As many researchers, university professors and graduate students are staying home for long time. Do you think that the amount of research will be more than usual? Also, the peer review process for journals will speed up resulting in more publication ?
Any new problems, solutions and inventions have direct impact on mankind. researchers are always looking for noble works, inventions and issues relating to mankind. 2020 has been all of COVID-19, its devastating human infection, suffering and deaths. Many of us were unknown to lockdown, quarantine, isolation like this before.
Many researchers are studying about COVID-19 hovering around their own specialization. Some are involved in lab studies, some on medicine/vaccine invention, ocular hazards, general medical problems, ENT, Dermatology, Dental, and so on.
These people have been supported with time as well. Staying home in lockdown they can spend plenty of times on researches. And this means positive impact on researches done around COVID-19. Other papers are having less attention and are getting time extension for peer reviews and acceptance for publication because almost all researchers, reviewers and journals are giving higher priority to COVID-19 related issues, which, I think is expectable and correctly done.
This depends on what people are busy on under COVID-19.
In many different health-care settings, medical people, no matter allied health or paramedics, all are busy at the front-line to fight against the exponential increase in health-care demand by the populations. They work endless in the ward, without time to eat and toilet, to save up the PPE and face-mask.
People not working at the front-line may have more time to tidy up their research, yet many studies recruitment subject cannot attend the follow-up, and makes the ongoing research chaotic.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Research_under_COVID
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Should_we_treat_COVID-19_as_a_confounding_in_currently_conducted_research
For peer review process, I think other than researcher, the administrative process might be delayed with the close down of city in scale.
A phenomenal amount of research has already been initiated. Although clinicians are engaged on the frontline. Many other specialists and researchers are pooling their efforts to combat this disease.
I expect a paradigm shift in our understanding of viral disease and its treatment.
Yes. For years it has been recognised that a pandemic would eventually hit the global population. Now it has actually happened research will increase in this area and the next one might be far less severe as a result.
Yes. Not because the researchers of some areas are home but due to the transforming effects of the pandemic. I believe that this period will become a landmark with effects on different research levels. Considering journalism, we are already verifying some effects, at least in certain markets: more news consumption, less advertisement investment, journalists in lay off, some traditional papers in trouble...
IMMEDIATE NEED
Obviously there is a pressing need for vaccine and treatment R&D, and there is also a need for longer term research in understanding viral/cellular interaction mechanisms at play, as well as Health Policy, and Social Policy (how can you isolate in shared apartments where no separation between individuals is available...).
DISRUPTIVE NEED for life after Covid19 "stay at home"
Now there may be a lot of other indirectly related areas where research can be boosted, because funding organisations now understand the need for it:
-(i) Social distancing
how do you track location and proximity of people without infringing privacy? How do you balance Society's interests with individuals' interest (an example of this tension has been the max-1-child per family rule in China, in the past: individuals wanted more children, society wanted less).
-(ii) Remote learning
Schools have been shut down. How can school programmes, Education, University, as programmes and exams, be redesigned to be more robust to switches between online and face to face learning/testing knowledge and abilities?
-(iii) Remote work and in-site work
The digital transformation had long term plans, and Covid19 forced the pace of transformation to get an order of magnitude higher.
-(iv) Artificial Intelligence and more prosaically Automation
How to limit human exposure, by using machines and automated processes wherever possible?
We have seen drones patrolling parks, to save the health and time of police needed elsewhere. Oh... but it's "big brother society"? Then comes the balance between Social efficiency and individual human acceptability (mentioned above on privacy vs tracking).
-(v) Localised production and local economic autonomy
We have seen questions raised about the global economy and its remote production strategy. The issue became acute when protection masks paid by one country were seized by an other one, as in the old stories of pirats and corsaries (the corsary is a pirat with a national flag in his hand making him "a good guy" only in the country of such flag, but the job is the same).
The question was also asked, why do such basic supplies have to come from far away, can't we manufacture them locally?
-(vi) Economics of commons versus competitive economics
This is more broadly the issue of State versus Markets. We have seen the State support the citizens, but for long the State had supported the citizens less and less and privatised its traditional missions. We had reached a point not dissimilar to Italy in the late Middle Age, in many parts of the world, where states were cities and each hired private armies of mercenaries (privatisation: Market-led) instead of having a state army. Now is the time for analysis, scenarios, for the reconstruction of the Economy after the Covid19 crisis. What belongs to common management (State run) and what belongs to Markets (companies competing, driven by legitimate profit and wealth creation, leading to well being hopefully).
-(vii) Saving the Planet
Do we need Covid19 to breath clean air (if we except the viral elements it may have locally at very short distance and during very short times)?
How could a slowing of carbon production be organised in time and space?
-(viii) The future of travel
So many people have lost their jobs in travel and related industries.
How could the travel of the future be designed to preserve health, well-being, be affordable, and respect the planet?
The simple answer has been "stay at home", but it's only a temporary answer
Hope the above list is of use. Let me know...
Yes, researchers are at home more, but because so many of them are teachers and are having to transform so many classes on short notice, there may not be much research work done right now.
Plus think about the sciences, where biologists may be losing their very important research specimens through lack of attention. I heard of one biologist who said he is losing his life's research through not being able to work in his lab. We may see that research suffers in some fields.
Creo que los científicos e investigadores tuvieron que romper con la lógica de publicación en papers , ya que la propia dinámica de la propagación del virus, impuso que fuesen requeridos a responder de manera casi instantánea acerca de la crisis social, simbólica,sanitaria y económica en la que estamos inmersos.
Yes, of course, because it is a global phenomenon that affected all aspects of life and motivated researchers in their various fields to research it Mostafa Rashdan
Aunque el impacto negativo en lo económico si traerá y conlleva a investigar sobre el impacto en otros ordenes de caracter social y su impacto
Certainly, it has led to an increase in scientific interests and research in areas related to the impact and impact of the virus on it Mostafa Rashdan
Sin duda desde muchos enfoque por cuánto afectó todos los órdenes creo hay unos que deben ser privilegiados como la bioética, el desmantelamiento del militarismo. la medicina.
It depends on what type of research are we talking about here. With scarcity of personal protective equipments and life support equipment like ventilators in hospital , the number of research is increasing or will be increasing for developing low cost and mass production of these equipments in industrial and engineering aspects. So will increase the number of research in the field of pharmaceutical and biochemistry for developing vaccine or any other form of medication for COVID-19.
In the contrary as most of the researcher are stuck at home , labs and universities are closed all other areas of research are impacted negatively. The studies carrying out human subjects or any other surveys are being physically impossible to conduct.
As it is.. Covid 19 has Saturated every faculty of medicine. There are more preprints and pending researchers than ever before.
Besides the impact that Covid 19 has on the mental wellbeing will highly affect the research ithink. Personally, I have dropped 3 projects for this year already. 2 of them prospective studies. 1 literature review..
Yes, the ethical committee advised stopping all on-going prospective studies. retrospective studies can be conducted depending upon the feasibility of assessing files, easy for EMR users.
Yes, it will. Considering the fact that people will have an ample of time to finish up with some papers being written and possibly start some new ones. Especially those who have data already or normally use secondary data. Although, depending on prevalent rate of COVID-19 pandemic in their communities. Therefore, amount of research output will be higher at this period.
On the possibility of fast peer review of papers submitted to journals, I think the process will be delayed or slow. This is because many researchers are either busy by taking the advantages of the period or are being affected by epidemic itself. But, papers on COVID-19 submitted to journals are more likely to have fast peer review process than any other papers not on the pandemic. This may be attributed to the fact that COVID-19 is ongoing and all stakeholders are eager to find a permanent solution to it. Hence, papers discussing COVID-19 will enjoy fast tracking in the process of peer review.
My humble submission!
It has opened up great avenues of research because of the disruption.
While it is true that the COVID-19 lockdown period has provided ample free time for researchers to conduct research, so many factors may not make it a straight forward ambition. For instance, for female researchers who are the care givers of the period, with children also forced out of school, it may be difficult to have the time and the psychological wherewithal to carry out research at this time.
Any new problems, solutions and inventions have direct impact on mankind. researchers are always looking for noble works, inventions and issues relating to mankind. 2020 has been all of COVID-19, its devastating human infection, suffering and deaths. Many of us were unknown to lockdown, quarantine, isolation like this before.
Many researchers are studying about COVID-19 hovering around their own specialization. Some are involved in lab studies, some on medicine/vaccine invention, ocular hazards, general medical problems, ENT, Dermatology, Dental, and so on.
These people have been supported with time as well. Staying home in lockdown they can spend plenty of times on researches. And this means positive impact on researches done around COVID-19. Other papers are having less attention and are getting time extension for peer reviews and acceptance for publication because almost all researchers, reviewers and journals are giving higher priority to COVID-19 related issues, which, I think is expectable and correctly done.
COVID-19 has a positive impact on the amount of research in the are of pathology and medical fields in 2020 . However , has a negative effect on other areas of research. The Scientists would come together for face to face interaction due to spread up of Corona-19 virus.
Definitely yes as this virus is a burning issue these days which has had multiple manifestations and has become a global health threat. Primarily being a respiratory tract infection with extra-respiratory manifestations, including cardiac, gastrointestinal, hepatic, renal, neurological, olfactory, gustatory, ocular, cutaneous and haematological symptoms. Much ongoing research is held for this newly introduced fatal virus and scientist all over the world are working mainly on finding its way out as vaccine which is yet to come. The main concern for hindrances carrying out research these days is fear of the virus getting contaminated to researchers itself and the lack of proper Personal protective equipment to work on safe facilities.
Definitely not. Staying at home is one thing and being at mental peace in another thing. You cant be productive until you are at mental well being. Due to lockdown, the OPD and OT attendence is decreasing and hence the ongoing studies are also being slowed down.
To my opinion, covid-19 and associated research will get priority as it is need based. However, research in other fields/areas is likely to suffer due to covid-19 associated factors including fund constraint.
Thank you all for your valuable input to this discussion. I think as wd go the situation will get more clear regarding the impact of Covid 19 on research
Dear Dr. Mostafa Rashdan,
In the amid of this covid-19 pandemic, first time I embedded with RG Q &A section. Wishes the best.
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