Research and practices to reach a sustainable and healthy economic and social recovery post COVID-19 - An Invitation from Italy

PASCAL subscribers are invited to contribute to a new initiative being coordinated by the Form@re [2] Journal [2] at the University of Florence in Italy concerning post-COVID-19 recovery. In section 6 below you will read about the contexts for focus, and in sections 7 and 8, how you can play a role. 

At this point, if you are interested in playing a role as part of an International Research Team or Promoter, please contact me, Professor Paolo Federighi <[email protected] [3]>

1. In some months, hopefully a few months, reconstruction in the first instance and recovery as a second step will start worldwide.
2. In the past several crisis and wars were followed by – often epochal - redefinition processes of conditions and ways of living of citizens.
3. Replanning and redesign processes of life in our cities and territories are something both institutions and citizens are concerned about. Nonetheless, in order to be successful and be based on knowledgeable and illuminated decisions, such processes have to be supported by research activities and findings.
4. The pandemic has shown that the main problems were caused by the lack of preparation of services as well as infrastructures of any kind, but also by the difficulties for citizens to understand what was happening around them and to adopt individual behaviours in workplaces, public spaces, and services.
5. Financial incentives and emergency management can mitigate pain and instill hope. But it will not be enough in order to ensure a quick exit from economic and social recession and the downturn.
6. In order to take on reconstruction and then recovery, more reinforced management of both interdependencies among all populations in the world and their living conditions is necessary. More specifically, decision-makers, as well as professionals, will benefit from a set of knowledge and experiences that have been accumulated by the research, as these will help them in facing new challenges in the diverse contexts they work and live in: 

• cities and local communities have to face the community engagement challenge and the diffusion of sustainable services and lifestyles. Cities and local communities are required to identify learning devices that can promote and disseminate the culture of economic and social recovery;
• in cities and workplaces, it will be necessary to develop levels of safety and security culture among citizens as well as among health workers;
• within workplaces – including manufacturing and, much more challenging and complex, services – it will be necessary to deal with any kind of crisis that is connected to human resources management, and also to the management and production of new knowledge about markets and products by all kinds of workers as this is the knowledge that is needed to cope with recovery;
• the justice system and in particular the penitentiary system need to be revised in order to change the inconsistencies that have emerged during the pandemic. Specifically, it has not been adequate to manage re-educational activities and pathways for inmates under security conditions both for penitentiary staff and citizens; 
• education and training systems will be no longer places of infection and disease, but will become open systems where youngsters and adults are trained not only in classrooms;
• communication systems and social networks showed their potential in terms of supporting dialogue, but also persuading people, sustaining productive activities and monitoring by institutions. New challenges are related to the defence of privacy and the right of reply by the civil society;
• new possibilities to access and use cultural consumption were explored trying to overcome cultural barriers that isolate cultural infrastructures from the wider public;
• networks among families, associations, and friends have been shown to be key and crucial for the educational survival of youngsters and adults. Reinforcement and increase of the quality of networks can be the most effective answer to the challenges of the future;
• migration management may represent the most complex challenge given the impact Covid-19 can have on migration flows,  and the integration of migrants into the labour market where demand is and will be weak;
• the history of pandemic and related lessons learned can provide a pointer for facing the future. 

7. Form@re Journal [2] - Open journal for Networked Learning wants to provide its own tools and organisation in order to collect in one Dossier the existing know-how on Covid-19 management. We propose that researchers produce a Dossier where they can collect all kinds of contributions dealing with COVID-19 management from different perspectives and disciplines. The Dossier will be open from now until December 2020. It will guarantee the prompt publication of resources collected (texts, videos, slides). Resources will be organised for each of the items listed above. Moreover, for each of the contexts, a research team will be set up in charge of validation and editing each of the resources submitted.
8. Researchers and Authors will be encouraged to publish the preprint version of their contributions (of any kind as stated above) under the dedicated section of the Form@re Journal web site. Thus resources will be shared and promoted quickly. The scientific review of the pre-print versions will be ready shortly thanks to the Form@re Editorial Team that will provide Authors and Researchers with prompt feedback before publication. Authors and Researchers will submit their contributions in the “DOSSIER” section of the online Journal. The digital platform will be the only way for publication. Instructions are available for everybody who is interested in submitting proposals for publication at this link [4]
9. Every preprint document will be assigned a DOI code and descriptive metadata so as to make them immediately available and ready for download and quotation.
10. Once the Dossier will be closed, contributions that are published as preprint versions will be reviewed once more (single-blind review) and published in the final version. So preprint versions can be amended and updated until the publication of the whole Dossier. The DOI code will not change until the final registration of the publication record.
11. Languages: contributions can be submitted in all languages and possibly in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish always equipped with an English abstract and keywords (no more than five).    

Board

Executive Committee:

Francesco De Maria (University of Firenze)

Giovanna Del Gobbo (University of Firenze)

Paolo Federighi (Director of the Form@re. Open Journal for Networked Learning Journal)

Laura Menichetti (University of Firenze)

Francesca Torlone (University of Siena)

A list of the International Research Team and Promoters will be confirmed shortly.