Mitigating losses: How science diplomacy can address the impact of COVID-19 on early career researchers

Abstract

Despite the failures to tackle early coordinated responses at national and multinational levels, the global emergence of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic promoted unprecedented actions on the science-policy, science-communication, and science-diplomacy interfaces worldwide. With varying degrees of success, various actions within the realm of science diplomacy have accompanied the creation of knowledge related to COVID-19 through international collaboration. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill and also drew attention to the genuine need for science diplomacy. This pandemic highlighted the need of training opportunities in the interface of policy and diplomacy for researchers to be able to get grips on emerging health issues. Moreover, it is necessary to create specific platforms for experts to interact with decision-makers at the national and international levels, especially in the Global South. This crisis inevitably shifted the focus on scientific areas that directly address the pandemic response (epidemiology, public health, virology, immunology, pharmacology, human behavioral research, economics, among others). At the same time, some areas not related to the pandemic response have been slowed down due to inevitable physical and social restrictions that impacted certain aspects of the academic life. This does not only relate to daily access to the lab, scientific collections, or field sites, but also associates with furloughed employees and reduced funding to non-COVID-19-related research. Moreover, during the pandemic, women and (usually young) scientists with children have reduced their research efforts substantially, with future implications still difficult to quantify. While some researchers might have harnessed telecommuting and lockdown periods to focus on data analysis and publication writing, gender bias still exists. The slight increase in publications with pre-acquired data may still be followed by an immediate future impacted by the lack of data acquisition during the pandemic. These issues may create long-term effects due to reduced capacity for generating pre-requisite data for securing new funding, termination of research, reduced networking opportunities, restrictions to international collaborations, collectively having a negative impact on other disciplines. While most established researchers may not be affected hardly by the above-mentioned effects, early career researchers (ECRs), represent a more vulnerable population. ECRs usually refer to PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and scientists who have 10 years or less of experience after the doctoral degree, although there is some flexibility in this definition. Due to their career stage, ECRs often face job precarity, lack of available opportunities, low funding, and job insecurity (e.g., untenured positions and temporary contract employees). These problems are augmented by the COVID-19 pandemic and may be experienced more in countries with a developing scientific system. The impact could be higher for countries that are developing their research environment, are dependent on training their ECRs and conducting experiments abroad through international exchanges programs, which have been stopped due to the pandemic. Given these unprecedented times, it has been observed that international scientific organizations, policy-makers, scientific communities, and private stakeholders have strengthened their collaborations in response to the pandemic. We, as ECRs, strongly believe that science diplomacy can make a difference in addressing the challenges (emanated or amplified by the current pandemic) that ECRs would face inside and outside academia. Here we present such challenges, and discuss how the Global Young Academy (GYA), an independent organization of early to mid-career researchers across all disciplines and countries, has provided a platform for ECRs to practice science diplomacy, science advice, and science communication. The former by serving as a bridge between ECRs and governments, the second by hearing the voices of young researchers when enacting policies, and the latter by informing societies about the benefits of scientific research. Motivated by the described examples, we recommend measures for scientists, funding agencies, and international organizations to foster international collaboration in these unparallel times.