Wigginton, N. S., Cunningham, R. M., Katz, R. H., Lidstrom, M. E., Moler, K. A., Wirtz, D., & Zuber, M. T. (2020). Moving academic research forward during COVID-19. Science, 368(6496), 1190-1192. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc5599

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1. The pandemic has caused about 30% decrease in GDP in the USA (Azoulay, P., & Jones, B. (2020))
2. About 80% of on-site researching was canceled because of social distancing(Wigginton 2020)
3. Scientists and researchers are frustrated with reviewing literature during the pandemic.
4. Wildlife in Africa is threatened as a result of consequential financial problems of lower tourism spending and donor funding (Lindsey 2020).
5. Economical and financial problems may improve exposure to and consumption of wild animals, and increase future pandemic risks (Di Marco 2020)
6. Food Security. "COVID-19-related hunger may
well kill more people than direct infection."(Food2020 Nature)
7. Psychosocial health and obesity epidemic as a side effect of lockdown during pandemic is also apprised(Clemmensen 2020 Nature).

Importance of technical solutions to fight against COVID-19

Azoulay, P., & Jones, B. (2020). Beat COVID-19 through innovation.

Beat COVID-19 through innovation

Di Marco, M., Baker, M. L., Daszak, P., De Barro, P., Eskew, E. A., Godde, C. M., ... & Karesh, W. B. (2020). Opinion: Sustainable development must account for pandemic risk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(8), 3888-3892. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2001655117

Opinion: Sustainable development must account for pandemic risk

Food in a time of COVID-19. Nat. Plants 6, 429 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-020-0682-7

Food in a time of COVID-19

Clemmensen, C., Petersen, M. B., & Sørensen, T. I. (2020). Will the COVID-19 pandemic worsen the obesity epidemic?. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 1-2.

Will the COVID-19 pandemic worsen
the obesity epidemic?

Alternative technologies and platforms have been utilized to help researchers navigate and validate literature during the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include:

1. Science Rapid PREreview (outbreaksci.prereview.org)
2. Pubpeer journal club (pubpeer.com)
3. 27 active Twitter-Based Journal Clubs
4. Retraction Watch (retractionwatch.com), which tracks retracted papers. For instance, 30 papers about COVID-19 were retracted after being cited 1,410 times, at an estimated cost of US\$425,000 per article.

Alternative technologies to help fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

Lindsey, P., Allan, J., Brehony, P., Dickman, A., Robson, A., Begg, C., ... & Flyman, M. (2020). Conserving Africa’s wildlife and wildlands through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1275-6

Conserving Africa’s wildlife and wildlands through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond

Moving academic research forward during COVID-19

Collaborative research during the COVID-19 pandemic faced several significant barriers. These challenges included the time-consuming nature of self-judging rapidly released papers, cognitive overload, repetition and contradiction in studies, and the static nature of published papers. Multidisciplinary collaboration was difficult, and there were issues with informing the research community about inappropriate findings. Additional obstacles involved the increased role and risks of preprint servers, marketing and subscription fees of journals, personal career incentives, and difficulties in effectively informing the public.

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