Library Services support for COVID-19 research

Library Services provided important specifications used in the development of JamVent

As Imperial scientists make new discoveries in the fight against COVID-19, Library Services are proud to be able to provide ongoing support.

Examples of such contributions are provided by our subject librarians and Scholarly Communications Management Team.

The departments of Bioengineering and Surgery and Cancer recently developed the JamVent ventilator, a low-cost ventilator designed to help solve the problem of worldwide ventilator shortages. Ensuring the correct specification was critical to the design. Our librarians were able to contribute by tracking down hard to find standards which the researchers could then compare. Using this information, they were able to create a robust electronic design.

The Scholarly Communications Management Team has been supporting Imperial researchers to disseminate COVID-19 research in different forms. The statistical modelling reports from the Imperial College London COVID-19 Response Team, as well as reports and preprints from other Imperial authors, were published in Spiral, Imperial's repository. By using Spiral, research can be made available to readers immediately, avoiding the delay of article screening run by some preprint servers and will be permanently archived and identifiable.

As well as publishing research through the repository in the form of reports, we also ensure that research published in journals reaches the widest possible audience, from advising on open access options to ensuring permanent accessibility and reuse rights as well as helping authors follow journal sharing policies. At the time of writing, 100% of Imperial research output on the topic is freely available to read.

Whilst the contributions of Imperial research to the coronavirus crisis would be impossible to quantify in any metric, we have been able to identify some measures to indicate some aspects of the impact generated. Statistics from IRUS-UK demonstrate that COVID-19 publications from Spiral have been downloaded over 110,000 times; not accounting for the unknown numbers of readers who could have accessed the research in other formats. The reports published in Spiral are tracked by Altmetric, a database that searches for evidence of non-academic online interaction with research. Many of the reports have been directly referenced by global news outlets, discussed on social media and more, with limited reporting from Altmetric showing at least tens of thousands of mentions for one of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis’s reports.

Support for research data is also available, with COVID-19 specific data management advice for Imperial researchers in line with a recent statement from The Wellcome Trust and other funders published.   

To find out more about how Library Services can support you visit the library website or email us at library@imperial.ac.uk.