The broader impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on postgraduate research in South Africa is concerning. This impact has been felt in higher education institutions and includes supervising postgraduate students’ research, meeting research output targets, submitting new grants to secure the next cycle of research and meeting research funding and project deliverables (Hedding et al. 2020:7). The pandemic has affected ongoing clinical trials that are evaluating interventions aimed at preventing or treating diseases other than COVID-19 (Fleming, Labriola & Wittes 2020:33). In addition, conducting postgraduate research during the pandemic has given rise to practical and ethical challenges as it became apparent that there was a need to strike a balance between generating new knowledge and the realities of the pandemic.

The pandemic forced postgraduate students to change their research methodologies, plans and scope (Motala & Menon 2020:80). Other postgraduate students had to request an extension of their research projects because of difficulties collecting participant data courtesy of lockdown restrictions (Motala & Menon 2020:80). Funded students faced a risk of having to fund their studies as they passed the deadlines because of the inability to collect data under lockdown regulations (Van Tienoven et al. 2022:1).

Postgraduate students transitioned from research that involved face-to-face interaction to conducting alternative research activities such as writing proposals, grants and protocols; simulation and modelling; and statistical analysis (Persky et al. 2020:1). Postgraduate research focusing on the elderly population had to be halted because the elderly were among the most vulnerable to COVID-19 (Oviedo et al. 2021:1). In some cases, postgraduate students had to completely change their research methodologies (Van Tienoven et al. 2022:1) from the ones for which they had received ethical clearance. This led to increased time to completion of their research projects. Nonetheless, the change in research design also presented an opportunity for challenging main research methods typically used in a discipline, encouraging both the postgraduate student and their supervisors to learn new methodologies (Motala & Menon 2020). In the same vein, postgraduate students viewed the adoption of online interviewing instead of face-to-face as facilitating increased participant recruitment while cutting costs (King et al. 2022:671). The skills acquired by the postgraduate students as they adapted their research methods positively encouraged awareness of their potential in adapting to new research methods (King et al. 2022:671).

The pandemic offered postgraduate students opportunities to develop in the use of technology. However, it can be argued that by design, technology excludes the disadvantaged, resulting in inequalities and digital exclusion that may impact research participants, students and their supervisors (Dawood & Van Wyk 2021:1). Postgraduate students reported that since the lockdown, they had more time to write manuscripts. At the same time, some indicated that the lockdown heightened their anxiety and limited their research productivity. Such complexities show that we live in a complex world with a plethora of real-world problems. Hence, postgraduate students’ experiences when conducting research cannot be generalised (Hedding et al. 2020:7).

A commentary by Aydemir and Ulusu (2020:428) stated that postgraduate students could manage their time effectively by widening their knowledge base through reading literature, consulting supervisors for thesis or dissertation support and writing papers, thus turning the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity for academic growth. This scoping review aimed to identify and map out the breadth of evidence available on the challenges and opportunities of conducting postgraduate research during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The review was guided by the Arksey and O’Malley (2005:1) scoping review framework, which has the following stages: (1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection; (4) charting the data; and (5) collating, summarising and reporting the results. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) 2020 (Page et al. 2021:1) flow chart was utilised to report how the articles found from the search were sorted.

The study adhered to ethical standards without direct contact with human or animal subjects.

The studies identified were from: India (n = 1), Finland (n = 1), Belgium (n = 1), China (n = 1), the United Kingdom (UK) (n = 1) and South Africa (n = 1). Commentaries from South Africa (n = 2), the United States (US) (n = 1) and Turkey (n = 1) and a letter (n = 1) from India were identified and included in the review. The common themes identified from the review were the collection of data, change in study designs and the digital divide. Other challenges that were identified were limited face-to-face seminars and conferences for postgraduates to exchange ideas on research (Rafat & Khan 2021:S77), supervising postgraduate students, meeting research output targets (Hedding et al. 2020:7) and increased timelines for research projects, resulting in termination of funding (Van Tienoven et al. 2022:1). The pandemic also presented opportunities for postgraduate students to learn new research methodologies, as they had to adapt their research designs to be able to collect data from participants.

The pandemic had an impact on conducting postgraduate research; hence, there is a need to understand the challenges and opportunities that arose during the pandemic. This scoping review reports on the current literature on challenges and opportunities for conducting postgraduate research in the COVID-19 era.

The findings of this review revealed common themes regarding the opportunities and challenges of postgraduate research. The themes were the collection of data, the digital divide and changes in study designs. The inability to recruit participants and/or follow them up was reported by various authors (Rafat & Khan 2021: Van Tienoven et al. 2022:1). This was attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions which prohibited face-to-face interactions with participants. Consequently, most postgraduate research stalled. However, in a study conducted in China, postgraduate students benefited from stay-at-home measures, as they spent most of their time writing manuscripts (Dong et al. 2022:1), mining older data sets and extracting information from large online data sets (Hedding et al. 2020:7). Limited face-to-face seminars and conferences where postgraduates exchange ideas on research were reported as one of the challenges that postgraduates students faced during the pandemic (Rafat & Khan (2021:S77). The limited interaction left some postgraduates students demotivated (Pyhältö et al. 2022). In a study conducted in India, postgraduate students had difficulty maintaining communication with their thesis supervisors who were meant to support and guide them through their research projects (Rafat & Khan 2021:S77).

Postgraduate students who had planned electronic data collection or had already collected data were minimally affected by the pandemic. The mandatory stay-at-home measures enabled them to have more time to write up their research projects (Van Tienoven et al. 2022:1). However, postgraduate students who had to change their research designs to include online data collection had to take into account the availability of the Internet, and appropriate hardware and software for data collection may be in short supply in resource- constrained communities (Greef 2020:1; Hofmeyr et al. 2021). The pandemic also allowed postgraduate students to familiarise themselves with online data collection and adapt their research methods (King et al. 2022:671).

Postgraduate students undertaking research involving biological materials were affected the most by the lockdown restrictions, which emphasised mandatory staying at home. Their research ran a risk of being restarted, as biological material may become nonviable. Expensive supplies were likely to be slowly delivered as suppliers responded to a wave of orders (Pepper & Burton 2020:1). The inability of postgraduate students to collect data because of the COVID-19 restrictions may have tempted some of them to resort to unethical or fraudulent research activities such as data manipulation or fabrication to complete their research, which compromises the scientific integrity of research (Wadgave 2021:1).

In South Africa, the pandemic impacted the supervision of postgraduate students and the meeting of research output targets (Hedding et al. 2020:7), as most of them could not meet their project deliverables because of alert level restrictions. Additionally, the strict time frames for research completion that some funding agencies imposed made it difficult for postgraduate students to continue with their research because of the limited number of years of student financial support (Hedding et al. 2020:7). This impeded the postgraduate students’ research progress.

The review was limited to postgraduate research and did not consider the challenges and opportunities of COVID-19 for renowned researchers. The review also considered studies written in English, and there may be similar studies written in other languages.

The findings from the review reveal that the themes identified in the challenges of postgraduate research were the collection of data, the digital divide and changes in study designs. However, there is limited literature on the opportunities to conduct postgraduate research; hence, more studies must be undertaken focusing on enhanced research methods during pandemics and beyond.