Kavli Affiliate: Jia Liu
| First 5 Authors: Vanessa Böhm, Jia Liu, , ,
| Summary:
We study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on astronomy using public
records of astronomical publications. We show that COVID-19 has had both
positive and negative impacts on research in astronomy. We find that the
overall output of the field, measured by the yearly paper count, has increased.
This is mainly driven by boosted individual productivity seen across most
countries, possibly the result of cultural and technological changes in the
scientific community during COVID. However, a decreasing number of incoming new
researchers is seen in most of the countries we studied, indicating larger
barriers for new researchers to enter the field or for junior researchers to
complete their first project during COVID. Unfortunately, the overall
improvement in productivity seen in the field is not equally shared by female
astronomers. By fraction, fewer papers are written by women and fewer women are
among incoming new researchers in most countries. Even though female
astronomers also became more productive during COVID, the level of improvement
is smaller than for men. Pre-COVID, female astronomers in the Netherlands,
Australia, Switzerland were equally as or even more productive than their male
colleagues. During COVID, no single country’s female astronomers were able to
be more productive than their male colleagues on average.
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