Academics who switch to hybrid working and remote collaboration do less impactful research. That’s according to an analysis of how scientists’ collaboration networks and academic outputs evolved before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic (arXiv: 2511.18481). It involved studying author data from the arXiv preprint repository and the online bibliographic catalogue OpenAlex.

To explore the geographic spread of collaboration networks, Sara Venturini from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues looked at the average distance between the institutions of co-authors. They found that while the average distance between team members on publications increased from 2000 to 2021, there was a particularly sharp rise after 2022.

This pattern, the researchers claim, suggests that the pandemic led to scientists collaborating more often with geographically distant colleagues. They found consistent patterns when they separated papers related to COVID-19 from those in unrelated areas, suggesting the trend was not solely driven by research on COVID-19.

The researchers also examined how the number of citations a paper received within a year of publication changed with distance between the co-authors’ institutions. In general, as the average distance between collaborators increases, citations fall, the authors found.

They suggest that remote and hybrid working hampers research quality by reducing spontaneous, serendipitous in-person interactions that can lead to deep discussions and idea exchange.

Despite what the authors say is a “concerning decline” in citation impact, there are, however, benefits to increasing remote interactions. In particular, as the geography of collaboration networks increases, so too does international partnerships and authorship diversity.

Remote tools

Lingfei Wu, a computational social scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study, told Physics World that he was surprised by the finding that remote teams produce less impactful work.

“In our earlier research, we found that historically, remote collaborations tended to produce more impactful but less innovative work,” notes Wu. “For example, the Human Genome Project published in 2001 shows how large, geographically distributed teams can also deliver highly impactful science. One would expect the pandemic-era shift toward remote collaboration to increase impact rather than diminish it.”

Wu says his work suggests that remote work is effective for implementing ideas but less effective for generating them, indicating that scientists need a balance between remote and in-person interactions. “Use remote tools for efficient execution, but reserve in-person time for discussion, brainstorming, and informal exchange,” he adds.

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There are 12 questions in total: blue is your current question and white means unanswered, with green and red being right and wrong. Check your scores at the end – and why not test your colleagues too?

How did you do?

10–12 Top shot – congratulations, you’re the next John Hopfield

7–9 Strong skills – good, but not quite Nobel standard

4–6 Weak performance – should have asked ChatGPT

0–3 Worse than random – are you a bot?

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This quiz was first published in February 2025. Now you can enjoy it in our new interactive quiz format and check your final score. There are 18 questions in total: blue is your current question and white means unanswered, with green and red being right and wrong.

 

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China is building towards a debut Long March 10 rocket launch in what will be a major test for the country’s crewed lunar landing plans.

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The initiative aims to educate policy makers on space as a warfighting domain

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The Oct. 23 announcement that Airbus, Thales and Leonardo will merge their satellite operations was a historic development for the European space industry. The plan aims to establish a new combined entity by 2027. Historically, the European space industry has been a competent but fragmented market in the form of national champions and competing initiatives. […]

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NASA has selected a heliophysics mission to move into the next phase of development amid broader concerns about the state of the field.

The post NASA advances heliophysics mission into next phase appeared first on SpaceNews.