The Magnitude and Nature of Unfunded Published Cardiovascular Research

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the extent, type (e.g., staff, equipment), and sources of funding for published cardiovascular research. Important cardiovascular research is often performed without direct financial support. The degree to which medical research is conducted on an unfunded basis remains uncertain. We sent an electronic survey (Survey Monkey) to 938 corresponding authors who published papers in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology from 2007 through 2009. The data sought included the authors' characteristics (e.g., age, institution, type of research), funding, sources of funding, and types of support for their research. The response rate was 41% (388 of 938). The percentage of authors who were fully funded was 26%, 44.1% were partially funded, and those without any direct funding amounted to 30%. Most funding came from government (41.8%) and industry (35.1%), whereas institutional, foundation, association, philanthropy, and other grants contributed the remaining 23.1%. Funded authors received supplies (43.6%), staff (41.5%), and salary (39.7%) to a greater extent than equipment (27.3%) or administrative (24.7%) support. Significantly fewer authors 40 years of age or younger (24.3%) were partially funded relative to authors older than 40 years of age (≥ 47%) (p = 0.001). Significantly fewer authors from a community hospital (0%), from Europe (16.7%), or conducting interventional (7.3%) or heart rhythm (11.5%) studies were fully funded (all p < 0.05). Although only a trend, clinical investigators were more likely to be unfunded (35.7%) relative to basic/basic and clinical investigators (19.1%) (p = 0.001). Those significantly more likely to be fully funded were authors from the United States (35.3%) relative to non-American authors (≤ 28.6%) (p = 0.006). In addition, authors received more funding working in a government or VA hospital (45.9%) than nongovernment hospitals (≤ 27.1%) (p = 0.001). 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 (all p < 0.05). Considerable published cardiovascular research is currently being conducted without direct financial support. This is particularly true for young clinical investigators. The inability to accommodate this investigation in the medical enterprise might substantially diminish the amount of new knowledge coming forth.