Office of Extramural Research
Mike Lauer
March 2, 2016
In a recent PNAS commentary,
Daniel Shapiro and Kent Vrana of Pennsylvania State University, argue that
“Celebrating R and D expenditures badly misses the point.” Instead of focusing
on how much money is spent, the research enterprise should instead focus on its
outcomes – its discoveries that advance knowledge and lead to improvements in
health.
Of
course, as we’ve
noted before, measuring research impact is hard, and there is no gold standard.
But for now, let’s take a look at one measure of productivity, namely the
publication of highly-cited papers. Some in the research community suggest that
a research paper citation is a nod to the impact and significance of the
findings reported in that paper – in other words, more highly-cited papers are
indicative of highly regarded and impactful research.
