Pandemic dented researcher productivity, mental health

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously dented the productivity and mental health of researchers, according to two studies that surveyed scientists in Europe and the United States, although researchers may be showing early signs of recovery from the disruptions, writes Dyani Lewis for Nature.

The full impact of the pandemic could take years to be felt across academia, and researchers studying the problem warn that measures are urgently needed to support the scientists most acutely affected by disruptions, especially women, parents of young children and people of colour.

“The worst may be yet to come,” says network-science researcher Dashun Wang at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who led a study that involved two polls of a total of nearly 7,000 principal investigators, conducted nine months apart.
Full report on the Nature site