Internal medicine

Pathology

Slowdown

Disease

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Demographic economics

Economic growth

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Pandemic

World Wide Web

Outbreak

Macroeconomics

Political science

Virology

Economics

Geography

Productivity

Economic geography

Production (economics)

Shock (circulatory)

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak

Computer science

Development economics

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Preprint

Medicine

Scientometrics

The massive shock of the COVID-19 pandemic has already shown its negative effects on economies around the world, unprecedented in recent history. COVID-19 infections and containment measures caused a general slowdown in research and new knowledge production. Because of the link between R&D output and economic growth, it is to be expected then that a slowdown in research activities will slow in turn the global recovery from the pandemic. Many recent studies also claim an uneven impact on scientific production across gender. In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon across countries, analysing preprint depositions in main repositories. Differently from other works, that compare the number of preprint depositions before and after the pandemic outbreak, we analyse the depositions trends across geographical areas, and contrast after-pandemic outbreak depositions with expected ones. Differently from common belief and initial evidence, the decrease in research output is not more severe for women than for men.

Impact of Covid-19 on research output by gender across countries