Journal article
Immediate and longer-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific productivity in ecology and evolution
Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences, Vol.292(2045), 20250463
04/2025
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.0463
PMCID: PMC12015576
PMID: 40264350
Abstract
While the subject of much speculation, most quantitative assessments of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific productivity (i) are based on self-reported survey data, (ii) cover only a short period of time, (iii) may be biased by an increase in COVID-19-based research, (iv) cover a limited range of publishers or publishing outlets, and/or (v) cannot distinguish between changes in submission versus acceptance rates. Here we analyse submission and acceptance data from 2012 to 2023 for 25 journals in ecology and evolution, a field that has produced relatively few COVID-19-related articles. We show that although submission rates spiked when the pandemic began, they have been plummeting since. While there is variation in these patterns among countries and journals, the latter is unrelated to journal impact factor. The absence of a coinciding change in acceptance rates suggests that journals have not changed their quality standards to buffer these trends in productivity. Together, this demonstrates dynamic but long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific productivity, suggestive of fundamental changes to scientific practice and communication. A profitable direction for future research would be to build upon our results by targeting topic-, method- and system-related variation in productivity within and across journals.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Immediate and longer-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific productivity in ecology and evolution
- Creators
- Stephanie Meirmans - , ,Erik Postma - , , ,Maurine Neiman - , , ,Shalene Singh-Shepherd - , ,
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences, Vol.292(2045), 20250463
- DOI
- 10.1098/rspb.2025.0463
- PMID
- 40264350
- PMCID
- PMC12015576
- NLM abbreviation
- Proc Biol Sci
- ISSN
- 0962-8452
- eISSN
- 1471-2954
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Grant note
- Nordic Society, Society for the Study of Evolution
We would like to acknowledge the following societies and publishers for contributing data from their journals to the study: British Ecological Society, Ecological Society of America, The Nordic Society, Society for the Study of Evolution, John Wiley & Sons, Genetics Society; Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, European Society for Evolutionary Biology, Oxford University Press and Springer Nature. We would like to thank Gareth Jenkins and Joanna Kim (Wiley), Nicola Cook (Journal of Evolutionary Biology), Melinda Modrell (Evolution and Evolution Letters), Brandon Stuart Gaut (Molecular Biology and Evolution), Lorena Salgueiro Ferreno (Heredity) and Andrea Baier (British Ecological Society) who curated and supplied datasets. We are grateful to all the editors-in-chief of the participating journals who saw value in the study and agreed to participate, to Spencer Barrett for his valuable input and support, and to James Harris for his help with the specification and interpretation of GAMs.
- Alternative title
- Immediate and longer-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific productivity in ecology and evolution
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 04/2025
- Academic Unit
- Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies; Biology
- Record Identifier
- 9984813295902771
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