Reviews Show Research, Growth Fueled by EU Biomedical Initiatives

An analysis of journal papers published by participants in Europe’s Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) shows the €3.3 billion (US$3.6 billion) public/private partnership is now turning out high volumes of high-quality research.

From a slow start when the program first got off the ground in 2009, IMI projects have generated 1,134 journal papers, with the rate of publication increasing by 53 percent over 2013-2014.

The quality of that research, as measured by the impact factor of the journals in which it appears and the number of times it is cited, has been maintained as the output has grown. As a “young” funding body, IMI claims research it backs already stands shoulder to shoulder with that of leading, long-established funders like the UK medical charity Wellcome Trust and the UK Medical Research Council.

IMI said the analysis also highlights the collaborative nature of its projects, noting that 59 percent of all papers include authors from across big pharma, small- and medium-sized enterprises, patients’ groups and academic institutions, while 53 percent include authors from more than one country. Papers reporting results of cross-sector projects are more highly cited than those authored by researchers from a single sector.

Overall, IMI research has a citation impact of 2.19, which is almost twice the European average of 1.1 and more than twice the world average of 1. Almost a quarter of IMI papers are highly cited, meaning they are in the top 10 percent of publications.

IMI published the analysis as it prepares next month to welcome a new executive director, Pierre Meulein, who may find that useful ammunition in addressing claims that the program amounts to a taxpayer subsidy for pharmaceutical industry R&D. (See BioWorld Today, July 9, 2015.)

However, from that perspective a commentary on the bibliometric data by former executive director of IMI, Michel Goldman, who stepped down in December, could be construed in two ways. Writing in Nature Biotechnology, Goldman said the analysis “provides evidence of the positive impact of an industry agenda on the output of collaborative noncompetitive research.”

For the critics, that is further fuel for their contention that with the research topics funded through IMI being nominated by pharma companies, the program lacks objectivity and transparency.

Under Goldman’s stewardship, IMI conducted regular bibliometric reviews of the impact of its research. In his commentary, Goldman suggests that is something of a blunt instrument for research projects involving many different collaborators, saying “classic bibliometrics is not suited to measure and incentivize collaboration, which is a key aspect that consortia are leveraging.”

To address that shortcoming, Goldman suggests new metrics are needed to assess the interdisciplinary nature of IMI projects, which look at citation patterns across disciplines. He also proposes the use of metrics that reflect the expectations and interests of each stakeholder group, saying assessment of the impact of research consortia should be based on a framework of measurements that take in criteria of relevance to private and corporate funders.

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