TABLE 3.

Quotes illustrating themes

Theme	Representative quotes
Research projects delayed or reprioritized	“All activities that require the use of materials or consumable products have been stopped because it is impossible to obtain them, due to import restrictions.”—Tunisia “We had to stop wet lab work and no new experimental work could be started, meaning that many milestone deliverables related to grants will become delayed.”—Finland “Neuroimaging data requisition was stopped due to the quarantine, which affected our longitudinal MRI studies.”—China “Our laboratories were closed for 8 weeks, and they are now gradually re‐opening. Government regulations limit the number of people who can work simultaneously in the same laboratory.”—Italy “Many clinician investigators, including myself, were redeployed to cover internal medicine COVID teams or related services.”—USA “With decreased patient flow to the hospital, we were not able to proceed in recruiting patients [to clinical studies].”—Egypt “We were negotiating the final version of the protocol for a clinical trial. That had to be set aside, due to other priorities of the stakeholders.”—Italy
Shift to working from home & virtual meetings	“Researchers from our lab mainly worked in home offices, self‐isolating. Some stayed home due to their age or other personal risks. Some had to stay home because of their kids, which they needed to homeschool and take care of when schools and childcare centers closed.”—Germany “Face‐to face exchanges were lost between people.”—Italy “We are more efficient during [virtual] meetings and can more seamlessly share documents and knowledge together, resulting in more productive meetings.”—USA
Current and future funding concerns	“I assume some of the long‐term effects will be that a lot of money is now (and for the next couple of years) going into COVID‐19 research. That is money and attention that will be lost to other research areas, including epilepsy research.”—Germany “The huge reductions in university, charity and government income are likely to have a detrimental effect on research funding.”—UK “There's only so much funding, so by funding COVID research there will be less funding for other topics. Competition will be even more difficult.”—Canada “I think that the handling of pandemic has very clearly shown the need for fact‐based information and research. I hope the pandemic will encourage governments and funding organizations to increase research and innovation budgets.”—Finland
Effects on mental health	“Many people were struggling to adjust to the new realities. Self‐isolation or quarantine, the extremes of social distancing, no possibility to escape conflicts at home, the uncertainty… caused a lot of emotional stress and interfered with productivity.”—Germany “Mental health support services adapted for the specific needs of research or health care personnel will be critical.”—USA
Changes in the research landscape	“I am not in favor of the increasing popularity of preprints. Peer review, while imperfect, remains the best system to prevent bad science from being widely disseminated.”—Italy “The need for social distancing and infection prevention is likely to continue for months and may mean that clinical research will continue to be severely impacted.”—UK “I am concerned about the delivery of new information, as many meetings were cancelled. Though digital platforms work okay, they do not replace personal contacts and communications, during which often the most essential information is exchanged.”—Finland “It is unlikely that international travel will recover to pre‐pandemic levels in the near future. Enabling international academic exchanges without intercontinental travel is likely to be good news for the planet [from a climate change perspective].”—UK “These months of reduced interactions could break links between researchers and between centers, and that could decrease collaboration.”—Italy “The global scientific and health care community appeared to have a united front against the pandemic. This has led to multicenter collaborations for clinical trials on new drugs and the creation of databases on clinical research or medical records data from COVID‐19 patients.”—USA