Texas Tech University, Department of Biological Science, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA.
Swarthmore College, Department of Biology, Swarthmore, PA 19081 USA.
Gen Comp Endocrinol. 2024 Jan 1;345:114394. doi: 10.1016/j.ygcen.2023.114394. Epub 2023 Oct 21.
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted personal and professional life. For academics, research, teaching, and service tasks were upended and we all had to navigate the altered landscape. However, some individuals faced a disproportionate burden, particularly academics with minoritized identities or those who were early career, were caregivers, or had intersecting identities. As comparative endocrinologists, we determine how aspects of individual and species-level variation influence response to, recovery from, and resilience in the face of stressors. Here, we flip that framework and apply an integrative biological lens to the impact of the COVID-19 chronic stressor on our endocrine community. We address how the pandemic altered impact factors of academia (e.g., scholarly products) and relatedly, how factors of impact (e.g., sex, gender, race, career stage, caregiver status, etc.) altered the way in which individuals could respond. We predict the pandemic will have long-term impacts on the population dynamics, composition, and landscape of our academic ecosystem. Impact factors of research, namely journal submissions, were altered by COVID-19, and women authors saw a big dip. We discuss this broadly and then report General and Comparative Endocrinology (GCE) manuscript submission and acceptance status by gender and geographic region from 2019 to 2023. We also summarize how the pandemic impacted individuals with different axes of identity, how academic institutions have responded, compile proposed solutions, and conclude with a discussion on what we can all do to (re)build the academy in an equitable way. At GCE, the first author positions had gender parity, but men outnumbered women at the corresponding author position. Region of manuscript origin mattered for submission and acceptance rates, and women authors from Asia and the Middle East were the most heavily impacted by the pandemic. The number of manuscripts submitted dropped after year 1 of the pandemic and has not yet recovered. Thus, COVID-19 was a chronic stressor for the GCE community.
COVID-19 大流行对个人和专业生活都产生了影响。对于学者来说，研究、教学和服务任务都被打乱了，我们都不得不应对这种变化。然而，有些人面临着不成比例的负担，特别是身份处于少数群体的学者，或者是职业生涯早期、照顾者或具有交叉身份的学者。作为比较内分泌学家，我们确定个体和物种水平的变化如何影响对压力源的反应、恢复和弹性。在这里，我们翻转了这个框架，将综合生物学视角应用于 COVID-19 慢性压力源对我们内分泌学界的影响。我们探讨了大流行如何改变了学术界的影响因素（例如学术产品），以及相关的影响因素（例如性别、性别、种族、职业阶段、照顾者身份等）如何改变了个人的反应方式。我们预测，这场大流行将对我们学术生态系统的人口动态、组成和格局产生长期影响。研究的影响因素，即期刊投稿，因 COVID-19 而改变，女性作者的投稿量大幅下降。我们广泛讨论了这一点，然后报告了 2019 年至 2023 年按性别和地理区域划分的 General and Comparative Endocrinology (GCE) 投稿和接受情况。我们还总结了大流行如何影响具有不同身份轴的个人，学术机构的反应，汇编了提出的解决方案，并以讨论我们如何以公平的方式重建学院结束。在 GCE，第一作者职位的性别比例持平，但通讯作者职位的男性多于女性。稿件来源地区对投稿和接受率有影响，来自亚洲和中东的女性作者受大流行影响最大。大流行第一年之后投稿数量下降，尚未恢复。因此，COVID-19 对 GCE 社区来说是一个慢性压力源。
