• CAREER FEATURE

The career cost of COVID-19 to female researchers, and how science should respond

Some funders and journals are trying to support female researchers and others whose publications and positions are at risk.
By
  1. Virginia Gewin

    1. Virginia Gewin is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon.

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Early data on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on scientific-publishing output suggest that female researchers, particularly those at early-career stages, are the hardest hit. Submissions to preprint servers, such as arXiv, rose more quickly for male authors than for female authors as nations adopted social-isolation measures. And female authors have accounted for only one-third of all authors on published COVID-19 papers since January 2020.

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Nature 583, 867-869 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02183-x

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

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