COVID. A New Journal to Affirm the Role of Science between Communication and Social Responsibility

The COVID-19 pandemic, a global health, economic, and social tsunami, has profoundly changed the relationship between science and public opinion [1].

The urgency to feed insatiable and unstoppable information hunger has pushed the work of many researchers, their publications, and their collaborations into the spotlight, often prematurely.

The role of the scientist in society has profoundly changed over the last year. Scientists are required to be present, to explain, to offer turnkey solutions, to be advisers and compasses together for both the private citizen and their governing bodies. In the current information society, schemes and rules often change. Pressed or pushed by the need to attract the attention of institutions, scientists speak, are engaged, have their own publicity, and communicate their research without filters, often with the use of prepackaged press releases—good or bad—from the structures to which they belong.

The rapid access to scientific literature through the preprint servers, the free access to content that in the past was behind paywalls, together with the amplification and multiplication system offered by the social media platforms, has marked a constant increase in the general public’s attention towards medical research. All of these factors expose researchers and publishers to an enormous responsibility: to inform without disorienting and to communicate to motivate, raise awareness and guide choices and investments [2].

The issue at stake is of vital importance: it is fundamental. The effects on the generations to come are scarcely measurable. This is demonstrated every day by the questions that the public asks scientists: Which vaccine is best to get? What good is the vaccine if it does not work with the variants? Have we become human guinea pigs for multinationals? Here, with the journal COVID [3], we believe that it is worth accepting works of great scientific interest but also of great interest to the general public who are waiting for quality scientific information and not fake news.

We will likely come out of this pandemic not because of a single drug or protein, but thanks to the ability to identify personalized therapeutic paths that will help us understand and adequately treat the most dangerous extremes that this disease presents: severe symptomatic manifestations.

The purpose of a new scientific journal is not only to make new knowledge known, but also to stimulate its use for the benefit of all sectors of society. In a delicate intertwining of social balances, in a stormy sea where every voice generates a wave, the bar must be kept straight. Science does not have to be scary, but ignorance must.