Public Research Funding Research Articles

The Freshwater Information Platform: An online network supporting freshwater biodiversity research and data publishing

Species distribution data are crucial for understanding biodiversity dynamics and the underlying drivers. For freshwaters, which cover only a small proportion of the world's surface, but host a large variety of species, knowledge on species occurrences is extremely important as they are among the most endangered ecosystems globally. However, a huge body of data gathered by scientists and water managers is currently difficult to access: systematic data publishing practices have not been fully adopted yet and data embedded in scientific papers and research project websites are often challenging to extract. At the same time, data and knowledge generated through publically-funded research or monitoring programmes are considered a common good. The Freshwater Information Platform (FIP) aims at pooling freshwater related research information from multiple projects and initiatives to make it easily accessible for scientists, water managers, conservationists and the interested public. The FIP consists of several major components, three of which form its “data publication unit”: The Freshwater Metadatabase (1) is an online tool where data characterising and documenting actual datasets can be entered in a simple way. With one more mouseclick these metadata can then be published as open access articles in the connected Freshwater Metadata Journal. The second part of the unit is the Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal (2), where we aim to mobilise and publish the connected freshwater biodiversity data (occurrence records) through GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). The use of collected datasets for large-scale analyses and models is demonstrated in the Global Freshwater Biodiversity Atlas (3) that publishes interactive online maps featuring research results on freshwater biodiversity, threats and conservation priorities. Here, we focus on introducing these components as tools to streamline open access freshwater data publication, arguing it will improve the capacity to protect and manage freshwater biodiversity in the face of global change. We further present linkages to and cooperations with other key initiatives in the field, namely the "Alliance for Freshwater Life" as well as "FreshwaterBON".

US Department of Agriculture and global biogenome initatives: policy challenges and opportunities

Biodiversity research is seeing unprecedented global collaboration with initiatives such as the Earth BioGenome Project, an effort to sequence all known eukaryotic life, and Genesys, a global database for sharing crop genetic resources. However, as in other disciplines, public funding and policy for scientific research in agriculture tend to follow national borders even when science and its collaborations do not. In addition, agriculture is similar to biomedicine in having significant private investment in research and development where competition could inhibit sharing. It would seem that significant challenges lie ahead for making progress on ambitious global initiatives at least where agricultural samples, collections, and data are concerned. In this talk we will review several activities at the United States Department of Agriculture that illustrate how policy and infrastructure can overcome difficulties. For example, recent policies for openness of publicly-funded research products and adoption of FAIR data principles even for private or proprietary data hold promise and have elevated the importance of data infrastructure. The US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) launched its Ag100Pest contribution to the Earth BioGenome Project, including the use of the i5K Workspace@NAL platform for its sequenced and annotated genomes. The GRIN Global platform supports not just USDA germplasm data management but a growing network of plant and animal researchers and collections around the world. The Ag Data Commons provides standardized metadata and machine-readable data dictionaries to the publicly accessible products of these and other USDA-funded efforts. It is teaming with the ARS high performance computing system SCINet to explore cost-effective public access to big data storage for agricultural data and models. Finally, many of these efforts extend and contribute back to widely used open source software systems. While challenges remain in coordinating and sustaining these efforts with international stakeholders, engagement with groups like AgBioData, the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Interest Group on Agricultural Data, and the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition coalition will continue to bear fruit (pun intended). We seek similar engagement with the broader biodiversity data community in order to ensure that policy and infrastructure investments result in maximum mutual benefit.

Putting it together: Solutions-based collaboration to unite teams in higher education

As public funding of higher education and research continues to decline, philanthropy plays a critical role in helping universities achieve their missions. Gifts fill funding gaps to provide financial aid that equalises access to college and enables scientists to undertake transformative research. When it comes from corporations and foundations, however, philanthropy is often fraught with administrative challenges between the departments tasked with overseeing this support, typically university advancement and sponsored programmes. Academic administrators in the Corporate and Foundation Relations offices at three State University of New York (SUNY) research centres set out to address the complex issues between university advancement and sponsored programmes, the pre-award arm of university research. Due to intricacies in each other’s goals, objectives, methods, processes and measures for success, the departments often have misaligned functions and services that can hamper the growth of philanthropic support from corporate and foundation sources. This paper analyses the areas of management/structure, policy/protocol and engagement/outreach and discuss current challenges, best practices and pathways for solutions.

The US Higher Education System - Drivers of Excellence

US universities are not only acting as vehicles for educating the people for carrying out roles in the American economy but also as engines for the nation’s growth. They are expected to conserve the knowledge accumulated by the past, impart that knowledge to students, and contribute to the development of new knowledge of all kinds. Universities are expected to utilize their vast knowledge pool to conduct research and develop solutions to myriad issues. For this purpose, the vehicle of public funding is used to channelize the research efforts towards issues of importance to the US economy. University administrators too place enormous importance on such research grants and may factor the grants in faculty tenure, promotion and salary increment decisions. Apart from this public funding of research, the federal and state governments have been liberally providing undergraduate scholarships and graduate teaching and research fellowships to develop a scientific manpower pool in the country. The other major driver for excellence in the US Higher Education System is the continuing quest for high faculty quality and productivity. Faculty quality is ensured through conscious interventions during the selection, confirmation, promotions and salary reviews.

Study of Asian RDR based on re3data

PurposeRDR has become an essential academic infrastructure in an atmosphere that facilitates the openness of research output granted by public research funds. This study aims to understand operational status of 152 Asian data repositories on re3data and cluster repositories into four groups according to their operational status. In addition, identify the main subject areas of RDRs in Asian countries and try to understand what topic correlations exist between data archived in Asian countries.Design/methodology/approachThis study extracts metadata from re3data and analyzes it in various ways to grasp the current status of research data repositories in Asian countries. The author clusters the repositories into four groups using hierarchical cluster analysis according to the level of operation. In addition, for identifying the main subject areas of RDRs in Asian countries, extracted the keywords of the subject field assigned to the each repository, and Pathfinder Network (PFNET) analysis is performed.FindingsAbout 70 per cent of the Asian-country repositories are those where licenses or policies are declared but not granted permanent identifiers and international-level certification. As a result of the subject domain analysis, eight clusters are formed centering on life sciences and natural sciences.Originality/valueThe research output in developing countries, especially non-English-speaking countries, tends not to be smoothly circulated in the international community due to the immaturity of the open-access culture, as well as linguistic and technical problems. This study has value, in that it investigates the status of Asian countries’ research data management and global distribution infrastructure in global open-science trends.

Pedagogy and public-funded research: an exploratory study of skills in digital humanities projects

PurposePublic-funded research in digital humanities (DH) enhances institutional and individual research missions and contributes open data to a growing base of globally networked knowledge. The Digging into Data 3 challenge (DID3) (2014–2016) is an international, interdisciplinary and collaborative grant initiative, and the purpose of this paper is to explore skills that faculty and students brought to projects and others they acquired and shared on collaborative teams.Design/methodology/approachRooted in the naturalistic paradigm, this qualitative case study centers on semi-structured interviews with 53 participants on 11 of the 14 DID3 projects. Documentary evidence complements empirical evidence; analysis is constructivist and grounded.FindingsHailing from diverse academic research institutions, centers and repositories, participants brought 20 types of discipline-based or interdisciplinary expertise to DID3 projects. But they reported acquiring or refining 27 other skills during their project work. While most are data-related, complementary programming, management and analytical skills push disciplinary expertise toward new frontiers. Project-based learning and pedagogy function symbiotically; participants therefore advocate for aligning problem-solving skills with pedagogical objectives at home institutions to prepare for public-funded DH projects. A modified content analysis juxtaposes DID3 skills with those advanced in 23 recent DH syllabi to identify commonalities and gaps.Originality/valuePedagogy has an important yet under-researched and underdeveloped role in public-funded DH research.

PNS172 COMPARISON OF CURRENT AND PREFERRED STATUS OF HTA IMPLEMENTATION IN JORDAN

To describe the current HTA practice in Jordan and to map the preferred status HTA direction in Jordan based on preferences of multi-stakeholders. An international scorecard to design HTA roadmaps in middle-income countries was developed in 2016 (Kaló, et al., 2016). The survey was administered among different stakeholders of public and private sectors in Jordan. Participants were recruited based on snow ball technique. Respondents’ opinion on current and preferred status of HTA implementation are aggregated in eight domains: capacity building, HTA funding, legislation on HTA, scope of HTA implementation, decision criteria, quality and transparency of HTA implementation, use of local data, and international collaboration. Overall 22 (73%) received scorecards were considered valid; 14 (64%) from public sector and 8 (36%) from private sector. 76% of respondents reported that currently Jordan invest more in project-based HTA trainings. Nevertheless, graduate and postgraduate HTA trainings are required in the long-term according to 95% of respondents. Jordan does not allocate sufficient financial resources for HTA implementation, and so increased public funding for HTA research and critical appraisal was preferred by 81% and 77% of survey participants, respectively. 45% of respondents mentioned that several HTA agencies would be the preferred future structure to boost HTA implementation. 59% of respondents indicated that soft thresholds could be used as a tool in the future to guide decision makers, vs 23% prefer applying hard thresholds as a rule. 82% of respondents stated that local data should be mandatory in HTA, and when collection of local data is not feasible and not efficient, transferability consideration is a must. Currently, HTA input to pharmaceutical reimbursement decisions in Jordan are mainly based on results from other countries without considering transferability on most cases if any; therefore, policy makers should facilitate advancement of local evidence in policy decisions.

Reduced IL-2 response from peripheral blood mononuclear cells exposed to bacteria at 6 months of age is associated with elevated total-IgE and allergic rhinitis during the first 7 years of life.

BackgroundAutoimmunity and allergy have been associated with decreased number and function of regulatory T-cells (Tregs) and low interleukin-2 (IL-2) levels. We aimed to investigate if the release of IL-2 from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) stimulated with pathogenic airway bacteria was associated with development of allergy-outcomes in early childhood.MethodsPBMCs were isolated at age 6 months in 331 infants from the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood 2000 (COPSAC2000) mother-child cohort, and subsequently stimulated with H. influenzae, M. catarrhalis and S. pneumoniae in in vitro cultures. Levels of cytokines (IL-2, IL-10, IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-5, IL-13 and IL-17A) were determined in the supernatant by electrochemiluminescence immunoassays. The immune profiles were analyzed for association with development of total-IgE, allergic sensitization and rhinitis during the first 7 years of life using regression models and principal component analysis (PCA).FindingsAn attenuated IL-2 response to stimulation with H. influenzae (p = 0∙011) and M. catarrhalis (p = 0∙027) was associated with elevated total-IgE at age 7, which was confirmed in a multivariate PCA model including all cytokine measurements (PC2, p = 0∙032). An immune profile with both reduced IL-2 and elevated IL-5 was associated with increased risk of allergic rhinitis (PC3, p = 0∙038). We found no associations with development of allergic sensitization.InterpretationA reduced IL-2 response from PBMCs exposed to common pathogenic airway bacteria at age 6 months was associated with elevated total-IgE and allergic rhinitis during the first 7 years of life. These findings suggest that suppressed Treg activity in early life may herald onset of allergy in early childhood, which could be a target for low-dose IL-2 trials in the future.FundCOPSAC is funded by private and public research funds all listed on www.copsac.com.

Surgical Management of the Patient Living with Autism

Importance: The CDC estimates that 1 in 59 children currently born are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Increased public awareness and research funding for ASD have lead to scientific advances as well as changes in medical management. While the challenges of treating those living with ASD are becoming increasingly well described in the medical, psychological, and nursing literature; much less is known on how to effectively plan for and manage treatment for those living with ASD who need surgical intervention. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate the best care strategies for surgical patients living with ASD and to provide recommendations on how to apply those strategies into clinical practice. Conclusions and Relevance: Despite the very high prevalence of ASD in our society, there remains significant deficiency of previous research on the surgical management of these patients. The wide spectrum of symptoms associated with ASD pose unique challenges for the surgical management of these patients and may complicate even “routine” procedures. Early contact with the patient, family,and/or caregivers is the best way to facilitate an understanding of the patient’s needs and effectively develop a plan of care. Strategies including identifying patterns of behavior and triggers for anxiety, soothing mechanisms, performing surgery as the first case in the morning, and completing preoperative paperwork prior to surgery should be utilized when treating the individual with ASD to ensure that they return to their normal routine as soon as possible. Familiarizing healthcare providers on the treatment, appropriate interventions, and services for those living with autism will become even more important as the extremely large number of children diagnosed with autism grow up into adults with increased needs for surgical services.

India Research Management Initiative (IRMI) - an initiative for building research capacity in India.

Research and innovation are growing in India with significant investments being made towards institutions, researchers and research infrastructure.Although still under 1% of GDP, funding for science and technology in India has increased each year for over two decades. There is also increasing realization that public funding for research should be supplemented with that from industry and philanthropy. Like their counterparts worldwide, Indian researchers require access to professional research management support at their institutions to fully leverage emerging scientific opportunities and collaborations. However, there are currently significantgaps in the research management support available to these researchers and this has implications for research in India. The India Research Management Initiative (IRMI) was launched by the Wellcome Trust/DBT (Department of Biotechnology, Government of India) India Alliance (hereafter India Alliance) in February 2018 to narrow these gaps. A 12-month pilot phase has enabled conversations across multiple stakeholders. In this Open Letter, we share some insights from the IRMI pilot phase, which could aid systemic development and scaling up of research management as a professional support service across India. We anticipate these will stimulate dialogue and guide future policy and interventions towards building robust research and innovation ecosystems in India.

Public Health, HIV Care and Prevention, Human Rights and Democracy at a Crossroad in Brazil.

On January 2019, Brazil's new far-right president Jair Bolsonaro was sworn into office. Bolsonaro's administration supports downsizing the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), while increasing the size of the private health sector. The new administration might leave millions of Brazilians without medical care, including hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS. Bolsonaro's administration, allied with a highly conservative Congress and sharp decreases in federal funding for public health, education and research, could jeopardize key health and human rights strategies focused on women, LGBTQ + individuals, Indigenous populations, and people living with HIV/AIDS.

What characterises funded biomedical research? Evidence from a basic and a clinical domain

Improving our knowledge about funding patterns in different research domains and how funding contributes to research is a matter of great interest for funders and policymakers. This paper aims to (a) compare the funding patterns of two biomedical domains that differ in their basic versus clinical nature, and (b) to elucidate the factors that influence the presence of funding. To do so, we draw on the scientific output of Spain-based researchers in the Virology (basic) and Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems (clinical) domains as covered by the Web of Science database. Funding rate, public versus private funding source, and national versus foreign origin of the funds are examined through an analysis of funding acknowledgements in published papers. The relationship between funding and different bibliometric indicators such as impact, collaboration, basic or clinical research level, and authors’ institutional sector is scrutinised. Funded studies tend to have higher impact and are more likely to have foreign partners, findings which are aligned with the objectives pursued by public funding agencies. Clinical research and research done in hospital settings are less likely to be funded. The likelihood of funding increases with the number of institutions in the clinical domain but not in the basic one. Although collaboration is fostered by public research agencies and funding may enhance the establishment of collaborative links among researchers, the likelihood of being funded does not always increase with the number of institutions, because other factors such as the type of institution and the clinical or basic nature of the research have a significant moderating effect.

Open+: Versioning Open Social Scholarship

Advocates of the Open Access (OA) movement have been fighting for free and unfettered access to research output since the early 1990s. Open access is a crucial element of a fair, efficient scholarly communication system where all are able to find, interpret, and use the results of publicly-funded research. Universal open access is more possible now than ever before, thanks to networked technologies and the development of open scholarship policies. But what happens after access to research is provided? In this paper I argue that versioning scholarship across varying modes and formats would move scholarly communication from a straightforward open access system to a more engaging environment for multiple communities.

India Research Management Initiative (IRMI) - an initiative for building research capacity in India.

Research and innovation are growing in India with significant investments being made towards institutions, researchers and research infrastructure.Although still under 1% of GDP, funding for science and technology in India has increased each year for over two decades. There is also increasing realization that public funding for research should be supplemented with that from industry and philanthropy. Like their counterparts worldwide, Indian researchers require access to professional research management support at their institutions to fully leverage emerging scientific opportunities and collaborations. However, there are currently significantgaps in the research management support available to these researchers and this has implications for research in India. The India Research Management Initiative (IRMI) was launched by the Wellcome Trust/DBT (Department of Biotechnology, Government of India) India Alliance (hereafter India Alliance) in February 2018 to narrow these gaps. A 12-month pilot phase has enabled conversations across multiple stakeholders. In this Open Letter, we share some insights from the IRMI pilot phase, which could aid systemic development and scaling up of research management as a professional support service across India. We anticipate these will stimulate dialogue and guide future policy and interventions towards building robust research and innovation ecosystems in India.

National health problems and useful knowledge: lessons from public funding of diabetes research in Mexico

ABSTRACTDiabetes Mellitus has become an urgent national health problem in Mexico. We would expect knowledge production, particularly when is publicly funded, to be oriented towards the generation of useful applications and to collaborate in the solution of this disease. In this paper, we aim at analysing knowledge production for diabetes in terms of the Pasteur's quadrant, which consist of two axes: (i) ‘consideration of knowledge use’ and (ii) ‘search for fundamental knowledge’. We organized 303 diabetes projects supported by CONACYT funds to operationalize a structural equation modelling (SEM) that frames diabetes research in Mexico. We found that most of research funds are not devoted to projects with high levels of ‘consideration of knowledge use’; we believe that this is caused by the context of scientific funding in Mexico, which have incentives for basic research and does not count with sufficient mechanisms to orient the use of new scientific knowledge. We outline some policy recommendations. First, incentives should be focused on reorienting the research system towards a greater consideration of knowledge use. Second, the project approval process could also be modified to be more democratic, which the scientific community could discuss and find consensus with other social actors.

Answering a Question Older Than Most Pediatricians: What to Do About Duarte Variant Galactosemia.

* Abbreviations: DG — : Duarte variant galactosemia NBS — : newborn screening In their article “Developmental Outcomes in Duarte Galactosemia” in this issue of Pediatrics , Carlock et al1 report the results of a landmark study in which it was demonstrated that Duarte variant galactosemia (DG) is not associated with an increased risk of developmental abnormalities and does not require dietary treatment. The field has been waiting 50 years for this study, since newborn screening (NBS) for galactosemia began.2 This work can be used to impact clinical care and NBS program planning. It can also be used to teach us important lessons about the public funding of research into clinical outcomes and the importance of data-driven clinical decision-making. The study was well designed and robustly powered to answer the questions asked, and the results clearly reveal through careful neuropsychological testing that no significant developmental differences are seen in children with this biochemically mild variant of galactosemia, compared with controls. The immediate implication of this for health care providers is obvious; dietary therapy, which always includes stopping breastfeeding, is not indicated for infants … Address correspondence to Shawn E. McCandless, MD, Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Denver AMC, 13121 E 17th Ave, L-28 Fourth Floor, MS 8400, Aurora, CO 80045. E-mail: shawn.mccandless{at}ucdenver.edu

Open Access Publishing in India: Coverage, Relevance, and Future Perspectives.

Open access (OA) publishing is a recent phenomenon in scientific publishing, enabling free access to knowledge worldwide. In the Indian context, OA to science has been facilitated by government-funded repositories of student and doctoral theses, and many Indian society journals are published with platinum OA. The proportion of OA publications from India is significant in a global context, and Indian journals are increasingly available on OA repositories such as Pubmed Central, and Directory of Open Access Journals. However, OA in India faces numerous challenges, including low-quality or predatory OA journals, and the paucity of funds to afford gold OA publication charges. There is a need to increase awareness amongst Indian academics regarding publication practices, including OA, and its potential benefits, and utilize this modality of publication whenever feasible, as in publicly-funded research, or when platinum OA is available, while avoiding falling prey to poor quality OA journals.

Early cost-effectiveness modeling for better decisions in public research investment of personalized medicine technologies.

Millions of dollars are spent on the development of new personalized medicine technologies. While these research costs are often supported by public research funds, many diagnostic tests and biomarkers are not adopted by the healthcare system due to lack of evidence on their cost-effectiveness. We describe a stepwise approach to conducting cost-effectiveness analyses that are performed early in the technology's development process and can help mitigate the potential risks of investment. Decision analytic modeling can identify the key drivers of cost effectiveness and provide minimum criteria that the technology needs to meet for adoption by public and private healthcare systems. A value of information analysis can quantify the added value of conducting more research to provide further evidence for policy decisions. These steps will allow public research funders to make better decisions on their investments to maximize the health benefits and to minimize the number of suboptimal technologies.

Looking back at 2018 and ahead to 2019: Royal Society of Biology News

The year ahead will bring big changes; we will be leaving the EU, there will be a UK spending review with implications for research and education budgets, and there will be further visibility of UKRI's strategy for public research funding in action. Despite all these changes, it will be the people and the science, as always, that will power our community and give us focus.

Paths of Baltic States public research funding 1989–2010: Between institutional heritage and internationalisation

Paths of Baltic States public research funding 1989–2010: Between institutional heritage and internationalisation