March 23, 2020
In the face of a global health crisis, data must be shared without restriction and barriers to collaboration must be removed. To facilitate free exchange of information among those at the frontlines of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) has issued a call for academic publishers to immediately make all research related to COVID-19 open-access and accessible to all.
Now is the time for potentially lifesaving data to be open and immediately available to all who are working together to contain this outbreak and to treat those patients and providers who have been infected. Many journals, including Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine, are already leading the way by lifting subscription requirements to access COVID-19 content, and it is vital that others follow suit.
The society journal, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC), has always made all articles freely available, and remains deeply committed to the open-access model of scientific publishing. As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, SITC encourages other journals to commit to making all research related to SARS-CoV-2 open-access, for the benefit of the global community.