Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on work capacities of researchers: An overlooked problem

Ferdinando D’Amico, Didier Mainard, Cedric Baumann and Laurent Peyrin-Biroulet*

Background: The new coronavirus pandemic has substantially changed research and teaching activities. The aim of our survey was to investigate the impact of the current health emergency on teaching and research activities, focusing on the perspectives of research unit members.

Methods: This was an anonymous web-survey conducted between April 29 and May 6, 2020. All members of the center of Biology, Medicine, and Health sciences (BMS) of the Lorraine University were invited to participate in this survey through collective e-mails.

Results: Eighty-three subjects participated in our survey. Research activities were totally (86.8%) or partially (75.9%) stopped in most centers and most of respondents were working from home occasionally (15.7%) or every day (78.3%). The main activity during lockdown was writing original articles from already collected data (39.8%). More than a third of the respondents (39.7%) reported remarkable reduction in their work. Similarly, most of conferences (82%) and internships (73.3%) were canceled and graduation of students were postponed in 58.8% of cases. 

Conclusions: Work from home was a valid alternative to workplace activities during the pandemic. Further studies are needed to evaluate the long-term effects of this new approach on quality of research and teaching.

Keywords:

Published on: May 21, 2021 Pages: 14-19

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/jvi.000040
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