University epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, who points out that far less information on the outbreak exists compared with COVID-19 at the beginning of that pandemic. “We’re all scrambling to find information and we do not need roadblocks in our way.”

The letter was signed by representatives from Germany, Ghana, Singapore, and 16 other countries as well as the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors of the European Commission. The letter highlights the need for research results and data to be freely available to scientists and public health officials in low- and middle-income countries where there is often much less access to such information.

A similar call in March 2020 urged publishers to share research on COVID-19 and coronaviruses and allow scientists to post preprints on work they had submitted to the journals. Many journals, including Science , already provide free access to papers on emerging diseases because of their relevance to public health.

Recent important publications on monkeypox in The New England Journal of Medicine , The BMJ , and The Lancet have all been open access, notes Boghuma Titanji, a virologist at Emory University. “I hope that will continue. But I am aware that not every journal is doing this, so a call for others to follow suit is still relevant. [Monkeypox] sadly isn’t going away and there will be a lot of research published in coming months which will need to be widely accessible.”