Understanding the impact of public policy on cancer research: A bibliometric approach

doi:10.1016/j.ejca.2009.12.020

European Journal of Cancer

Volume 46, Issue 5, March 2010, Pages 912-919

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejca.2009.12.020 Get rights and content

Abstract

With global spend on cancer research from the public sector now in excess of 14 billion euro, as well as the increasing burden of disease in market economies and low-middle income countries through changing demographics (ageing and population growth) cancer is now one of the most complex and global public policy issues. Using novel bibliometrics we have sought to investigate changes in research activity (total output), relative commitment and collaborations between countries/regions with similar healthcare and population and development parameters – United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and Sweden – to assess the utility of this policy research approach by analysing two different cohorts (1995–1999 and 2000–2004) to study the impact of changes on research publications as a surrogate for overall research activity.

Section snippets

Introduction: assessing the impact of public policy on cancer research activity

In 1937 James Ewing asked, in a Science editorial, whether public interest in cancer was intelligent and was being addressed along sound lines, or whether it was largely emotional and uncritical, and, of course, he could have added politicised.¹ Some 70 years later cancer is arguably one of the most extensive biomedical research domains, spanning the whole public and private sector(s) with annual global public spend now in excess of 14 billion euros.² The questions James Ewing proposed thus

Creation of the filter

Papers in cancer research (restricted to articles and reviews) were selected from the SCI by means of a ‘filter’ consisting of lists of specialist journals and title keywords. This filter, designated ONCOL, was designed by Dr. Lesley Walker, and revised by Dr. Lynne Davies, both of Cancer Research UK (formerly with the Cancer Research Campaign, CRC); it has a specificity (precision, p) of 0.95 and a sensitivity (recall, r) of 0.90, so that its calibration factor is p/r = 1.06. This means that the

Results

Sweden is one of the most research active countries in the world with a high ratio of researchers and spend (as a% of GDP) in comparison to the other countries in this analysis.

Sweden also has nearly double the output per million of population in cancer research publications compared to Canada, Germany and France. Of the four UK devolved regions Scotland is the most research-productive. Germany has seen the biggest rise in outputs (nearly 20%) with small increases by both Canada and Wales

Discussion

Our previous work has focused on understanding supra-national macro-trends in funding cancer research activity², the move to nation-state level assessment is both novel and challenging. Quantitative methods are being used increasingly in research evaluation – at the national level, institutional level and even at individual level, though the latter application is particularly difficult. They are usually based on the numbers and other parameters of papers in the peer-reviewed serial literature.

Funding

European Cancer Research Managers Foundation (RS) and NIHR Biomedical Research Centres grant (ADP).

Contributors

R.S. initiated this study. G.L. was responsible for data collection, database design and collation of data. G.L. was involved in the analysis of the data. G.L., A.P., M.M., G.Mc.V. and R.S. were involved in its interpretation and the writing of this paper. R.S. and G.L. are the guarantors.

Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

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Understanding the impact of public policy on cancer research: A bibliometric approach

Abstract

Section snippets

Introduction: assessing the impact of public policy on cancer research activity

Creation of the filter

Results

Discussion

Funding

Contributors

Conflict of interest statement

Mol Oncol

Social Sci Med

Eur J Cancer

Mol Oncol

Clin Radiol

Res Policy

Mol Oncol

Eur J Cancer

Physica A