All of us are aware of the deadly Coronavirus pandemic and the total lockdown in many countries across the globe. We have been requested to work from home by our Governments. As a community of researchers, I would like to know the impact - work from home - has on individual researchers. I know that many of us have to use our laboratories for experiments without which we are paralyzed to proceed further.
What is your opinion??
1. Has the work from the home process increased our research ability to think? or
2. has this exercise hindered our research?
This depends on the field of the researcher if it is a scientific specialization that requires laboratories, etc., or if its specialization is human.
The first major in the case of writing for research is this experience is useful.
But be harmful in the practical research stage.
The human specialization will probably benefit more.
Thank you, Rocky, for the honest response!
Appreciate it!
Sir, I am finding it difficult to concentrate in work (initial days) as other responsibilities interfering to a great extent. The home atmosphere is totally different from office and the present condition ( news, WhatsApp msg etc) causes a lot of anxiety. I think it will take some time to cope up with the situation.
Usually, I love working from home and I am highly productive, but under such tensing and unpredictable situation, this is next to impossible concentrating on anything. I am even not able to manage to do some stupid job like referencing and formatting. Every morning I am thinking to start but I have a strong tendency to watch the news update about COVID-19 and this is again distracting my concentration. I am not sure if we can compare this situation of usual "work from home" with this lockdown "work from home" scenario. I also feel that even if I could go to office, I do not know if I will be able to concentrate either. The question is of life and death and there will be a strong impact on our economy. All these things are not really in favour of writing papers under the current crisis. I hope next few weeks I can probably try harder to work. Thanks.
Thank you so much Dr Ganguly, Dr Chanda and Dr Biswas for your views. Highly appreciated!
Deepak Samuel Vijay Kumar that depends, the researcher who needs labs can't do their works. but for others, it's the only the best time to conducting more research.
I always loved to work at home. In office, I cannot concentrate. My big library is mostly at home (still there are many undigitazed books). But my work does not require lab experiments, etc., so, it's anyway easier for me than for experimental scientists. Museum collections are not temporarily available but hopefully in a month or so I can visit there.
Sir, when I came to know that there will be a lock down for 21 days, I thought it will be productive and can complete all the pending research and review assignments. But as the days are passing, I can see no productivity in any way. Its not usual for me to work from home and may be its the first ever in my life till now. I personally feel this is not fetching me any good professionally rather increasing the pressure, that I am wasting lot of time with zero productivity or contribution.
More and more private companies suggest to work at home, prior to coronovirus outbreak.
You are right Dr Lutaenko. The IT companies at Chennai India asked its employees to woek from home almost a week before the lockdown was announced in India
It is a new kind of experience and it is difficulty stay inside home all the day and working at home. But whenever new conditions/environmental conditions are imposed on animals /humans normally adaptations will be taken place. Which leads to arisen of new traits/behaviors/characters /learning for better survival.
A research particularly scientific based is definitely laboratory oriented. Such research needs laboratory equipment, sometimes special ones, chemicals or biological specimens which cannot be obtained at home. But nowadays, as we are facing a global problem, COVID-19 infection, for personal and national safety and security we have to do what we are told to do. So, why should we take the risk to go to the laboratory and not stay at home and do studies related with the research, such as reviewing research articles, computing, analyzing, plotting etc.
Deepak Samuel Vijay Kumar
It has hugely increased. In fact we shud imbibe a new culture of research with greater autonomy to researchers with flexible timing by having adequate monitoring mechanism. Sooner done the better.
Much safe and work can be done very comfortably --- but field survey and Environmentalists can not carry out -----work from home
Dear Abhijt sir,
thank you for your comment. As most of them have pointed out, one of the major drawbacks is conducting fieldwork.
Kind regards
Deepak
As a theoretical and computational physicist, I can throttle my research in this days of Quarantine. Lacking of field datasets may cause slacken in validating the works, but research still sustains as more journals are expecting papers from theoretical researchers. This may be the opportunity to wind up all pending works in research.
The original research like experiments or field base research work is not possible from home but review work like diversity of a particular group of animal for a specific region , on the basis of previously published research paper can be done from home. I have published such type of paper very recently on 23.07.2020 in Uttar Pradesh Journal of Zoology, vol.41, issue-9. So, we can do this type of work from home very easily.
work from home will help all of us to perform to some extent but not fully. whereas the field oriented research will hamper drastically if Covid-19 situation is not going to be controlled.
During COVID-19 lock down, being at home, it is a good opportunity to write up some research articles as well as reviewing thesis write ups of postgraduate research students. On the other hand, practical research works both in the field and laboratory are greatly hampered.
1. Has the work from the home process increased our research ability? My personal and honest view, definitely!
Research instruments of high value during this age of COVID-19 include mass surveys of trends that are done fully online. At the same time, if you're a QUAL focussed researcher like myself, 'Netnography' data are extremely useful when we have to physically distance ourselves from our research participants.
Yes of course it increased our research ability.As you pointed out lock down totally locked our laboratories and research.
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