Coronavirus Open Research Dataset

One of the few silver linings during the COVID-19 situation has been the frequent examples of people pulling together in a time of crisis. Whether it’s quarantined Italian neighborhoods joining together in song from their balconies, or the rise of caremongering in Canada, it’s enough to make you completely forget about the toilet paper hoarders and conspiracy theorists.

Here’s another example to further confirm your faith in humanity. Yesterday, researchers and leaders from the Allen Institute for AI, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Microsoft, and the National Library of Medicine together released the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset.

Instead of working separately on proprietary solutions, or hiding their research behind paywalls, the teams listed above partnered to create and distribute a publicly available dataset. With over 29,000 scholarly articles, it’s an effort to create a unified resource that will help researchers and accelerate our common understanding of the coronavirus and COVID-19. Because the faster we understand what we’re dealing with, the faster we can beat it.

And the best thing about the dataset? It’s machine readable which opens it up to machine analysis and data mining. If there was ever a prime use for artificial intelligence, this is it.

If you’re a budding data scientist stuck at home wondering how you can help, here’s your opportunity. Analyze this!