How we planned for a pandemic

This isn’t a post about what we’re doing in response to COVID-19. Instead, we’re sharing how we planned to respond as an act of transparency to our community. It’s also an opportunity to get feedback, and we hope that it’s something that others can use to guide their thinking.

We were extraordinarily lucky to be well suited to a world with COVID-19. Since day one, we’ve been a small remote team, and we’ve previously written and released plans to deal with the unforeseen. Regardless, we got to work planning, not only to keep running, but to understand what the new circumstances meant for our team (and what they didn’t).

After a week of worrying, writing, and discussing (as a team and with friends), we threw our existing plan out the window in favor of a new one. That meant we responded by releasing shareyourpaper.org, building RSCVD.org alongside IFLA, keeping openaccessbutton.org stable for new users, and supporting our teams experimental side projects, like covidpapers.com. Maybe, and more importantly, it lowered our stress levels and helped us to look after our team.

Thank you to the Arcadia Fund for supporting this initiative and all our other work.