Abstract 16997: The Magnitude and Nature of Unfunded Published Cardiovascular Research

Abstract

Objectives: To determine the extent, type (staff, equipment, etc), and sources of funding for published cardiovascular research. Background: Important cardiovascular research is often performed without direct financial support. The degree to which medical research is performed on an unfunded basis remains uncertain. Methods: We sent an electronic survey (Survey Monkey) to 938 authors who published papers in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 2007-2009. The data sought included the authors’ characteristics (age, institution, type of research, etc), funding, sources of funding, and types of support for their research. Results: The response rate was 41% (388/938). The percentage of authors who were fully funded was 26%, partially funded 44.1%, and those without any direct funding amounted to 29.9%. Most funding came from government (41.8%) and industry (35.1%), whereas institutional, foundation, association, philanthropy, and other grants contributed the remaining. More authors received supplies (43.6%), staff (41.5%), and salary (39.7%) than equipment (27.3%) or administrative (24.7%) support. Significantly fewer authors age 40 years or younger (24.3%) were partially funded (p<.05). Significantly fewer authors from a community hospital (0%), from Europe (16.7%), or performing interventional (7.3%) or heart rhythm (11.5%) studies were fully funded (p<.05). Although only a trend, clinical investigators were more likely to be unfunded (35.7%). Those significantly more likely to be fully funded were authors from the United States (35.3%) and working in a government or VA hospital (45.9%) (p<.05). The authors who were 50 years of age or older, from the United States, had PhD degrees, doing basic as well as clinical research, or studying genetics/genomics had significantly more sources of funding and types of support (p<0.05). Conclusion: Considerable published cardiovascular research is currently being performed without direct financial support. This is particularly true for young clinical investigators. The inability to accommodate this investigation in the medical enterprise would substantially diminish the amount of new knowledge coming forth.