Research capacity in Ukraine has fallen massively due to war
Published: Tuesday, Dec 12th 2023, 09:40
Updated At: Wednesday, Dec 13th 2023, 00:59
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Ukraine has lost a fifth of its research capacity due to the war. 18.5 percent of researchers have fled Ukraine, according to a new study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).
"These findings have significant political implications," the authors of the study wrote in the study published on Tuesday in the journal "Humanities & Social Sciences Communications".
Ukraine must prepare itself to rebuild its scientific community after the war, the researchers demanded. Support for Ukrainian researchers from other countries is also important for this, for example through more and longer research grants.
Representative survey
For the study, the EPFL researchers surveyed 2,500 scientists who were employed at a Ukrainian research institution at the time of the Russian attack in February 2022.
At 18.5%, the proportion of scientists who have left the country since the start of the war roughly corresponds to the proportion of the total population that has fled Ukraine in the same period. The study also shows that it was mainly more productive scientists who left the country.
Lack of access to resources
17.6 percent of respondents have turned their backs on science altogether since the start of the war. Among those who have left Ukraine, the proportion is 17 percent higher than among those who have stayed.
However, according to the study, almost a quarter (23.5 percent) of scientists still in Ukraine have no access to critical resources for their research, and around a fifth (20.8 percent) have no physical access to the research facility.
Finally, the average time that each scientist spends on research activities per week has fallen from 13 to ten hours.
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