The COVID-19 response illustrates that traditional academic reward structures and metrics do not reflect crucial contributions to modern science
Adam J. Kucharski, Sebastian Funk, Rosalind M. Eggo · PLoS Biology · 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has motivated many open and collaborative analytical research projects with real-world impact.However, despite their value, such activities are generally overlooked by traditional academic metrics.Science is ultimately improved by analytical work, whether ensuring reproducible and well-documented code to accompany papers, developing and maintaining flexible tools, sharing and curating data, or disseminating analysis to wider audiences.To increase the impact and sustainability of modern science, it will be crucial to ensure these analytical activities-and the people who do them-are valued in academia.The emergence of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of analytical research.In the first six months of the pandemic, researchers from around the world collated and curated valuable open data sources [1,2], as well as living reviews of key epidemiological parameters [3].Real-time development of statistical and modelling pipelines has enabled ongoing situational awareness, such as tracking of the reproduction number [4,5].Rapid reports have provided crucial early analysis of virus evolution, transmission and severity [6-8], and interactive online apps have turned static results into flexible tools [9,10].Alongside this analysis, open source models and data processing packages have enabled wider applications of new methodology [11,12].These initiatives have been instrumental in supporting worldwide responses to the pandemic.Such examples share several common features; they are open, collaborative, generate novel insights, and have immediate real-world impact.In many ways, they reflect the best aspects of scientific progress.But there is another feature they have in common: despite the value of these projects, they are outputs that are generally not captured by traditional academic metrics.Two central activities mark the academic career path: obtaining research grants and publishing journal articles.These are in turn viewed through summary metrics, such as journal brand as a measure of quality and position in an author list as a measure of research