What happens within the university-based research enterprise when a federal funding agency abruptly changes research grant funding levels, up or down? We use simple difference equation models to show that an apparently modest increase or decrease in funding levels can have dramatic effects on researchers, graduate students, postdocs, and the overall research enterprise. The amplified effect is ...

PURPOSE Few systematic studies have focused on determinants of cumulative research funding (CRF), a measure of research productivity among career researchers world-wide. Using researchers funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), this exploratory study quantifies the association between CIHR-investigator roles and CRF obtained from the CIHR. METHODS CIHR grants and awards ...

In the last issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Medical Toxicology, Dr. Reza Afshari raised the question of what are the best scientific areas of focus of toxicology for “low income countries and how such research might be achieved (1). South-south collaboration, in which developing countries share resources, was one of the proposed solutions. Rather than limit discussion to “low income” coun...

BACKGROUND Little is known about who the main public and philanthropic funders of health research are globally, what they fund and how they decide what gets funded. This study aims to identify the 10 largest public and philanthropic health research funding organizations in the world, to report on what they fund, and on how they distribute their funds. METHODS The world's key health research f...