Laboratory assistants in a clean room at Biontech, carrying out the final production steps for the coronavirus vaccine. | Photo: Boris Roessler / Keystone

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many researchers left their traditional field of work to conduct research on the virus. According to the journal Nature, this led to many transdisciplinary collaborations. But a study by Northwestern University in Evanston now claims that this shift has had negative consequences for the careers of those involved. They analysed millions of scientific articles and found proof of a “pervasive ‘pivot penalty’ in which the impact of new research steeply declines, the further a researcher moves from their previous work”.

They found that the impact of this ‘pivot penalty’ could be reduced, however, if researchers publish the results of their new, transdisciplinary work in a journal that has already accepted their articles in the past. Nature writes: “The world needs researchers to be able to hop outside their areas of specialism, even if only once in a while, without a penalty to their career”.