COVID-19 had a deep impact on research infrastructures, but it provides a chance to improve remote operations with benefits for users and the environment.
Large Research infrastructures (RI) such as synchrotrons, neutron sources or laser research infrastructures play a crucial role for the work of many scientists in Europe. They are often shared or visited for particular experiments or analyses only. In the current COVID-19 pandemic, the sharing and use of such facilities presents particular challenges; researchers may face difficulties with travelling, and safety measures impact operations. In April 2020, many infrastructures even had to close their doors to external users completely. A new report, published on 7 January by the Association of European-level Research Infrastructure Facilities (ERF) and the Central European Research Infrastructure Consortium (CERIC-ERIC), has analysed the impact of COVID-19 on the operations of 27 analytical research facilities.
Overall, the report finds that the pandemic had a substantial impact on the facilities. At the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in Europe, only a third of the surveyed RIs were accessible to external user activities. Several of them however, had either set up specific COVID-19 services or shifted towards remote services. The report further demonstrates that only half a year later, in October 2020, the majority of RIs had introduced changes to their operations in order to enhance the extent and quality of their services under the current difficult conditions. However, the challenges of remote access had also become visible, it created higher workloads for the onsite RI staff, and the performance of complex experiments became even more demanding. As it seems today, the pandemic is far from over and RIs will have to live with restrictions or altered services for a while to come.
By conducting interviews, the authors of the report made the following observations: More than two thirds of RIs reported full operations in October, but served fewer external users compared to the pre-pandemic era. They expected that this might translate into slower progress or lower output in ground-breaking research. COVID-19 research had become an important focus of many facilities; more than half of them offered dedicated services. Some RIs started operating with mailed samples and increased their remote services from lower than 20% to more than 60% of their access. The majority of institutions also believe that the remote service is here to stay. Safety measures, ranging from mask wearing to on site COVID testing, are of course also part of the changes.
To increase the efficiency and effectiveness of operating in crisis mode, the authors make recommendations to address the main bottlenecks. While users will have to come back to conduct complex experiments in the short term, RIs should prepare long-term tools to enhance their capacity to perform such experiments remotely with benefits for users and the environment. Funders at national and EU level should support the RIs in their transformation by enabling the development of solutions to serve more users, protect staff better and increase the quality of services. Lastly, a platform supporting the exchange of safety-related information and practices such as testing could help spread best practices and ideas for improvement.
On a more general level, the Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2021 of the OECD focussed on the response of the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) system as a whole to COVID-19. On a positive note, the outlook concludes that the STI system response has been decisive, rapid, and significant, with international collaboration as a key factor. Reponses to the crisis have also boosted the innovation potential of businesses. However, business and research innovation have been affected unevenly, and STI policies in the future should be redesigned to tackle the challenges of sustainability, inclusivity and resilience.