Making time for science

Barham, Bradford L.; Foltz, Jeremy D.; Prager, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.respol.2013.08.007

Cited by 35 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Increasing regulatory requirements over the last half-century-generally in the interest of public safety-have undoubtedly placed larger financial and temporal burdens on the development of new therapies. Furthermore, as scientists now spend nearly half of their time on administrative tasks, they are able to devote less time to research and training responsibilities (21). Other economic factors, such as the recent proliferation of patent trolls (22), may have also contributed to a stifling of biomedical innovation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing disparities between resource inputs and outcomes, as measured by certain health deliverables, in biomedical research

Bowen

Casadevall

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Society makes substantial investments in biomedical research, searching for ways to better human health. The product of this research is principally information published in scientific journals. Continued investment in science relies on society’s confidence in the accuracy, honesty, and utility of research results. A recent focus on productivity has dominated the competitive evaluation of scientists, creating incentives to maximize publication numbers, citation counts, and publications in high-impact journals. Some studies have also suggested a decreasing quality in the published literature. The efficiency of society’s investments in biomedical research, in terms of improved health outcomes, has not been studied. We show that biomedical research outcomes over the last five decades, as estimated by both life expectancy and New Molecular Entities approved by the Food and Drug Administration, have remained relatively constant despite rising resource inputs and scientific knowledge. Research investments by the National Institutes of Health over this time correlate with publication and author numbers but not with the numerical development of novel therapeutics. We consider several possibilities for the growing input-outcome disparity including the prior elimination of easier research questions, increasing specialization, overreliance on reductionism, a disproportionate emphasis on scientific outputs, and other negative pressures on the scientific enterprise. Monitoring the efficiency of research investments in producing positive societal outcomes may be a useful mechanism for weighing the efficacy of reforms to the scientific enterprise. Understanding the causes of the increasing input-outcome disparity in biomedical research may improve society’s confidence in science and provide support for growing future research investments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing disparities between resource inputs and outcomes, as measured by certain health deliverables, in biomedical research

Bowen

Casadevall

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Van de Ven et al (1984) observed that less successful entrepreneurs tended to spend more time on external matters such as customers and networks in comparison to time allocated to internal activities. Barham et al (2014) observe that time for research is a crucial determinant of academic productivity. However, to date there has been relatively limited consideration with regards to how academic researchers, and more specifically research leaders or PIs, allocate their time, as Harman (2001) observes: 'Little is known how academics in different universities actually make decision about the allocation of time.'…”

Section: Pis Entrepreneurs and The Allocation Of Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other research measures research time allocation to administration activities by biotechnology scientists to be in the 30-40% range (Rabinow, 1997;Kenney, 1986). Longitudinal research by Barham et al (2014) analyses the evolution of the research-administration time balance in Tier 1 US universities from 1975 to 2005. This research shows a 20% decline in time spent on research and a doubling of time spent on administration.…”

Section: Pis Entrepreneurs and The Allocation Of Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Publicly funded principal investigators allocation of time for public sector entrepreneurship activities

et al. 2016

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In this paper we explore the allocation of time of publicly funded principal investigators (PIs) for public sector entrepreneurship activities. We examine their allocation of time in general to research activities and specifically at a project level in relation to the type of research, knowledge transfer activity, project impact, deliberate technology transfer strategy and boundary spanning activities using data from a full population survey of publicly funded PIs in Ireland in science, engineering and technology across national and European research programmes. We find that PIs who spend more time on general research related activities allocated a higher proportion of time to technology transfer activities and that PIs who spend more time on technology activities engaged more in end of project reports and collaborative research with industry. In relation to the importance placed on impact criteria, PIs who spend more time on research placed more importance on technology and market impacts than those spending less time on research related activities. Furthermore, PIs who spend more time on technology transfer placed greater value on technology transfer, market and economic impact. We find projects of PIs spending more time on research related activities had a greater impact on technology transfer and a greater market impact, according to the assessment of respondents, than the projects of PIs spending less time on research activities. Finally, with respect to boundary spanning activities we find PIs spending more time on research engaged more in direct consultation with industry end-users and direct consultation with their technology transfer office at the pre-proposal stage of their selected project and they had significantly larger than average amount of industry partners. We conclude our analysis by considering the implications for public sector entrepreneurship.

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“…9 Research time changes are statistically significant across almost all subgroups. See Barham, Foltz, and Prager (2014) for a detailed disaggregation and discussion of these trends.…”

Section: Key Descriptive Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These findings on research productivity dynamics are consistent with the Agrawal and Goldfarb (2008) study of the impacts of the expansion of the internet and computational opportunities on U.S. faculty research performance in middletier research institutions. A second is that while most other key research inputs have stayed relatively constant (with some minor fluctuations), computational resources have increased and faculty "time for science" has declined significantly over time across almost all cohorts (Barham, Foltz, and Prager 2014). The main explanation for this decline in time for science has been a commensurate expansion in the proportion of time that faculty spend on administrative duties, both general ones and those related to pre-and post-grant responsibilities.…”

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confidence: 99%

Making Time for Agricultural and Life Science Research: Technical Change and Productivity Gains

Prager

Foltz

Barham

2014

American J Agri Economics

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This work analyzes the research productivity of agricultural and life science faculty in U.S. Land Grant research universities from 1975 to 2005. Production function estimations that control for inputs and demographic characteristics reveal significant improvements after 1980 in faculty research productivity per unit time, especially in the non‐top ten universities. Because, however, time available to faculty for research has decreased substantially in the past three decades, overall journal article output per faculty did not increase after the 1980s. Our findings demonstrate large productivity increases but raise concerns about the optimal allocation of faculty time.

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Making time for science

Cited by 35 publications

References 13 publications

Increasing disparities between resource inputs and outcomes, as measured by certain health deliverables, in biomedical research

Increasing disparities between resource inputs and outcomes, as measured by certain health deliverables, in biomedical research

Publicly funded principal investigators allocation of time for public sector entrepreneurship activities

Making Time for Agricultural and Life Science Research: Technical Change and Productivity Gains

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