COVID-19's effect on astronomy publications: Boosted rates but a worsening gender gap

A recent article published by Physics World reported that astronomers "published more papers per year during the COVID-19 pandemic than they did beforehand – but men enjoyed a disproportionate share of the increase." 

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The change widened the gender gap in astronomy, as reported in Nature Astronomy by Vanessa Böhm (University of California, Berkeley) and Jia Liu (Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Japan). They examined the public records of refereed astronomy articles and non-refereed pre-prints published between 1950 and 2022 and found that the overall annual output of the field  increased, mainly driven, they report, "by boosted individual productivity in most countries." They also found, though, that fewer papers were written by female astronomers and fewer women are among incoming new researchers as compared to pre-pandemic trends, in 14 out of 25 countries studied.  

In response to a request by the AASWomen editors, Ethan Vishniac, Editor-in-Chief for journals published by the American Astronomical Society, wrote

I’m grateful for the authors for the work they did on this important topic and I think it’s a great service to the community. Past that, I think the community needs to think about what we can do to alleviate the disproportionate effect of the pandemic on women and younger researchers.

Find a general summary of the article at Physics World and the peer-reviewed artcile (with data and graphs) at Nature Astronomy.