Knowledge recency to the birth of Nobel Prize-winning articles: Gender, career stage, and country

Disparities in funding for Nobel Prize awards in medicine and physiology across nationalities, races, and gender

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine has been awarded to numerous individuals for their outstanding contributions. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the Nobel Prize recipients, focusing on gender, race, and nationality. We observe that an alarming disparity emerges when we examine the underrepresentation of Black scientists among Nobel laureates. Furthermore, trends in nationalities show how Americans make up the majority of Nobel Prize winners, while there is a noticeable lack of gender and racial minority winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Together, this highlights the importance of diversity and inclusion in scientific achievement. We offer suggestions and techniques, including funding opportunities and expanding nominators, to improve the gender, racial, and geographical diversity of Nobel Prizes.

Expedited editorial decision in COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic and its resultant lockdowns have interrupted the way scientists live and work. This nevertheless caused an unforeseen impact of COVID-19: the pandemic substantially increased editorial speed. Here, we causally identify the impact of the pandemic on the editorial decision time, based on a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity (RD) design that compares (N = 339,199) papers submitted in the lead-up to and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that editors make acceptance decisions significantly quicker after the pandemic, reducing the editorial decision time of revised papers by 8.9 days on average. The pandemic, however, has unequal impacts on editors. The results reveal a larger reduction in editorial decision time for editors of high-tier journals, in the field of social science, or with busy work schedules. Finally, our findings also allude to the potential for the increase of editorial speed, and will stimulate policy changes in scientific enterprises that strive for accelerated publishing.

Exploring the clinical translation intensity of papers published by the world's top scientists in basic medicine

The extent to which basic medical research is translated into clinical practice is a topic of interest to all stakeholders. In this study, we assessed the clinical translation intensity of papers published by scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the field of basic medicine (Lasker Prize winners for Basic Medical Research). Approximate Potential for Translation (APT), Translational science scores (TS), and Citations by clinical research (Cited by Clin.) were analyzed as dependent variables. A traditional citation indicator was used as a reference (relative citation ratio, RCR). In order to examine the correlation between these different indicators and the characteristics of the paper, the author, and the institution. we used nonparametric tests, Spearman correlations, ordinal least squares regressions (OLS), quantile regressions, and zero-inflated negative binomial regression methods. We found that among the basic medical research papers published by Lasker Basic Medicine Award winners, (1) 20% are cited by clinical research; 11.6% of the papers were more valuable for clinical research than basic research; 12.8% have a probability of more than 50% to be cited in future clinical studies; (2) Spearman correlations were conducted among APT, TS, Cited by Clin., RCR, and all of the other continuous variables. There is a significant, positive, low to moderate correlation between APT, TS, and Cited by Clin (APT and TS: r = 0.549, p < 0.01; APT and Cited by Clin: r = 0.530, p < 0.01; TS and Cited by Clin: r = 0.383, p < 0.01). However, the relationship between RCR and the three indicators of clinical translation intensity was not consistent. APT was positively correlated with RCR (r = 0.553, p < 0.01). Cited by Clin. is weakly positively correlated with RCR (r = 0.381, p < 0.01). There is almost no correlation between TS and RCR (r = 0.184, p < 0.01). (3) Publication age, primary research paper, multidisciplinary science, number of disciplines, authors, institutions, funded projects, references, length of the title, length of paper, physical age, gender, nationality, institutional type, Nobel Prize have a significant relationship with 1 to 3 types of clinical translation intensity measures. In a sample of basic medical research papers published by the world's top scientists in basic medicine, we came to the following conclusions: the three indicators, APT, TS and Cited by Clin., measured the clinical translation intensity of the papers from different perspectives. They are both related to each other and have their own characteristics. In a sample of basic medical research papers published by the world's top scientists in basic medicine, characteristics at the paper, winner, and institution level significantly correlated with the measures of clinical translation intensity. Gender effect on the clinical translation intensity of papers was confirmed. Traditional citation-based indicators and translational-focused indicators measure academic impact and clinical impact respectively. There is a certain degree of disconnect between them. Two types of indicators should be used in combination in future assessments of basic medical research.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11192-023-04634-4.

Using context-dependent DEA to analyze the efficiency of highly funded scientists in China

Funding inputs and research outputs have always been two central issues in the science of science. In recent decades, research funding plays an increasingly important role in scientific research. Thus, it is progressively significant for management authorities to measure the research efficiency of highly funded scientists, which can be helpful for them to make effective policies. However, few researchers use quantitative analysis to study these issues. To promote the research in this field, we begin with collecting a dataset. This dataset contains research funding and other information from 345 highly funded scientists in Mainland China. Next, we use the dataset to measure the efficiency of highly funded scientists based on the data envelopment analysis. In this way, highly funded scientists are placed into several levels according to their research inputs and outputs. We also give their attractiveness and progress scores compared to other grades. The learning path for less efficient scientists is also provided. We find that highly funded scientists have relatively high efficiency in three kinds of projects, such as the Major Research Plan. Besides, the career length and career start year are demonstrated to have a limited impact on the highly funded scientists. These patterns are beneficial for the development of the scientific community and management authorities to make policies.