The war in Ukraine also has consequences for the scientific world. Many international cooperations with Russia have been suspended since the Moscow offensive and this has an impact on the production of articles. Illustration at Cern, the European Center for Nuclear Research, where no scientific article has been published since March 2022.
It is one of the largest international research centers in the world, if not the largest: the CERN and its particle accelerators, straddling France and Switzerland, the place where scientists from all over the world try to understand what matter is made of.
However, from the start of the war in Ukraineno scientific article has been published as a result of the research carried out there, whereas there are usually around a hundred a year.
Geopolitics before research…
The reason: some members refuse to be credited as co-authors alongside Russian institutes or scientists. Awaiting a solution, the decision was therefore taken not to put anything to press. The only departure from this rule is that the results are put online on a pre-publication site popular with the world of research, but which does not benefit from the peer review system of the major scientific journals.
For an organization such as CERN, the case is boring: the organization has often been touted as the place where international cooperation and the pleasure of discovery took precedence over geopolitics. A reputation that dates back to the Cold War: its laboratories were indeed among the only places where Russian and American scientists could then work together.