Abstract
We recently passed the halfway mark of a disastrous year. Rather than celebrate the dawn of an exciting new decade, we find ourselves wondering how much more we can take and how much worse this unbelievable year could yet turn out to be. Whether sick, lonely, stuck at home, and financially or socially challenged, we stand united in our desire to find a lasting solution to the COVID-19 crisis, pondering when things will finally get better.
Some schools and universities (including my own, North Carolina State University) are reopening, leaving many students and faculty wondering whether the safeguards and protocols put in place will suffice, as large groups will be sharing common space for a sense of normality. In some ways, this is a large-scale human health experiment with a great deal at stake. Many people will be monitoring events in real time, conscious of the delayed readout thanks to the incubation period for this insidious virus. We should know the outcome of the experiment within weeks. We are hopeful that our administration will implement data-driven policies, while (perhaps naively) wishing all the key decision makers will heed the advice of public health experts.
The monumental challenges that lie ahead of us can be solved by science—and science alone. The most promising solutions on the way with regard to diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines, all come from a tireless and committed science community, which transcends the pervasive skepticism and disturbing antiscience bias still on the rise. Without the scientific enterprise, there will be no vaccine, no effective therapy; without the medical and health care community, there will be no recovery nor reprieve.
Making an Impact
Despite such difficult times, there are opportunities to rise to the challenge and monitor in real time how the scientific community is doing. In this issue, Caroline LaManna and colleagues provide a timely update on the growing uptake of CRISPR technologies and the expanded democratization of genome editing by Addgene. Impressively, CRISPR plasmids have now been shipped nearly 200,000 times to approximately 4000 groups in 88 countries.
As developers enhance and sharpen the CRISPR toolbox, users across the globe are putting to work vintage and newer cutting-edge technologies. Our community is hard at work, and the numbers show that despite a momentarily dip at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many are already back in the laboratory, working industriously on solutions to our problems. Many still laboring from home are actively working on new grants and proposals or writing up articles.
In June, we received news of our debut impact factor—5.343 for the record. We do not want to read too much into this—impact factors are widely misjudged by authors and misused by some funders and search committees. But we understand that many researchers are reluctant to submit to a new journal before it receives an impact factor. Certainly, the surge of submissions we have witnessed since our impact factor was announced is gratifying, and we hope sustainable.
Refreshingly, despite the intense competition in vaccine development and testing technologies, encompassing business interests and geopolitical implications, we also see team science actively sharing data and tools, and transparently providing progress updates. Several vaccine candidates are advancing in the clinic. This is a heartening reminder that the scientific community can and will meet the challenge to engineer, develop, manufacture, and supply the solutions that we desperately need to return to a semblance of normality.
Indeed, in times like these, all we need may just be a moment of science.