Thursday, April 12, 2018

Philanthropic Sector Evolving Under Trump Administration, Study Finds

Philanthropy News Digest
April 12, 2018

The flexibility, nimbleness, and willingness to collaborate demonstrated by the philanthropic sector over the past year in response to a rapidly changing policy environment could serve as a model for the sector going forward, a report from the TCC Group finds.
Based on interviews with nearly thirty leaders of philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs), the report, (Un)precedented: Philanthropy Takes Action in the First Year of a New Political Reality, found that in the first year of the Trump administration, PSOs and funder collaboratives were called on to keep funders well informed of policy changes. To that end, PSOs have played a critical role in enabling funder learning, dialogue, and action, and have helped accelerate important funder conversations in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion; the need to think beyond issue silos; and the foundational benefits of creating space for dialogue across political and ideological divides through nonpartisan civic engagement.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

There’s No I In Team: Assessing Impact of Teams Receiving NIH Funding

NIH Extramural Nexus
Mike Lauer
April 5, 2018


Almost 11 years ago, Stefan Duchy, Benjamin Jones, and Brian Uzzi (all of Northwestern University) published an article in Science on "The Increasing Dominance of Team in Production of Knowledge." They analyzed nearly 20 million papers published over 5 decades and 2.1 million patents and found that across all fields the number of authors per paper (or patent) steadily increased, that teams were coming to dominate individual efforts, and that teams produced more highly cited research.

In a Science review paper published a few weeks ago, Santo Fortunato and colleagues offered an overview of the "Science of Science." One of their key messages was that “Research is shifting to teams, so engaging in collaboration is beneficial.”