FW: New ways of measuring research

[Eugene Garfield]

 Clearly of potential interest to citation analysts. EG

-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM at LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
Behalf Of Bill Hooker
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 12:56 AM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM at LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: New ways of measuring research

The following recent paper:

Despina G. Contopoulos-Ioannidis, George A. Alexiou, Theodore C.
Gouvias,
and John P. A. Ioannidis, "Life Cycle of Translational Research for
Medical
Interventions," Science (5 September 2008) Vol. 321, no. 5894, 1298 -
1299.

(link: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/321/5894/1298)


may be of interest to those following this thread.  Alma mentions
measurements of ROI, and the paper is an attempt to measure the time
between
an initial discovery and a highly-cited clinical trial showing effective
intervention.  One can imagine expanding this study to encompass
clinical
trials that did not have a positive outcome, or automating the process
in
order to cover a representative sample of *all* reported trials, so as
to
paint a better picture of actual ROI.

In case the paper is of interest, Janet Stemwedel's blog post about it
will
likely be useful also:

http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2008/10/tracking_the_lag_betwee
n_promi.php



Bill Hooker
www.sennoma.net