We evaluated progress towards animal biodiversity research in Georgia, a key area in the Caucasus biodiversity hotspot. By reviewing recently (1990-2018) published articles in all areas of animal diversity research, we unmasked the trends in biodiversity inventory, ecological and biogeographical studies, and conservation issues in Georgia. We concluded that species inventory and biodiversity research in Georgia has significantly increased during the last ten years, however the rate and extent of investigation is far from satisfactory. Major gaps remain in all branches of animal diversity research in Georgia, and consequently existing knowledge is inadequate to address modern challenges related to species and ecosystem conservation. We urge local governmental authorities and international scientific societies to support development of stronger research facilities and cultivate interest in biodiversity inventory and research in Georgia as an important step towards maintaining globally important biodiversity in the Caucasus.

A global event such as the COVID-19 crisis presents new, often unexpected responses that are fascinating to investigate from both, scientific and social standpoints. Despite several documented similarities, the Coronavirus pandemic is clearly distinct from the 1918 flu pandemic in terms of our exponentially increased, almost instantaneous ability to access/share information, offering an unprecedented opportunity to visualise rippling effects of global events across space and time. Personal devices provide “big data” on people’s movement, the environment and economic trends, while access to the unprecedented flurry in scientific publications and media posts provides a measure of the response of the educated world to the crisis. Most bibliometric (co-authorship, co-citation, or bibliographic coupling) analyses ignore the time dimension, but COVID-19 has made it possible to perform a detailed temporal investigation into the pandemic. Here, we report a comprehensive network analysis based on more than 20000 published documents on viral epidemics, authored by over 75,000 individuals from 140 nations in the past one year of the crisis. In contrast to the 1918 flu pandemic, access to published data over the past two decades enabled a comparison of publishing trends between the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and those of the 2003 SARS epidemic, to study changes in thematic foci and societal pressures dictating research over the course of a crisis.

Disputes on authorships or the order of authors on publications are among the most common conflicts in science, particularly where multi-author papers have become the norm. Here, I propose an adaptable and generalizable method to rationalize and democratize decisions about authorships, which can be applied in diverse scientific areas. In the process, the authors of a manuscript collect, discuss, score, and weight their contributions to the final manuscript. The decision process is assisted by a simple spreadsheet-based “authorship matrix”, which helps to break down the complexity of different contributions and their importance. The matrix generates a score s describing the percentage of the author’s total contributions and can be used to determine authorship and their order. The transparency and simplicity score s can reduce conflicts and thus increase productivity in collaborations.