The data of our NWO Corona Fast-Track Data study is now openly accessible at Zenodo. We conducted a two-wave (non-panel) survey of academic researchers working at Dutch research institutions. Through this survey research we aimed to study scientists’ information gathering and spreading behaviour with regard to the latest scientific information on COVID-19. The first wave survey data were collected between 9 June and 31 August; the second between 26 October and 30 November 2020. We made both the dataset available as well as the measurement instrument (survey questionnaire) and some data documentation such as methodological information about the sampling process and demographic tables of our survey samples.

How to cite

Roex, K. & Colavizza, G. (2020). Doing Science in Times of Covid-19: A Survey. [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4313278 .

Questions about the project or data?

You can contact the researchers: Giovanni Colavizza (g.colavizza@uva.nl) or Karlijn Roex (k.l.a.roex@uva.nl).

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The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the channels and methods through which scientific findings are communicated. Instead of waiting to publish a full journal article, scientists already reveal ‘tidbits of scientific data’ through preprints, which contributed to fast sharing of early and crucial insights (Koerber, 2020). More than ever, experts find themselves in a role in which they have to correct rapidly circulating misinformation. In this global health crisis, reliance on scientific experts is of vital importance. In June-August, we – Giovanni Colavizza and Karlijn Roex – conducted a survey study among academic researchers. We are currently conducting a second round of the survey. All academic researchers based in The Netherlands can participate through this link.

Gender inequalities in speaking up against COVID-19 misinformation

We asked respondents whether they had responded to COVID-19-related misinformation in the last four weeks (N = 498). On average, almost a quarter had done so (24.2%) on online fora. Scholars that study COVID-19-related issues, were slightly more active in this (26.0%) than ‘non-COVID-researchers’ (17.2%). Male COVID-19-researchers (N = 46) were more likely to have done so (30.4%) than their female colleagues (N = 75, of which 23.7% did so). Figure 7 displays the percentages.

Figure 1. Researchers who responded to misinformation on online fora.

We also asked respondents whether they had responded to COVID-19-related misinformation by commenting in some international or national news outlets (N = 500). The hurdle to do so (such as selective editors, or being granted the opportunity by being interviewed) is higher than for commenting on online fora. Yet, a remarkable 13.8% of the sample had done so – in the last four weeks before participating in the survey. Again, those working on COVID-19-related issues were most likely to do so (20%), compared to 11.8% of non-COVID-researchers. Because the hurdle of speaking out in the media is higher, it is potentially less difficult to do so for those considered experts – which are in this case those working on COVID-19-related research. And again, females working in COVID-19-related research (N = 76) were less likely to have commented in the media (18.4%) than their male counterparts (23.9% of a total N of 46).

This clearly resonates with a result of a recent research report titled ‘The Missing Perspectives of Women in COVID-19 News’ (Kassova, 2020). At the same time, our sample of COVID-19 researchers consists of more females than males – which appears to be different from other studies based on researchers’ published work. This could suggest the presence of an undervalued female labour behind the COVID-19 breakthroughs highlighted in publications and citations – and could be an interesting direction for further research.

Figure 2. Researchers who responded to misinformation in the press.

Researchers desire greater press influence of COVID-19 experts

What do we think about the influence of scientific experts on COVID-19 in major news outlets? How big is this influence perceived by academic researchers? Our respondents (N = 478) were quite optimistic. Asked to rate the perceived influence between 0 and 100, they gave an average estimation of 64.3. Indeed, COVID-19-researchers were more optimistic (68.1) than their other colleagues in academia (63.2). Disagreement was virtually identical within each group (SD = 19 and 21 respectively). 

Although this rating indicates some optimism, our respondents still preferred to see an increase in press influence for COVID-19 experts. The average preferred degree of influence was 72.3. Here, the differences between those who are working on COVID-19-related research and those who do not, are smaller (73.6 versus 71.7).

Open science is widely endorsed, and most so in COVID-19-related research  

One of the notorious changes that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic evoked, was an acceleration of a longer-term progression towards more open access and open source academic work. Scholarly journals have released more of their articles open access, in order to enable a faster and wider exchange of knowledge on an urgent topic. A Frontiers survey study conducted in June reveals that this pandemic has motivated international researchers to consider publishing open access. As much as 44% of academic researchers said to be more likely to publish in an open access journal as result of the pandemic, and 45% considered sharing their data in the future. Researchers share their data, code, instrument and models to others in order to better help the community in finding innovative solutions for pressing problems.

An inspiring recent Dutch anecdote is the revamped BCG tuberculosis vaccine research, kicked off as a fast track project by the Radboud MC and Utrecht UMC immediately after the pandemic had started (see interview with Bonten, 2020). Researchers abroad have picked up the idea, eventually leading to as much as 15 local studies to the potential of this vaccine. The data will be immediately shared across these research groups, without the usual competitive hesitation. This way, stronger analyses can be conducted. Another Dutch example is the work of Dutch PhD candidate Marino van Zelst and his colleague in data science Edwin Veldhuizen. They process, analyze and display official Dutch COVID-19 data in a way that is remarkably intelligible and transparent for the wide audience. They post all data files and code online.

With this, it is perhaps unsurprising to find that almost 400 of our 646 respondents indicated to have recently encountered scientific information related to COVID-19. And that these people, on average, estimated that as much as 62.8% of the encountered work was open access or open source. This high estimation was given regardless of whether people themselves were active in COVID-related research (65.2% for those that did versus 62.0 for the rest). Only 7 people indicated they had never encountered any work that was open access or open source in the last four weeks. Indeed, almost three quarter of the respondents (71.5%) had estimated that at least half of the encountered COVID-19 work was open access or open source.

What are our respondents’ own behaviours and attitudes regarding open science? We asked respondents to think back of the work related to COVID-19 that they shared in the last four weeks – if they did so. This was the case for 73 respondents. We asked these people to estimate what percentage (0-100) of this work was free for anybody to read (open access) and/or to develop (open source). On average, people judged this to be the case for as much as 73.1% of the work they shared on COVID-19. Respondents did not substantially differ in their open science sharing behaviour along gender lines, age or their academic fields (e.g. Social Sciences, Health Studies/ Medical Sciences).

Regardless of their own research topics, respondents on average estimated that 73% of the work they recently had shared on COVID-19 was open access or open source.

The only notable differences were between COVID-researchers and non-COVID-researchers. The first had a higher tendency to use open access or open source (78.1%) material compared to non-COVID-researchers (still as high as 66.5%). This difference may be explained by the simple practical fact that academics are more likely to share scientific work about their own research topic.

Still, differential attitudes may also play a role. We asked our respondents (N = 510) a hypothetical question: “If you were to choose between different ways to keep up to date or share the latest COVID-19 research, how important is it for you that a channel provides free access for all to read (open access) or develop (open source) the articles, datasets or applications?” The advantage of this hypothetical survey item is that it gives us information about respondents’ attitudes towards open science in the context of COVID-19, without immediately depending on the extent to which people are actually sharing gathering or sharing information on COVID-19.

Overall, we find that a majority considers ‘open science’ as a desirable phenomenon. Almost half of the sample (47.7%) stated that it is ‘very important’ to them that a channel provides open access or open source content. An additional 174 respondents (34.1%) rank this as ‘important’, and only 9 (1.8%) dismiss this as ‘unimportant’. The urgency is even more emphasized by scholars working on COVID-19-related questions (N = 126). As much as 84.1% of those researchers think it is ‘(very) important’. Only 1 COVID-researcher replied that it was ‘unimportant’. Of all ‘non-COVID-researchers’ that replied (N = 382), as much as 78.5% think that this is ‘(very) important’. Only 8 (2.1%) thought it was unimportant.

Next steps

We will move into deeper analyses. For instance: we want to discover trend patterns in the data and test our hypotheses. Does the heightened epistemological and social uncertainty of the pandemic change the way in which we seek and share information? In order to make valid inferences about the wider research population in the Netherlands, we are developing survey weights in order to account for different sampling probabilities. This was not done yet for the present descriptive analyses – so caution in making broader inferences is warranted. You can stay up to date about this by visiting our website or contacting the researcher Karlijn Roex: k.l.a.roex@uva.nl. We hope that our unique data and deeper analyses will help different parties with improving science communication, open science practices and misinformation interventions.

The post Communicating science in times of COVID-19 appeared first on COVID-19 INFODEMIC.

Image source: Pixabay.

[Last updated 16-12-2020: Survey is closed]

We, Giovanni Colavizza and Karlijn Roex, are conducting a new study to understand how science is communicated during the pandemic. This week, we released the first survey for this project. All academic researchers, whether they are studying COVID-19 or not, are invited to undertake this 10-minute survey.

This is the second of a repeated series of surveys that started in June. Participation in the first is no requirement to participate in the present one. By issuing the survey in the fall, we hope to unveil important changes in researchers’ behavior and situation throughout the pandemic.

The post The second round of surveys is open for participants! [Closed] appeared first on COVID-19 INFODEMIC.

By collecting survey responses so timely during the pandemic, we were able to build a database with valuable and otherwise lost data. Between 9 June and 31 August 2020, we collected 777 survey responses. In this blogpost we present the first descriptive results, focusing on the demographics of our sample of researchers.

Background

Since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic took off, scientific research has gained a record visibility. Already in the first months on Twitter, scientific work that is related to COVID-19 had received nearly 1.4 million direct mentions. On these and other platforms, misinformation and fake news are spreading fast as well. It appears evident that we are not only facing a global pandemic, but also a global ‘infodemic’. Combining their knowledge with an intensified visibility during a global crisis, scientists play a key role in ensuring the diffusion of credible information, relevant in this global pandemic. Immediately after the first peak of the pandemic, in the Summer of 2020, we have conducted a survey amongst Netherlands-based academic researchers, to better understand their reaction to the ‘infodemic’. We wanted to explore the following questions: How did researchers gather the latest scientific work on COVID-19? How did they keep up-to-date? How did they communicate scientific results and address online misinformation? 

Who are our respondents?

Of all the 777 respondents, 552 completed the survey fully (71%). For the current analyses, we omitted respondents that quit before completing the first quarter of the survey (losing 131 respondents, with 646 remaining).

The resulting working sample is strongly representative with respect to academic position and age. Starting with age (N = 494), we see that people in their late-twenties (25-29) comprised the largest relative group in our sample (28.1%), followed by those in their early-thirties (18.6%) and late-thirties (11.7%). The smallest group of respondents comprised those over 70 (1%), those over 65 and those under 25 (each 3%). This closely resembles the age distribution within the Netherlands-based academic community. Figure 1 shows the proportions of age-groups in our own sample compared to the Rathenau Institute statistics about the research population of the Netherlands (Cijfers over universitair personeel, WOPI, Rathenau Instituut, 2019 and Het personeel bij de universitair medische centra, Rathenau Instituut, 2020).

Figure 1. Age distribution of sample and research population ¹

Regarding academic position (N = 590), as much as 38.6% of our respondents were PhD candidates. This is only a small over-representation, as PhD candidates also form the largest professional group in Dutch academia (32.3%). They are followed by assistant professors, the second-largest group. They comprise one-fifth of our sample and the research population (19.8% and 19.9% respectively). Postdoctoral researchers are a relatively small group (approx. 13%). Only 10% of the academic researchers is a full professor, both in our sample as in actual society. Table 2 shows the distributions of academic position for both our sample and the Rathenau Institute statistics.

Table 2. Sample and population distributions in academic position²

Our sample is less representative regarding research institutes (N = 479). This appears to be directly connected to our sampling process. For some universities, we directly emailed researchers of multiple faculties, asking them to participate in our survey. This led to an over-representation of these universities in the survey sample. Utrecht University, Tilburg University, Eindhoven University are clearly over-represented. For other universities, we only contacted email addresses of the medical center (such as Erasmus MC). Scholars of the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University also received our survey invitation through newsletters or blogposts. These two research institutes were adequately represented in the total sample, as well as Erasmus University (all approximately 9% in the sample and in the research population). Stronger under-representation is due to not having received any recruitment method at all – such as was the case for Wageningen University or Delft University, among others.

Women are over-represented

Finally, our sample clearly over-represents women. Whereas 50.2% of our respondents were women, only 39.5% of Netherlands-based academic researchers are female. As PhD candidates comprise the largest group in our survey, one could conjecture that this explains the high proportion of women. There are many more women among PhD candidates (43.0%) than among full professors (23.1%). Yet, as seen, the presence of the different academic positions in our survey neatly resembles their relative size in the wider Dutch academic community. Therefore, we also would expect a similar gender distribution as in the population (with 39.5% women and not 50.2%). It is longer known that women have a higher tendency than men to respond to surveys (e.g. Dunn et al. 2004; Kalmijn &Liefbroer 2011; Slauson-Blevins & Johnson 2016).

Of our sample, 579 respondents indicated their field of study when asked to choose among six broad categories. The largest category in our sample are the Natural Sciences and Mathematics, with 35.1% of our respondents working in these fields. More than a quarter (26.8%) of the respondents works in Health Studies and Medical Sciences. Also substantial is the share of Social Science scholars (17.6%). Slightly more than one-tenth of our sample works in the Humanities (12.1%). Finally, the smallest category in our sample are Business and Economics (5.5%), Law and Legal Studies (2.9%). Figure 2 shows the relative presence of each academic field.

Figure 2. Sample distribution by academic field

One in four researchers is active on COVID-19

We also asked respondents whether they have been conducting academic research that was COVID-19 related. We received 585 replies. A quarter (24.4%) answered affirmatively, whereas the other three-quarter (75.6%) indicated they had not. Among this quarter that studied COVID-19 related questions (N = 143), a small minority indicated they had studied problems related to pandemics or coronaviruses before the global outbreak. In other words: 16.1% of the respondents that actively researches COVID-19 related questions, had already been studying such topics before the official WHO-declared start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Perhaps not surprisingly, these 23 scholars were predominantly working in the Natural Sciences and Mathematics (43.5%) – mostly Cellular, Molecular Biology and Microbiological Sciences, Immunology (each 30%).

Another highly represented field was Health Studies and Medical Sciences (34.8%) – almost all Public Health and Health Services scholars (85.7%). Note that these percentages are highly sensitive to low numbers (we are speaking of 8 Health Studies and Medical Sciences scholars). Figure 3 displays the relative presence of academic fields among the 585 respondents, divided into those studying COVID-19-related issues before the pandemic, since the pandemic, and those who do not work on COVID-19 or anything related.

Figure 3. Presence of academic fields divided by topical focus (COVID-19 or not COVID-19)

Of these 23 researchers already studying COVID-19 related problems before the pandemic, 6 are full professors (26.1%), 3 are associate professors (13.0%), 6 assistant professors (26.1%), 1 postdoc (4.3%), and 2 PhD candidates (8.7%). Others were retired or in ‘other’ – unspecified – career stages. By contrast, as much as 120 respondents (83.9% of all those working on COVID-19 related research) are new to these questions. Among these ‘new COVID-19-researchers’, there were slightly fewer full professors (N = 17; 14.2%) and notably more postdocs (N = 18; 15.0%) and PhD candidates (N = 32; 26,7%). Moreover, there were 11 associate professors (9.2%) and 26 assistant professors (21.7%) in this group.

Scholars who have been studying COVID-19 related topics already before the pandemic are most often active in Public Health, Cellular Biology or Microbiology/ Immunology. Newcomers are often from Health Studies, Medical Sciences and Social Sciences.

Similar as for the researchers already working on COVID-19 related topics, ‘new COVID-19-researchers’ are relatively often working in Health Studies and Medical Sciences (38.1% of those new to COVID-19 research). What is different about this new group, is the substantial presence of social sciences. More than a quarter (26.3%) of scholars is from social science disciplines. Regardless of their discipline, most of the ‘new COVID-19-researchers’ started researching their topic in March or April. It appears that many scholars managed to respond quite early in the pandemic, shifting their research efforts.

Regardless of when people started, the two academic fields that are most represented in COVID-19-related research (N = 574) are Health Studies and Medical Sciences and Social Sciences. More than a third of the scholars (34%) in each field had been undertaking COVID-19 related research. Surprisingly, only 13% of the scholars in Natural Sciences and Mathematics (among which many biological sciences) are conducing COVID-19 related work. The percentages for Law and Legal Studies and Business and Economics are notably high, but this is likely due to their small sample size.

Zooming in on sub-disciplines

Now we take a closer look at sub-disciplines. In the part of Health Studies and Medical Sciences that is involved in COVID-19 research (N = 74), two disciplines stand out in size: Clinical Medicine (44.7%), Public Health and Health Services (36.2%). Notably, one-tenth of COVID-19 related research within Health Studies and Medical Sciences can be classified as Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry or Neuroscience (10.6%). Figure 4 displays the share (in percentage) of these Health Studies and Medical Sciences disciplines within the total group of ‘COVID-19-researchers’ (N = 143) and those that do not work on COVID-19 (N = 442) respectively.

Figure 4. Presence of medical (sub)disciplines among scholars working on COVID-19 or other topics

Among the Social Sciences scholars working on COVID-19 related questions (N = 32), psychologists comprised the largest share (37.5%). A quarter of these social science scholars were sociologists (25%), and another substantial share were political scientists (18.8%). Figure 5 shows the share of the different social science disciplines within the total pool of COVID-19-researchers.

Figure 5. Presence of social science (sub)disciplines among scholars working on COVID-19 or other topics

Finally, within the small Natural Sciences and Mathematics part that is devoted to COVID-19-related research (N = 27), two predictable sub-disciplines dominate: Cellular and Molecular Biology (22.2%) and Microbiology and Immunology (18.5%). However, their numbers remain low (around N = 6 for each discipline or sub-discipline). This is indicated by the low portion that these sub-disciplines (below 8%) take in the total group of COVID-19-researchers in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Presence of natural sciences or mathematics (sub)disciplines among scholars working on COVID-19 or other topics

Also notable is the large presence of women among those that work on COVID-19. Among COVID-19-researchers that answered our gender question (N = 124), 61.3% were women. Please note that our result may also be explained by the overall over-representation of women in our survey. Yet, an odds ratio – which accounts for the different sample sizes of men and women – reveals that women are almost twice as likely to be working on COVID-19 than men (OR = 1.81). This finding is striking, since earlier research shows a high under-representation of women in published scientific work on COVID-19 (see papers here and here). In our next blogpost about our data, we will focus more on interesting gender differences and information behaviour.

Next steps

We will now move into deeper analyses³. Moreover, we plan to conduct a second round of the survey, starting later this month. Further updates on our project will follow on our website. Feel free to contact Karlijn Roex for further information: k.l.a.roex@uva.nl. We hope that our unique data and deeper analyses will help different parties with improving science communication, open science practices and misinformation interventions.

The post First results from our COVID-19 survey appeared first on COVID-19 INFODEMIC.

This special NWO funding program is meant for projects collecting data which is only available during the COVID-19 crisis. It specifically supports research into societal issues that arise during the crisis. By speeding up the research funding process for COVID-19 related reserch, the NWO seeks to enable researchers to quickly respond to open questions raised by the pandemic.

The post ‘Corona: fast-track data’ grant by the NWO appeared first on COVID-19 INFODEMIC.

This blog post on the website of the Institute of Logic, Language and Computation at University of Amsterdam explains Giovanni Colavizza’s previous COVID-19 related work. He applied natural language processing and clustering techniques to organize all scientific literature that is broadly related to COVID-19 into a term map.

This previous project was focussed on how researchers communicate with each other in times of the pandemic using scientific publications. In that sense, it nicely complements our current project, which investigates the way scientists communciate with the public.

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