National survey: Covid-19 impact on early career faculty

The Covid-19 pandemic has had and will continue to have severe impact on academic life and research productivity. Among all faculty, early career researchers are potentially vulnerable in particular. On the one hand, they are yet to establish their scholarship and reputation as independent researchers. On the other hand, as young faculty they are often young parents, and parenthood under pandemic poses extreme challenges. In order to survey and accurately reflect the main challenges that early career faculty in Israel face, and to facilitate data-based solutions to the academic leadership, the Israel Young Academy has launched a national survey whose main results are made accessible and summarized here.

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The survey was distributed among researchers hired during the past 10 years at all Israeli universities. It was open for 10 days (during Dec. 29, 2020 to Jan. 8, 2021), during which around a third of all surveyed population (874 respondents out of about 2,500 in total)  replied, providing a broad representation of fields of research, methodologies, seniority and tenure, gender and parenthood status. 

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The survey aimed to reflect the main impacts the pandemic has had on the research productivity of early career faculty, as well as identify their main causes. Expected long term effects were also surveyed. These were supplemented by a quantitative section that surveyed the relative impact on the number of scientific talks given, and publications and proposals submitted during the pandemic (since March 2020) compared to normal (throughout 2019). We also provide a summary of suggested solutions we have asked the participants to share with us within the survey.