Thanks for sharing, Carolyn. This is an important finding about what is happening when science responds to a global crisis. Finding that researchers seem to rely on familiarity during emergencies, shows that they are not really different from most others. More interesting are the findings about small teams, suggesting, also, a tie to research in other fields on teams and adaptability. Finally, most important are the results about elite universities. As you note, relying on reputation, rather than what might be more relevant expertise, or, in fact, greater talent, at non-elite universities, is another marker for future study. So this is an informative bibliometric analysis contributing to our understanding of science at a macro-level. But, in your paper, you note that researchers lack a clear focus. How do you know that based upon analyzing a distribution of publications? Focus depends on the level of analyses. The teams, themselves, I’m sure, were quite focused in whatever it was they studied. Perhaps, at the level of the ‘field’, there was what appears to be a lack of focus. But, at the same time, one person’s lack of focus (or field's) is another’s exploration stage. With that said, in the paper, there are also speculations about coordination costs. How do we know these teams had high coordination costs? They were not queried about them. Similarly, the paper says that teams weighed an inherent tradeoff about their collaboration choice. Again, how do we know that is the case? Inferring psychological processes from citation analyses seems problematic - in the absence of asking the scientists, we remain too disconnected from those actually doing the work. In short, although we have some sense of ‘what’ is occurring, what this type of analysis does not help us understand is any of the “why” these findings are occurring. Short of the exogenous trigger event, a global pandemic, we have no sense of the causal factors for any collaboration outcomes, let alone, processes. The paper speaks of team structure, but from the study of teams, we know there is more than simply size or international membership to team structure. Said another way, each one of the papers analyzed has a team behind them, and, associated with it, a rich set of interaction processes, a particular form of interdependency, a unique hierarchy, a composite of complementary cognition, shared and unshared attitudinal profiles, etc. etc. None of these can be understood by only looking at publications. Although bibliometrics and scientometrics studies, with their tens of thousands of data points, might be able to inform macroscopic patters of collaboration, they are but one lens onto this phenomenon. The Science of Team Science was specifically created to provide the theoretical and methodological foundation through which to understand not only the “what” of teamwork, but also the “why”. Behind every single one of the thousands of pre-prints and publication making up a bibliometric data set, there are hundreds of hours of individual work and teamwork. Although it is fine to speculate about the macro-phenomena bibliometrics and scientometrics can uncover, such analyses can only go so far. And any recommendations about policy decisions should be similarly tempered. These types of analyses are not appropriate for making inferences about the actual teamwork processes and emergent phenomena occurring at the level of the team, that is, the rich world of interaction ‘in’ the teams producing (or failing to produce) publications that are treated merely as a single data point for citation analyses in bibliometrics studies. Best, Steve -------- Stephen M. Fiore, Ph.D. Professor, Cognitive Sciences, Department of Philosophy <http://philosophy.cah.ucf.edu/staff.php?id=134> Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, Institute for Simulation & Training (http://csl.ist.ucf.edu/) <http://philosophy.cah.ucf.edu/staff.php?id=134> <http://philosophy.cah.ucf.edu/staff.php?id=134> University of Central Florida sfiore(a)ist.ucf.edu ________________________________ From: A public forum for scientists. &lt;scientists(a)sciencelistserv.org&gt; Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2020 1:04 PM To: scientists(a)sciencelistserv.org &lt;scientists(a)sciencelistserv.org&gt; Subject: Message: 9 Dear Friends, Our paper on international collaboration on COVID-19 research is published now in PLOS One: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236307 Abstract: This paper seeks to understand whether a catastrophic and urgent event, such as the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerates or reverses trends in international collaboration, especially in and between China and the United States. A review of research articles produced in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that COVID-19 research had smaller teams and involved fewer nations than pre-COVID-19 coronavirus research. The United States and China were, and continue to be in the pandemic era, at the center of the global network in coronavirus related research, while developing countries are relatively absent from early research activities in the COVID-19 period. Not only are China and the United States at the center of the global network of coronavirus research, but they strengthen their bilateral research relationship during COVID-19, producing more than 4.9% of all global articles together, in contrast to 3.6% before the pandemic. In addition, in the COVID-19 period, joined by the United Kingdom, China and the United States continued their roles as the largest contributors to, and home to the main funders of, coronavirus related research. These findings suggest that the global COVID-19 pandemic shifted the geographic loci of coronavirus research, as well as the structure of scientific teams, narrowing team membership and favoring elite structures. These findings raise further questions over the decisions that scientists face in the formation of teams to maximize a speed, skill trade-off. Policy implications are discussed. Happy to have comments. Caroline Caroline S. Wagner Milton & Roslyn Wolf Chair in International Affairs John Glenn School of Public Affairs The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio USA 43210 ORCID <div itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a itemprop="sameAs" content="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1724-8489" href="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1724-8489" target="orcid.widget" rel="me noopener noreferrer" style="vertical-align:top;"><img src="https://orcid.org/sites/default/files/images/orcid_16x16.png" style="width:1em;margin-right:.5em;" alt="ORCID iD icon">https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1724-8489</a></div>