How Has the Zika Virus Pandemic Changed How Researchers Share Data?

David A. Schwartz, MD, MS Hyg, FCAP, clinical professor of pathology at Medical College of Georgia, explains how the Zika virus pandemic has brought about a new form of research sharing.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“This outbreak, [the Zika virus] pandemic, in my experience, has been very unusual, because investigators all over the world, like at this [Conference], have been in very close collaboration with one another. We’ve been sharing results freely [and] we’ve even been sharing unpublished results, which is a fairly new phenomenon, in my experience.

I’m an editor of medical journals, and medical journals have been doing everything they can to rapidly publish the results of investigators, like myself and my colleagues, and to make them available, largely free-of-charge on the internet.

For instance, some of the data that I’m talking about, and data from my colleagues and people who I’m very familiar with, have recently [been] published in this journal. This is the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine that’s published by the College of American Pathologists. This is actually the first peer-reviewed journal that is largely devoted to the subject of the Zika virus. I happened to have edited this issue, and so, these articles were published very quickly after they were submitted to me as the editor.

We’re trying to get this information out to investigators around the world as quickly as possible, so that it helps them design further studies to understand the Zika virus.”