Selection mechanisms underlying high impact biomedical research--a qualitative analysis and causal model.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although scientific innovation has been a long-standing topic of interest
for historians, philosophers and cognitive scientists, few studies in biomedical research
have examined from researchers' perspectives how high impact publications are developed
and why they are consistently produced by a small group of researchers. Our objective
was therefore to interview a group of researchers with a track record of high impact
publications to explore what mechanism they believe contribute to the generation of
high impact publications. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Researchers were located
in universities all over the globe and interviews were conducted by phone. All interviews
were transcribed using standard qualitative methods. A Grounded Theory approach was
used to code each transcript, later aggregating concept and categories into overarching
explanation model. The model was then translated into a System Dynamics mathematical
model to represent its structure and behavior. Five emerging themes were found in
our study. First, researchers used heuristics or rules of thumb that came naturally
to them. Second, these heuristics were reinforced by positive feedback from their
peers and mentors. Third, good communication skills allowed researchers to provide
feedback to their peers, thus closing a positive feedback loop. Fourth, researchers
exhibited a number of psychological attributes such as curiosity or open-mindedness
that constantly motivated them, even when faced with discouraging situations. Fifth,
the system is dominated by randomness and serendipity and is far from a linear and
predictable environment. Some researchers, however, took advantage of this randomness
by incorporating mechanisms that would allow them to benefit from random findings.
The aggregation of these themes into a policy model represented the overall expected
behavior of publications and their impact achieved by high impact researchers. CONCLUSIONS:
The proposed selection mechanism provides insights that can be translated into research
coaching programs as well as research policy models to optimize the introduction of
high impact research at a broad scale among institutional and governmental agencies.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/4538Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1371/journal.pone.0010535Publication Info
Zelko, Hilary; Zammar, Guilherme Roberto; Bonilauri Ferreira, Ana Paula; Phadtare,
Amruta; Shah, Jatin; & Pietrobon, Ricardo (2010). Selection mechanisms underlying high impact biomedical research--a qualitative analysis
and causal model. PloS one, 5(5). pp. e10535. 10.1371/journal.pone.0010535. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/4538.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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