Equity in science education
Equity in education refers to equitable distribution of educational resources and emphasizes both equity in opportunities and equity in educational outcome (Opheim, 2004). While the topic of equity in education is very broad and beyond the scope of this work, examples of online science education activities during COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in a more widespread access to education material, which would have been otherwise limited to members of one institution. For example, the Harvard University Microbial Sciences Initiative organised the annual symposium online and open to everyone from around the world or the Microbiome Data Congress initially planned to be held in Toronto moved online, considerably increasing the participation above expectations. Interestingly, many pay-walled publications are now freely available such as like Oxford University Press, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), and MIT Press eBooks (Lowrie). While these are commendable activities, we need to ensure continued accessibility to the scientific body of knowledge beyond the COVID-19 pandemics.