section_path: Information dissemination
section_name: Information dissemination
paragraph_text: Information dissemination
  
  Some news organisations removed their online paywalls for some or all of their pandemic-related articles and posts. Many scientific publishers provided pandemic-related journal articles to the public free of charge as part of the National Institutes of Health's COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Initiative. According to one estimate from researchers at the University of Rome, 89.5% of COVID-19-related papers were open access, compared to an average of 48.8% for the ten most deadly human diseases. The share of papers published on preprint servers prior to peer review increased dramatically.
  
  During the pandemic, Web GIS technology was leveraged to provide up to date visualizations of data related to the pandemic with the public. Employing this technology, the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard served as the first global visualization of COVID-19 data, which established it as the default method for government agencies to dissemeniate relevant spatial information. These dashboards were described by Jonathan Everts as "the most striking cultural artefact of the current coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic," and during the pandemic every state government in the United States maintained one.