![]() ![]() More recently, Hook and Porter have found some early evidence of ‘covidisation’ of academic research, with research grants and output diverted to COVID-19 research in 2020. Fraser and coworker found that COVID-19 preprints received more attention and citations than non-COVID-19 preprints. On a different ground, Shan and colleagues found that non-COVID-19-related articles decreased as COVID-19-related articles increased in top clinical research journals. Particularly, the COVID-19 outbreak took a tall on women and early-career scientists. As a consequence, clinical researchers have been impaired by reduced access to healthcare research infrastructures. According to Evaluate Pharma, clinical trials were one of the pandemic’s first casualties, with a record number of 160 studies suspended for reasons related to COVID-19 in April 2020 reporting a total of 1,200 trials suspended as of July 2020. Despite this undeniable success, there is a rising concern about the negative consequences of COVID-19 on clinical trial research, with many projects being postponed. Thanks to the rapid mobilization of the world scientific community, COVID-19 vaccines have been developed in record time. Similarly, the number of clinical trials related to COVID-19 prophylaxis and treatments skyrocketed. In the first three months after the pandemic, the number of scientific papers about COVID-19 was fivefold the number of articles on H1N1 swine influenza. The COVID-19 pandemic has mobilized the world scientific community in 2020, especially in the life sciences. ![]() Note that since COVID-19 publications may have been fast-tracked, the sudden surge in COVID-19 publications might be driven by editorial policy. Moreover, COVID-19 has displaced clinical trial publications (-24%) and diverted grants from research areas not closely related to COVID-19. The publication weighted impact has an even more pronounced negative effect (-16% to -19%). We find that COVID-19-related MeSH terms have experienced a 6.5 fold increase in output on average, while publications on unrelated MeSH terms dropped by 10 to 12%. We estimate through a difference-in-differences approach the impact of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific production using the PubMed database (3.6 Million research papers). In this paper, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on world scientific production in the life sciences and find indications that the usage of medical subject headings (MeSH) has changed following the outbreak. However, research in many fields not directly related to the pandemic has been displaced. On the one side, public and private incentives have been put in place to promptly allocate resources toward research areas strictly related to the COVID-19 emergency. The COVID-19 outbreak has posed an unprecedented challenge to humanity and science. ![]()
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