“Beyond Covid-19”: call for participation

Helping to better understand the major changes that societies are experiencing because of the Covid-19 pandemic is the aim of Beyond Covid-19, an open access reference library of humanities and social sciences research. The project is part of the OPERAS European infrastructure, coordinated by OpenEdition and Huma-Num. A call for participation is open to researchers who wish to contribute to the development of this library.

About Beyond Covid-19

Beyond Covid-19 is an open access reference library of humanities and social sciences research to support the better understanding of the major changes that societies around the world are experiencing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Beyond Covid-19 accumulates reading notes which summarize in an accessible way the content of selected publications and further establish their relevance in the current context. The open access reference library is complemented by a Zotero library where bibliographic references of selected publications are stored. 

The open access reference library is open to contributions from the entire social sciences and humanities research community and is managed by the OPERAS coordination team and volunteers.

Why Beyond Covid-19?

The pandemic currently affecting European societies and those around the world is being dealt with primarily from a health perspective. But we know that a health crisis at this scale is accompanied by difficulties and major challenges of all kinds: economical, political, social and cultural, that will lead to changes in our society itself…

In this context, research in the humanities and social sciences can help societies to better understand the transformations they are undergoing, to cope with them and to prepare for the future. However, the results of such research must be accessible in all senses of the word. The results should be open access, but they must also be selected, contextualized, explained and brought to the attention of those who are likely to use them: journalists, teachers, social workers, decision makers of all kinds and all citizens wishing to engage.

We, therefore, propose to build together an open and annotated library of human and social science publications in open access. The first step is to select validated publications that can help us better understand the current situation. By “validated publications” we mean first of all books and journal articles that have undergone a peer review process. Exceptionally, this scope may be extended to academic research notebooks, provided they are based on research work and are not opinion forums. On this basis, we propose to feed a library that gathers these references and to highlight each of these references with a reading note published on a dedicated research notebook on the Hypotheses platform.  

Our objective is, therefore, not to select publications that deal directly with the COVID-19 pandemic, but to choose those that can help us understand the situation, because they deal either with similar cases (such as past epidemics), or with themes important to the situation (such as states of exception, economic depressions, the virtualization of social and professional relations, the recent evolution of health systems and the resilience of societies in times of crisis). This selection would be accompanied by a note explaining the importance of those publications to a wider audience.

How can you contribute?

Publications and reading notes can be submitted via a simple and straightforward process, not involving multiple validation steps.

Contribute to Beyond Covid-19

Contact: covid19[at]operas-eu.org