Tuesday 2 September 2025

Digital Science is pleased to announce that Altmetric, which captures the online attention of research, has introduced a new AI-powered sentiment analysis feature, to provide research teams with deeper insights into the public response and impact of their work on selected social media platforms.

Now available in Altmetric Explorer, Altmetric’s AI-powered Sentiment Analysis has been robustly refined to explore the sentiment towards the use of research, thanks to the work of Digital Science Senior Data Scientist Dr Carlos Areia and Head of Data Insights Mike Taylor, in consultation with the research community.

Mike Taylor said: “Impactful research deserves the best possible insights. Our new Sentiment Analysis feature gives some meaning to numbers, leveraging advanced technology to interpret and visualize the sentiment behind mentions on key social media platforms, and brings the potential to turn raw data into actionable insights for members of the research community.”

Using AI to assign scores to mentions, it was possible to create a spectrum of sentiment for given research outputs. By capturing a whole range of reactions and discourse on social media, sentiment analysis supports research teams to better understand how their work is being received and engaged online across different audiences.

“There are many potential benefits from these new insights, including the opportunity for research teams to refine their approach to research publication, communication and dissemination plans,” Taylor said.

Key Features of Altmetric Sentiment Analysis

• Sentiment Scoring: Automatically assigns a sentiment score to individual social media mentions (ranging from strong negative to strong positive).
• Sentiment Breakdown Charts: Visualize sentiment trends with clear and concise graphical representations. Research teams can quickly identify changes in perception and respond accordingly.
• Filtering by Sentiment: Narrow down results in the Altmetric Explorer by sentiment type, allowing users to focus on specific aspects of discussions most relevant to their strategy or goals.

Amye Kenall, Chief Product Officer, Digital Science, said: “The inclusion of Sentiment Analysis into Altmetric data is an important step in helping users get real insight from Altmetric data, enabling researchers and organizations to understand how their publications are being received, discussed and used. Digital Science is committed to using AI responsibly and ethically in ways that drive more value to our users but also protect the community we serve. We’re pleased to bring this feature to our Altmetric Explorer users.

“Medical affairs professionals, academic researchers, scholarly publishers, and R&D specialists alike can fully explore the ‘how and why’ behind their impact, leveraging these insights to maximize the visibility and effectiveness of their published research.”

About Altmetric

Altmetric is a leading provider of alternative research metrics, helping everyone involved in research gauge the impact of their work. We serve diverse markets including universities, institutions, government, publishers, corporations, and those who fund research. Our powerful technology searches thousands of online sources, revealing where research is being shared and discussed. Teams can use our powerful Altmetric Explorer application to interrogate the data themselves, embed our dynamic ‘badges’ into their webpages, or get expert insights from Altmetric’s consultants. Altmetric is part of the Digital Science group, dedicated to making the research experience simpler and more productive by applying pioneering technology solutions. Find out more at altmetric.com and follow @altmetric on X and @altmetric.com on Bluesky.

About Digital Science

Digital Science is an AI-focused technology company providing innovative solutions to complex challenges faced by researchers, universities, funders, industry and publishers. We work in partnership to advance global research for the benefit of society. Through our brands – Altmetric, Dimensions, Figshare, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, metaphacts, OntoChem, Overleaf, ReadCube, Symplectic, and Writefull – we believe when we solve problems together, we drive progress for all. Visit digital-science.com and follow Digital Science on Bluesky, on X or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact

David Ellis, Press, PR & Social Manager, Digital Science: Mobile +61 447 783 023, d.ellis@digital-science.com

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Tuesday 27 February 2024

Digital Science is pleased to announce that ReadCube, an award-winning leader in literature management and full-text document delivery, has launched a new solution for research-driven organizations – known simply as Literature Review by ReadCube.

Literature Review seamlessly integrates with ReadCube’s premier literature management platform, trusted by over 650 research organizations globally. Known for its best-in-class user experience and robust literature workflows, ReadCube’s newest solution delivers a turnkey end-to-end workflow for teams tasked with monitoring and analyzing published literature related to their company’s drug, device, product, or service.

The current landscape for companies within the pharmaceutical, medical device (MDR), laboratory-developed tests (LDT), in-vitro diagnostics (IVD), and health technology assessment (HTA) sectors has never been more complex. The rapid growth in the volume of scientific and medical publications, coupled with the escalation of regulatory standards across major global markets, including the United States, the European Union, and other international jurisdictions, adds layers of complexity to an already daunting set of tasks. This has prompted teams to critically assess the inefficiency and risk of error inherent to their long-held SLR processes.

Robert McGrath, ReadCube Founder and CEO, said: “The process of conducting systematic literature reviews has traditionally been both time-consuming and manual, despite being such a crucial step in the research process. We’ve developed Literature Review in close collaboration with key customers, bringing user experience and AI automation capabilities to the forefront in one easy-to-deploy solution. We’re proud to provide a fully integrated solution to solve all-too-common workflow strains.” 

Whether an organization is conducting Safety Reviews and Comparative Effectiveness Research or gathering Competitive Intelligence, Literature Review by ReadCube streamlines SLR activities across business units, industries and departments. This newly integrated solution enables teams to effectively and efficiently navigate the challenges of increasing literature volumes and regulatory demands, ensuring every review is both comprehensive and compliant.

For more information about Literature Review, see this blog post on the ReadCube website, or visit the Literature Review solution page.

About ReadCube

Part of Digital Science, ReadCube is a leader in scalable literature management solutions enhancing research driven teams by transforming  the way scholarly literature is accessed, organized, reviewed, shared and monitored. Information overload and outdated workflows can impede progress and grind innovation to a halt. ReadCube’s adaptive literature management solutions, including the Papers reference manager, have helped thousands of individuals and organizations get back to the breakthrough work that matters most. Visit www.readcube.com and follow ReadCube on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Digital Science

Digital Science is an AI-focused technology company providing innovative solutions to complex challenges faced by researchers, universities, funders, industry and publishers. We work in partnership to advance global research for the benefit of society. Through our brands – Altmetric, Dimensions, Figshare, ReadCube, Symplectic, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, Overleaf, Writefull, OntoChem, Scismic and metaphacts – we believe when we solve problems together, we drive progress for all. Visit www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter/X or on LinkedIn

Media Contact

David Ellis, Press, PR & Social Manager, Digital Science; Mobile +61 447 783 023, d.ellis@digital-science.com

The post ReadCube expands Its award-winning literature management platform with the launch of Literature Review appeared first on Digital Science.

The report on which these Spotlight pieces have been based – Reimagining the Recipe for Research & Innovation by the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) – has received huge coverage since its publication in January, with the “Secret Sauce” report featured in the Financial Times, Nature, Times Higher Education, WonkHE and Research Professional among others, and further news outlet coverage (see Altmetric). Interestingly, what we can see here is the embodiment of the second ingredient identified in the report’s ‘secret sauce’, namely how social science research itself can have an impact on UK policy making. One way this can happen is through coverage of social science research in national, international and industry media.

Cooking up a storm

The AcSS report seeks to elucidate how the UK’s research and innovation (R&I) can improve, which the report argues is through targeted investment in social sciences as a complement to STEM research. The authors – which include Dr Juergen Wastl and Kathryn Weber-Boer from Digital Science – recognize the role social sciences can play to see that the UK’s competencies are maximized when it comes to overall R&I investment.

So what is really meant for the second ingredient to be “critical for good policy development”? Using Dimensions data, the report’s authors can see not only how many publications in different research areas receive funding, but how influential they are by being cited in policy documents in the UK. While many more STEM research projects are funded, around 3% of these end up being cited in policy documents, but for social sciences this rate doubles to 6%. Furthermore, when both STEM and social sciences are included in a funded research project, the rate increases by another 50% again to 7.5%.

In other words, funded research in social science is more likely to influence policy than STEM research in relative terms, and both combined even more so. Furthermore, the ‘translation rate’ from grants into publications and then into policy documents is higher for social science research than for STEM.

An additional impact can be seen in the chart below, which shows the number of policy documents per grant category (on the left of the chart) and the per publication category (in the middle), but with the fields of health sciences and biomedical and clinical sciences removed. What we can see is that policy documents in every category cite grants and publications produced in the others. Perhaps most importantly, nearly half of UK policy documents from 2012–2022 cited on social science-related or joint combined social science grants.

Funded research in social science is more likely to influence policy than STEM research in relative terms, and both combined even more so.

Case study

An example of how this has worked in practice is from the pressing issue of climate change, where the UK-based Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations (CAST) investigates systemic and society-wide transformations that are required to address climate change. By researching and understanding the social transformations that are necessary to develop a low-carbon society, CAST can have a huge impact on affecting the behaviors of citizens, perhaps even more than science-based solutions whose impact might be minimized if not adopted by the population at large.

Next Time

The next ingredient is… Social science underpins smart and responsible innovation.

The post In the spotlight: Social sciences’ second key ingredient for research success appeared first on Digital Science.

For decades, societal barriers have gradually lowered to enable more women to publish academic research and pursue a career in research. In 2021, for instance, women even outnumbered men in the reception of Doctoral degrees at US universities (Perry 2021). In some countries, it is even common for a woman to have a child while doing her PhD (the question being how many, rather than if); suggesting that motherhood and an academic career may be compatible providing the right environment.

Despite constant progress, we know that women have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (Kwon, Yun, and Kang 2023); which had been anticipated a year earlier in a call by researchers to funders and institutions to address the likely fallout  (Davis et al. 2022). So has the pandemic halted or reversed the progress women have made entering academic research?

Global trends from 2000

Kwon et al (2023)’s analysis suggested that mid-career women and those living in less gender equal countries would be the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic – but what about early career researchers? I set out to investigate how the proportion of women in the first publications had changed over time. 

I started the analysis in 2000, using Dimensions.ai data in Google Big Query (GBQ) and Gender API data, which classifies gender from first names, using their probabilities to be used by a man or a woman. Metadata of research articles have changed since the 2000s; authors and journals at the very start of the period often recorded initials of authors, with women more likely to use them in order to hide their gender. If possible, Dimensions algorithms will have consolidated a profile with publications that had initials only and the first name, making it possible to track it in our analysis, but for women at the start of our period, especially those with a short career, it is possible that their gender is under reported. On the other hand, women would often change their name at marriage / divorce, making it impossible to track their profile if they had published before and therefore creating multiple “first publications”. 

During the year 2000, 4.5 million women published their first academic publication, representing 30.2% of observable researchers. By 2021, the percentage of debut works authored by women had increased by a third, reaching 40.3% researchers (17.6 million of women).  This increase can be attributed to a greater percentage of women starting a research career, and to a much lesser extent, the effect could be intensified by our inability to identify women accurately at the start of the period.

But 2022 and 2023 saw a downward trend, respectively to 39.4% and 37.4%, reaching 2013 values. This emerging downward curve signifies a generational shift in reverse from empowering girls and young women in academia to placing obstacles, intentional or not.. 

We know that in and outside of academia, women in countries around the world were affected disproportionately more than men by the COVID-19, but what about the first publications of those starting in academia?

Selected countries

I selected the 20 countries with the highest number of women publishing their first publication over the period 2000-2023. The interactive graph below shows the trend over time, compared to global data presented earlier; double-click on one country to see only that one and progressively add the ones to be compared to.

^{Figure 2. Percentage of women who published their first publication between 2000 and 2023 in the top 20 countries by women’s first publications.}

I then did a deep dive into three continents: Europe, Asia, and America, where countries placed themselves around this average.

European countries

Among the selected countries, the following countries were in Europe: Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, and Sweden. Some European countries (Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden) stayed above or around the average, while the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and Russia* were below average during most of the period. All countries but Portugal observed a downward trend in 2022 and 2023.

* Slavic researchers use their initials more than others, making the determination of their gender more difficult.

Asian countries

The four Asian countries (China, India and Japan) in the top 20 use non-latin transcripts and in general genders are more difficult to derive from Asian names, therefore our analysis cannot be as generalized as European countries. Nevertheless, for the names that could be analyzed, all Asian countries stayed below the global average over the period, India’s percentages of women’s first publication dipped in 2007. All observed a downward trend in 2022 and 2023. 

American countries

On the American continent (Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the US) on the other hand, all countries but the US stayed above the global average for most of the period. Brazil was even above the highest global value (40.3%) for almost the entire period. Mexico fluctuated above the global average until 2013, when it settled around or below the global average until 2022. 

In search of the first grant

Dimensions also holds data on grants, albeit the coverage does not extend as fully as the publication dataset – it contains most established national and international funders but does not include all university and corporate grants. Nevertheless, I thought it might show a similar trend – so less publications would be related to less grants. In some fields, especially scientific fields, it is now common to write a PhD based on publication solely, while in others still write a thesis, and so the first publication would come during the first Postdoc. 

However, the trend observed in the grant dataset was more mixed than the publication dataset – the grant dataset is smaller so it is more erratic, and although there is still an observable global decline of women receiving their first grant in 2022 and 2023, it is not seen in all countries. For instance, in the UK and the US, the proportion of women receiving their first grant has gone respectively flat and up. But it has gone down in the Netherlands (for which the representation of women in first publications was better than average), China and India.

Conclusion

The present analysis has shown that the long-term rise in the proportion of women publishing their first academic work has unexpectedly peaked in 2021, followed by two consecutive years of decline. The decline coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic and its immediate aftermath, which has affected society in general, but women more markedly. 

I see two possible reasons for the decline of first publications: the decrease of less established grants, those that are not tracked by Dimensions (university or under another larger project) and / or the two-body problem. In the two-body problem two researchers attempt to find a place in the same university, which is often solved by one partner taking a lesser position in the university with more teaching than research, or lots of travel, which became harder during the pandemic. 

However, if the trend persists, there is likely an on-going crisis and the change of trend since 2021 should be taken seriously. Data for 2024 showed a persistent decline but was not included in the analysis as the year has barely started (although in terms of publishing data, 2024 started in October 2023 when 2024 started appearing in Dimensions and we already have 200,000 women’s first publication in Dimensions).

The present analysis of the reversal should serve as a call-to-action for funders and institutions to support and retain women in research through and beyond times of crisis.

Bibliography

Davis, Pamela B., Emma A. Meagher, Claire Pomeroy, William L. Lowe, Arthur H. Rubenstein, Joy Y. Wu, Anne B. Curtis, and Rebecca D. Jackson. 2022. ‘Pandemic-Related Barriers to the Success of Women in Research: A Framework for Action’. Nature Medicine 28 (3): 436–38.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01692-8

Kwon, Eunrang, Jinhyuk Yun, and Jeong-han Kang. 2023. ‘The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Gendered Research Productivity and Its Correlates’. Journal of Informetrics 17 (1): 101380.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2023.101380

Perry, Mark. 2021. ‘Women Earned the Majority of Doctoral Degrees in 2020 for the 12th Straight Year and Outnumber Men in Grad School 148 to 100’. American Enterprise Institute – AEI (blog). 14 October 2021.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/women-earned-the-majority-of-doctoral-degrees-in-2020-for-the-12th-straight-year-and-outnumber-men-in-grad-school-148-to-100/

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In this blog series, we will explore the Fragmentation of Artificial Intelligence research. This first post lays out some of the key areas where AI research and development have become disconnected, making it more difficult to advance the field in a coordinated, ethical, and globally beneficial manner.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a recent discipline, having started in the 1960s, which aims at mimicking the cognitive abilities of humans. After going through a few “winters of AI” in the 70s and 90s, the field has been experiencing a boom since the 2010s thanks to increased computing capacities and large data availability.

The interdisciplinary foundations of AI draw from diverse fields across the sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics, and humanities. Core STEM disciplines like mathematics, computer science, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy provide vital technical capabilities, cognitive models, and ethical perspectives. Meanwhile, non-STEM fields including ethics, law, sociology, and anthropology inform AI’s societal impacts and governance. Together, this multidisciplinary collaborative approach aspires to enable AI systems that not only perform complex tasks, but do so in a way that accounts for broader human needs and societal impacts. However, significant challenges remain in developing AI that is compatible with or directed towards human values and the public interest. Continued effort is needed to ensure AI’s development and deployment serve to benefit humanity as a whole rather than exacerbate existing biases, inequities, and risks.

Global divides

Research is globally divided – the high income countries in particular are the biggest publisher of peer-reviewed publications and the biggest attendee group at research conferences. This is especially true in AI research, with AI researchers from poorer countries moving to hubs like Silicon Valley. This is, in part due to the lack of cyber infrastructure in many countries (GPU, electricity reliability, storage capacity, and so on), but also for countries in the non-English speaking world there may be a lack of, to data availability in their native language. 

The concentration of AI research in high-income countries has multiple concerning consequences.: First, it prioritizses issues most relevant to high income countries while overlooking applications that could benefit lower income countries (e.g. iImproving access to basic needs, such as clean water and food production; diagnosis and treatment of diseases more prevalent in low-income regions). Second, the lack of diversity among AI researchers excludes valuable perspectives from underrepresented groups including non-Westerners, women, and minorities. Policies and ethics guidelines emerging from the active regions may not transfer well or align across borders.

In a third blog post of this series, we will investigate the global division of AI research, and look into the possible solutions. 

Siloed knowledge

However, in recent years research in AI has become so specialised that it is difficult to see where AI starts and ends. A great example of this is the fact that many AI-related considered research publications are actually not classified as “Artificial Intelligence” in Dimensions. Take the AlphaFold publications, these are considered Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, rather than Artificial Intelligence. Many consider Machine Learning to be a subfield of Artificial Intelligence, however the Fields of Research separates both and puts them at the same level.

As AI research spreads to different fields, progress is more difficult to spread – researchers in different disciplines rarely organise conferences together, most journals are specialised into one field of research, researchers’ physical departments in universities are spread across buildings, and therefore there is less collaboration between them. Any progress such as thatprogress required to make AI more ethical, is less likely to spread evenly to every applied AI field. For instance, transparency in AI, which is still in infancy and developedhappened thanks to collaboration between ethics and AI, will take more time to reach AI applied in Physics, Chemistry, and so on. 

Do the benefits of AI application in other research fields outweigh the difficulties in applying AI advancements? And how much interdisciplinary actually happens? This will be the inquiry of our second blog post of this series.

Policy framework

Globally, government policies and regulations regarding the development and use of increasingly powerful large language models (LLMs) remain fragmented. Some countries have outright banned certain LLMs, while others have taken no regulatory action, allowing unrestricted LLM progress. There is currently no international framework or agreement on AI governance; efforts like the  Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) aims to provide policy recommendations and best practices related to AI, which can inform the development of AI regulations and standards at the national and international levels. It tackles issues related to privacy, bias, discrimination, and transparency in AI systems; promotes ethical growth development, and encourages collaboration and information sharing.

AI policies vary widely across national governments. OIn 2022, out of 285 countries in 2022, just 62 (22.2%) countries had a national artificial intelligence strategy, seven7 (2.5%) were in progress and 209 (73.3%) had not released anything (Maslej et al. 2023). Of those countries that took a position, the US at that time focused on promoting innovation and economic competitiveness, while the EU focused on ethics and fundamental rights. On October 30th the US signed their first executive order on AI (The White House 2023), which demands the creation of standards, more testing and encourages a brain gain of skilled immigrants. At a smaller scale, city-level policies on AI are also emerging; sometimes conflicting with national policies. San Francisco, for instance, banned police from using facial recognition technology in 2019. 

Ultimately, AI regulations tend to restrict AI research, which if it happened unevenly around the world would create centres of research where less regulations take place. 

How does this varied policy attitude affect the prospects of AI research? Will this lead to researchers migrating to less restricted regions? Such will be questions addressed in another blog post. 

Bibliography

Maslej, Nestor, Loredana Fattorini, Erik Brynjolfsson, John Etchemendy, Katrina Ligett, Terah Lyons, James Manyika, et al. 2023. ‘Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2023’. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2310.03715.

The White House. 2023. ‘FACT SHEET: President Biden Issues Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence’. The White House. 30 October 2023. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/30/fact-sheet-president-biden-issues-executive-order-on-safe-secure-and-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence/.

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It may take a militarily powerful nation to establish a language, but it takes an economically powerful one to maintain and expand it.^[1]”

David Crystal.

A short commentary

In this short opinion piece we look at English as the universal form of communication in science, in fact, the language of both science and technology.

Although many countries still publish journals in their native tongue, English is currently still the ‘best’ way to share research findings with scientists in other parts of the world.^[2] However, from a historical perspective, this has not always been the case. Egyptian philosophers and stargazers told stories in hieroglyphs. Aristotle and Plato wrote books in Greek, which were then translated into Arabic by their followers. Then came the Romans, who wrote in Latin. It was not until the 20th century that English started to dominate.^[3]

English as today’s global ‘lingua franca,’ is the language most widely spoken throughout the world even though the vast majority of English speakers are not ‘native’ speakers of the language. Of approximately 1.5 billion people who speak English, less than 400 million use it as a first language which means that over 1 billion speak it as a second language.

With today’s technological advances, English as the global language of science and innovation could change by reducing the need to learn English as a language for international communication. AI language tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated and AI-powered translation could potentially create more fair access to science.^[4] Moreover, the rise of China’s research productivity and published research output could have a big impact on how we communicate science.^[5] The bias, if it can be called a bias, towards the use of English in the current global scientific landscape, however, can lead to barriers for those who are non-native English speakers and also to important research study outcomes being overlooked because they are not written in English.

With today’s technological advances, English as the global language of science and innovation could change”

The consequences of overlooking non-English science may be more serious than just revealing a lack of access to information written in languages other than English. For example, in a study published in PLOS^[6], it was identified that important papers reporting the infection of pigs with avian influenza viruses in China were initially going unnoticed by international communities, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. This was because they were published in Chinese-language journals^[7]. Likewise, in one of the non-English scientific papers it was reported that “urgent attention should be paid to the pandemic preparedness of these two subtypes of influenza”^[8]. It took 14 years for this finding to be picked up and reported on in the English language.

In a 2021 study, Plos Biology screened 419,679 peer-reviewed papers in 16 languages in the field of biodiversity and found that non-English-language studies can expand the geographical coverage of English-language evidence by 12% to 25%, especially in biodiverse regions. As with the study in the previous paragraph, the authors of this study urge wider disciplines to reassess the untapped potential of non-English-language science in informing decisions to address other global challenges.^[9]

Today the populations of native speakers of other languages are all growing faster than the population of native English speakers. About three times more people are native Chinese speakers as are native English speakers. Languages such as Hindi-Urdu, Arabic, Spanish, to name a few, are about the same as those whose native language is English, all of which are growing faster than native English speakers.

Many scientific papers go unnoticed because of the linguistic gap between the global north and the south. English has become the lingua franca of science to ease collaboration but has it really managed to do so? In fact the dominance of the English language risks excluding some of the global south countries.

Digital Science, as the creator of the world’s largest linked database for research information, Dimensions, is able to search the data it holds to find the language in which research publications are written. This is done using an algorithm to detect the language of publications.^[10] The total number of research publications currently stored in Dimensions is 139,644,299 and the table below highlights the probable numbers and percentages of publications in the top six languages of publication along with the number and percentage of publications where no language is detected. The total number of research publication languages in Dimensions is 148, ranging from a language with one publication to the highest numbers of publications set out in Table 1 below.

We also looked at trends over time (2001-2022) for the the top ten non-English language publications sourced from Dimensions (see Figure 1 below).

The top 10 non-English language publications and the percentage overall, show that a number of the top languages in the 2000s (in particular, French, German, Chinese, and Japanese) have waned in the 2010s; whereas others (Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and especially Arabic, Turkish, and Indonesian) have increased significantly.  

In terms of non-English language research coverage in Dimensions (at least for the sum of the top ten 10 other languages), there has been a growth within the publications corpus from  circa 6% in 2001 to greater than 9% in 2022. We might conclude here that there is either an effect of more non-English research being indexed by Dimensions or that there are beginning to be signs of researchers publishing in their own language when it is other than English.

Perhaps it is time for the scientific world to acknowledge and embrace work published in all languages to help diversify science thereby enriching research globally.”

Conclusion

As we outlined, the language gap between the Global North and Global South is likely to have excluded much of the research in the lower income countries. As long as English remains the language for scientific communication, many people of other cultural backgrounds will continue to find it increasingly difficult to participate in the scientific process and benefit from its outcomes.^[11] With regard to patterns of non-English publishing over time, we cannot rule out that the increases that we see are not a product of Dimensions amassing more non-English research output, but, at the same time it could be that publication patterns have made shifts to digital and/or open access publications that have affected what is included in the Dimensions database. 

Perhaps it is time for the scientific world to acknowledge and embrace work published in all languages to help diversify science thereby enriching research globally.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Alex Wade, VP Data Products, Digital Science, for providing time trends data and graph.

References

^[1] https://culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/pdf/research/books/nation_branding/English_As_A_Global_Language_-_David_Crystal.pdf

^[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00899-y

^[3] https://scientific-publishing.webshop.elsevier.com/manuscript-preparation/why-is-english-the-main-language-of-science/

^[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01679-6

^[5] https://scientific-publishing.webshop.elsevier.com/manuscript-preparation/why-is-english-the-main-language-of-science/

^[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7094971/pdf/41586_2004_Article_BF430955a.pdf

^[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7094971/

^[8] https://europepmc.org/article/cba/580966

^[9] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001296

^[10] Algorithm available on request.

^[11] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00031/full

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Last month saw the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2024 published to the usual fanfare of marketing (from highly ranked universities) and criticism (from disdainful academics and commentators). Few things get educators riled up and divided like university rankings, the definitive wedge issue of academia. But this year, the rankings have been published in the shadow of a different set of alternative voices from the BRICS countries; one that could change the face of university rankings globally.

What are university rankings for? Originally, they were conceived as a way to provide a systematic list of institutions dependent on certain criteria that would be of value to potential students and their parents making one of the biggest decisions of their lives. As the father of a 19 year old, I have just gone through this painful process, with conversations something like this:

CHILD: I want to go to X University

ME: But what about Y University – the grades are lower for admission, it’s a great place to live, and the course offers a wide variety of options in your third year?

CHILD: I want to go to X University. It’s better than Y. It has prestige.

ME: How do you know?

CHILD: It says in those rankings.

ME: But they are based on irrelevant criteria, cover research more than undergraduate studies, and are completely disowned by the academic community!

CHILD: (shrugs) I still want to go to X University

Needless to say, there was no discussion about alternative ways to weigh up universities’ relative merits, but if they had it might have been useful to reflect on events in July 2023 where a meeting of education ministers from BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – declared war on existing university rankings, and committed themselves to developing a new one. 

Their reasoning was based on their objection to the cost of participating in such rankings and the effect they had on research culture in universities. While a timeframe and further details have yet to be announced, it has long been felt by many universities in Global South countries that playing the rankings game was not worthwhile, as it sacrificed research norms such as collaboration and sharing. Furthermore, many academics can get drawn into trying to publish research in certain journals in order to ‘score’ more highly for their institution – journals that may not typically publish methodologies they or their research cultures would normally utilize. We have, then, systems in place where rankings for both universities and the journals their academics publish in dominate the higher education agenda. 

Criticism

University rankings have not been around as long as some may think. The US News & World Report first published its US college rankings in the early 1980s, followed in the early 2000s by Times Higher Education (THE). Several other rankings have also sprung up in the meantime at international and national levels, meaning that prospective students have never had more choice in terms of data and rankings to support their decision.

Providing more data to improve decision-making is usually a good thing, but the flip side is that such is the power of the rankings that universities are tempted to chase ranking points rather than focus on their core mission. In his book Breaking Ranks , former university administrator Colin Diver charts the rise of rankings and how they can persuade applicants to zero in on pedigree and prestige, while inducing HEIs to go for short-term gains. Not only does this rig the system, Diver also argues it reduces diversity and intellectual rigor in US colleges.

Looking at this problem more globally, a panel discussion entitled ‘University Rankings: Accept, Amend or Avoid?’ was convened  at the STI Conference in Leiden in The Netherlands (https://www.sti2023.org/) in October 2023. In establishing the panel discussion, the conference detailed events that had led up to the inclusion of this topic at the highly regarded conference on science, technology and innovation indicators. Just in the prior 12 months these involved the creation of an international coalition of stakeholders including a commitment to avoid use of university rankings in the assessment of researchers; a new initiative for HEIs called ‘More Than Our Rank’; the Harnessing the Metric Tide review of indicators, infrastructures and priorities for UK responsible research assessment; Yale University withdrawing from the US News & World Report Law Rankings, followed by several medical schools doing something similar.

Speaking on the STI Conference panel, UK-based research assessment expert Lizzie Gadd commented on the move by BRICS education ministers. Speaking on, Dr Gadd saying: “The BRICS states are expressing their dissatisfaction with the well known university rankings (THE,QS etc) due to these favouring the Global North. However, their chosen response of developing an alternative ranking based on qualitative inputs will only be effective if it displaces the existing dominant rankings in those regions. This is unlikely given previous efforts in this direction have not had this effect”.

Case study

So, thinking of the BRICS countries and many other commentators in this: when combined together, the domination of English language in research journals, Western-dominated university rankings, Western research paradigms and Western-located publishers works against authors from Global South countries, creating a form of hegemony that has been difficult to break down for decades. But how do these phenomena manifest themselves?

Back in 2010, I published an article with one of the Editors I worked with in academic publishing on the impact of the research assessment programs in the UK (REF), Australia (ERA) and New Zealand (PBRF). We interviewed academics from all three countries and asked them if they felt they were influenced in their research choices by the systems they worked under. Sure enough we found that they did, with impacts felt on lower-ranked journals who did not receive submissions in favour of higher-ranked titles.

In other words, attempts to rank or score universities in terms of their research leads to some of those universities or individual researchers impacted by those attempts to fundamentally change their approach. More insidious is how research itself is determined by a relatively narrow band of publications both for academics to publish in, and identified as ‘top’ research. For business schools, inclusion in the Financial Times Top 100 is marketing nirvana, with the potential to increase the number of MBA students (and therefore revenue) as well as the prestige of their institution. This ranking is derived in small part by the FT50, a well-established list of business and management journals that has hardly changed for decades. 

The result? Not only is it limiting for academics who are tasked with publishing in those journals as part of their commitments to their universities, it also limits what is regarded as the best examples of research in a certain area. In a study I co-authored on impact assessment, we used an AI tool to identify those business and management journals which included the most research relating to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Of the top 50 with the most related content, just one was also in the FT50. 

Identifying progress

So can these fractures caused and maintained by Global North-dominated university rankings be healed? There are green shoots that, if able to flourish, could help turn things around. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) has gained significant traction among stakeholders in the last decade, and the work of Dr Gadd and others at the STI Conference have inspired many universities to turn their back on rankings in favor of more balanced assessment methods. For example, at the end of September the University of Utrecht declared it had withdrawn its involvement in the THE rankings, citing that such rankings placed too much stress on university competition, not collaboration; the difficulty in scoring the quality of an institution as complex as a university, and the use of some questionable methodology. 

Progress is also being made through representation of more impactful data points in research platforms. For example, with data on nearly 140m publications, Digital Science’s Dimensions enables access to publications from a wide range of research outputs outside the Global North context, as well as content not in the English language. With translation becoming easier thanks to advances in AI, access to non-English content opens up a huge depth of opportunities for researchers the world over.

In addition, using Dimensions database researchers can identify how studies relate to the SDGs using a specific filter, or order articles based on their influence outside academia with Altmetric. Other platforms are also adding wider functionality that means citations – and specifically the Impact Factor from Web of Science – are no longer the only means of filtering research outputs.

Practical uses for this functionality include a recent report from THE, Prince Sultan University and Digital Science where for the first time Global South-oriented data was used in analyzing impact, as well as research integrity data now included in the DImensions database. The analysis in the report showed there was a significant gap between higher- and lower-income nations in regards to SDG-focused research. However, it was evident that there was growing SDG research in lower-income countries over the past 15 years or so, with some increases in collaboration within those regions.

University rankings providers are then listening to the need for wider representation in their data, with THE now also providing its Impact Ranking which has three Global South universities in its latest Top 20 and only one from the US. Other rankings providers are also widening the context of what they are evaluating, so while the methodological problems may persist of what can or cannot be ranked effectively, at least the focus of this activity is not squarely on prestige and performance.

Paradigm shift?

These developments help move the dial away from the dominance rankings have had on many university agendas, but may not be enough to engender the paradigm shift away from defining a ‘good’ university as one that simply satisfies a narrow set of criteria. What may be required is a concerted effort from funders, researchers, policymakers and universities themselves to follow a different path that instead celebrates the diversity of global research and different higher education approaches. 

We saw in an earlier piece in the Fragmentation campaign by Dr Briony Fane how an increase in focus in collaborative pharmaceutical research on the Global South was growing and that was where the biggest need was for medicines and other interventions. For all sorts of reasons, a fragmented research world has bad outcomes for huge swathes of the global population. Similarly, the fragmentation created by university rankings has impacted much of the developing world, which is why the BRICS countries have been moved to try and do something about it. Another ranking may not be the way to go about it, as it will do little to reduce fragmentation and its effects. Universities across the world need to collaborate more in research and meeting global challenges to bridge the divides between them, not compete for more meaningless points on a ranking.

The post Rank outsiders appeared first on Digital Science.

Summary

In this blog we present findings from a bibliometric evaluation of scientific publications that include a contribution from the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the Global North and Global South, which have been indexed in Digital Science’s Dimensions database in the past five years (2018 to 2022). The study maps aspects of the landscape in this area exploring differences in pharmaceutical research practices from different perspectives including funding and collaboration, pharmaceutical research and its association with the SDGs, the impact of the cost of medicines developed by pharma and their accessibility in distinct geographic regions. The results show significant gaps between the two global areas, but also some ways where these gaps are now closing.

Contents

• Introduction
  • The new geography of the pharmaceutical industry
  • The pharmaceutical industry’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Methodology
• Analysis
  • Global North and Global South
  • Pharmaceutical funding and collaboration with ‘access to medicine’ research publications
  • Pharma funding and collaboration associated with the UN Sustainable Development Goals
  • Funding Sources-Pharmaceutical Partnerships
• Conclusion
• References

Introduction

Access to essential medicines is a serious global concern, regardless of the income level of a country. Medicines are not affordable for those who need them in many low- and middle-income countries (the Global South), and many new medicines are too expensive even for the health systems of middle- and high-income countries (the Global North)^[2].

Staggeringly, an estimated two billion people worldwide still lack access to essential medicines and vaccines that could prevent and treat diseases, relieve suffering, improve quality of life and reduce deaths,^[3] and the majority of these people are living in global south countries. This is a clear example of fragmentation in our society – a disconnect between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, where science and medicine could save lives but are unable to overcome the barriers in their way.

Pharmaceutical companies are recognised as being uniquely positioned to remedy this and improve people’s lives by producing innovative and affordable medicines^[4]. However, their products have generally been developed to target more lucrative markets and, as a result, are often poorly matched with the needs of global south countries.

Achieving equitable access to medicines is a key component in the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda. In particular, one of the targets of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) – ‘Good Health and wellbeing’ – is to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and is a critical driver to realising health equity. Equitable access and resilient health systems are the basis for UHC, by enabling availability, affordability, and acceptability to ensure that people can get the right medicines of the right quality at the right price and at the right place^[5].

Since 2006 the UN’s Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) has provided support and assistance to advance local pharmaceutical production in developing countries where its support contributes effectively to strengthening the health security of the global south countries and as a follow on to attaining SDG3, addressing the need for “access to safe, effective, quality, and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all”^[6]. However, there remain barriers for many people in the world who have difficulty accessing the healthcare they need for multiple reasons, including:

Even for diseases that affect both the Global North and the Global South alike, research often focuses on products that are best suited for use in the Global North. For example, a lot of pharmaceutical research has been conducted on complex AIDS drugs that are more useful in global north countries, but too expensive and difficult to deliver to much of the population in global south countries.^[9] The lower income countries take the bulk of the global disease burden, yet essential healthcare products are often unaffordable or unavailable to them.

Achieving greater access for the global south countries who have less access to the most essential of medicines requires pharmaceutical companies to give them a place in their business operations. The 2022 ‘Access to Medicine Index’^[10] evaluates and compares 20 of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical companies according to their efforts to improve access to medicine. Data analysed for the 2022 Index found that more companies had stepped up their access efforts – including some companies that were previously less likely to take action.^[11] The data relates to 83 diseases, conditions and pathogens that disproportionately impact people living in the 108 global south countries in scope of the Index, where better access to medicine is most urgently needed. Most recently, Johnston & Johnston has agreed to allow generic versions of the drug bedaquiline in dozens (96) of lower income countries to be made available. It is implementing this by providing the Global Drug Facility (GDF)^[12] with licences enabling the organisation to procure and supply generic forms of the drug countries the organisation supplies.^[13]

The ability to contribute to health equity and, more specifically, facilitate access-to-medicine, has increasingly become a priority for the pharmaceutical industry. However, while steps are being taken to improve access to their products in the global south, many plans and strategies still overlook the poorest countries.

The new geography of the pharmaceutical industry

The geographic concentration of the pharmaceutical industry currently sits in those countries with the fastest growing economies. This concentration is gradually starting to shift and more and more we are seeing that pharmaceutical production in developing countries is increasing. For instance, India is now a more prominent and developing player in the global pharmaceutical industry and their domestic pharmaceutical market’s growth outpaced that of the overall economy by 2-3% a year^[14]. According to China Briefing, the Chinese pharmaceutical market has grown in the past few years, with a 200% increase in market capitalisation between 2016 and 2020.^[15] Thus, although the US pharmaceutical industry still dominates the global market, accounting for roughly 50% of global pharmaceutical sales revenue, we are seeing shifting patterns in the geography of the pharmaceutical industry.

The research-based pharmaceutical industry is also entering a new era in medicines development^[16] and there is fast growth in the market and research environment in emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India, leading to a gradual migration of economic and research activities from Europe to these markets^[17]. That said, of the 40 vaccine manufacturers in 14 nations that are part of The Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network, currently just one is African: the Biovac Institute based in Cape Town, South Africa, which delivers over 25 million doses of vaccines each year for illnesses such as measles, polio and tuberculosis.^[18]

Consequently there is still a heavy reliance on external sources and the export of medicines to African nations. However, within the next two decades, the African Union member states are aiming for 60% of Africa’s routinely used vaccines to be manufactured on the continent.^[19]  With roughly half the population of Africa lacking regular access to the most essential medicines, according to the WHO,^[20] attempts to reduce this has seen a growing number of healthcare practitioners beginning to build the pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity on the African continent.

Crossing the continents, Bangladesh’s pharmaceutical industry is unique in the Global South. Driven by active government policies, output has grown a thousand times since 1982, to US$2 billion (around 1% of gross domestic product), making it the biggest white collar employer in the country. The industry supplies pharmaceuticals to almost the entire domestic market and more than 100 other countries including the United States.^[21]

The pharmaceutical industry’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The value of translating scientific evidence into action in support of the SDGs and their attainment is of paramount importance. The pharmaceutical industry’s participation in accelerating achievement of the SDGs requires that its roadmap for research and development includes demonstrating its ability to tackle diseases in both global south and global north countries. 

The need to have access to safe and effective essential medicines is so important that it has been designated a basic human right by the World Health Organization.^[22] This importance has been given further weight by its inclusion in the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda.

Access to medicine is essential for ending epidemics and reducing the mortality in non-communicable diseases and is one of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 3 – Good Health and well-being (SDG3.4). Of course, living healthy lives is what most people would expect, or at the very least hope for, in the 21st century. However, for millions, this remains an aspiration. The mission of SDG3 is to change this and ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for people of all ages, and the pharmaceutical industry is making inroads in its contribution to SDG3 and beyond.

For example, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) expresses a long-term commitment to improving access to health care across the world. Since 2010, it has capped the prices of patented medicines and vaccines in the “least developed countries” at 25% of those in the EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) as long as manufacturing costs are covered^[23]. 

We also examine how the UN SDGs influence the pharmaceutical industry to do more good than changing and saving lives. So although the pharmaceutical industry’s primary impact is in SDG3, other Goals such as SDG12 Responsible Consumption and Production and SDG6 Clean Water and Sanitation are also influential.

For example, a number of leading pharmaceutical companies now demonstrate ‘responsible production’ by, for example, reducing animal testing and hazardous chemical use (Bayer), recycling water in the manufacturing process (GSK), or education on vaccination for the community (Pfizer), along with wastewater management, water recycling, and the use of green chemistry aimed to address environmental issues. The above examples focus on targets set out in SDG12 and SDG6.

Methodology

We extracted the top ten pharmaceutical companies by income using GRID IDs (parent GRID), whilst extracting the (child GRID) ID for each company (the top pharmaceutical companies operate worldwide and have subsidiaries across the globe) and this allowed us to split them into those operating in global north countries and those operating in global south countries depending on operation bases, ie, where top ten pharmaceutical companies based in the Global North have operations carrying out pharmaceutical research and development in the Global South. Dimensions allows us to do this using Google Big Query (GBQ) bringing together World Bank data for the Global North and Global South distinction, and the research output from Dimensions, to perform the analyses.  

Next, a simple boolean search string was created: “access medicine”~3 and, along with our search string of top ten pharmaceutical companies, Dimensions retrieved the relevant research outputs for pharmaceutical companies in global north and in global south countries.

Using the set of search results we filtered the research output by Global South (low and lower-middle income countries) and Global North (high and upper-middle income countries).

Analysis

Global North and Global South

In this section we analysed the relevant research that involves the top ten pharmaceutical companies and their contribution to research on ‘access to medicine’ in the Global North and in the Global South.

To get an initial sense of the data, we first analysed ‘access to medicine’ research publications featuring top ten pharmaceutical companies, using Dimensions. This enabled us to ascertain the geographical distribution of the pharmaceutical companies’ participation in this domain (see Figure 1) in global north and global south countries.

Figure 1 details the total volume of research publications associated with ‘access to medicine’ research by country income level..  Of the total volume (3,165 publications), 109 (3.4%) include a contribution from the pharmaceutical industry. 1,473 publications from the dataset did not have the required data to determine country-income group (46%).

Pharmaceutical funding and collaboration with ‘access to medicine’ research publications

Figure 2 outlines the volume of papers across global north and global south countries over time.  We note that a mixed pattern emerges. We also note that numbers are small and might expect this for two reasons.  Firstly, access to medicine research is a particularly niche area of research, and secondly, historically, it has not been common for the pharmaceutical industry to collaborate on academic research. But this is changing with links between academia and the pharmaceutical industry increasing both as funding partners or as collaborators, or both.^[24] The data here would confirm this.  What is apparent is that pharmaceutical companies predominantly collaborate with researchers and fund more research in the high income countries of the Global North. Although there is evidence of pharmaceutical companies funding  and collaborating with research in the global south, it is to a much lesser extent. Figure 3 reveals that collaboration in conjunction with funding by pharma for research associated with ‘access to medicine’ is evident in 2022 for the first time. It would be interesting to see whether this is the starting point for the pharmaceutical industry’s engagement and collaboration with academic researchers in the Global South going forward.

The top ten pharmaceutical industry’s contribution to ‘access to medicine’ relevant research in Global North and Global South countries is displayed in Figure 3 above detailing the extent to which collaboration and funding in this area is focused in the two regions over an eight year period.  Immediately apparent is the stronger commitment to the higher income countries, where, in particular, the pharmaceutical industry’s collaborations with academic research is most pronounced. Funding and/or collaborating with research in the Global South shows data only across three years.

Pharma funding and collaboration associated with the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Figures 4a and 4b above assess the volume of research outputs that are associated with the UN’s SDGs, either funded or in collaboration with, or both, the pharmaceutical industry. Unsurprisingly, the research focus is predominantly with SDG3 – Good health and well-being, however the data would suggest that there are potentially starting to be signs of their focus extending to SDG12 Responsible Production and Consumption (eg, supply chains) and SDG6 Clean Water and Sanitation (eg, management of wastewater). With reference to SDG6, advances in wastewater treatment processes are being made in the industry to prevent the discharge of harmful substances into water resources and the environment. In fact  AstraZeneca has made an 18.7% reduction in water use since 2015 and 100% reduction of active pharmaceutical ingredients discharges from AstraZeneca sites. 92% of discharges from direct suppliers were in compliance with SDG6 target 6.3.^[25] With respect to SDG12 again, AstraZeneca averted 2,129 tonnes of waste in 2022 alone by selling it as a by-product.

The geographical distribution of the top ten pharmaceutical industry’s participation in research associated with ‘access to medicine’ research was examined using a collaborative network visualisation tool (see Figure 5 above), VOSviewer. The tool allows us to see, in this instance, countries participating in research focused on ‘access to medicine’, the collaborative networks between those countries, and where pharmaceutical companies concentrate their collaborations. Understanding geographic patterns can also help to identify potential gaps and highlight areas where more collaborative effort might be valuable. It can also indicate regions where the pharmaceutical industry is more proactive in supporting research on access to medicines.

Funding Sources-Pharmaceutical Partnerships

We present data in Figure 6 to provide an understanding of the financial and/or collaborative support from the pharmaceutical industry behind research focused on ‘access to medicine’ in different sectors. Analysis of the dataset using Dimensions, allowed us to determine the proportion of research funded by pharmaceutical companies, alongside other sources, including government agencies, foundations, and nonprofit organisations. The analysis provides an indication (despite small numbers^[26]) of the extent of the pharmaceutical industry’s financial commitment to ‘access to medicine’ research in the Global North and Global South, and helps to evaluate the diversity of pharmaceutical funding of research in this area.

Conclusion

Exploring a niche area of research as we have done here with our focus on ‘access to medicine’, means that the data retrieved will be small in number, and made smaller by the introduction of a filter which is possible using Dimensions which in this case is the top ten pharmaceutical companies. Lower numbers in an analysis naturally brings with it a number of caveats, and one in particular, the robustness of the data and subsequent outcomes.

Despite this, it is still worthwhile and beneficial to explore the research from this perspective and has provided some useful insights. Insights such as the industries that the pharmaceutical industry supports in this niche area and where we see that it is not just in healthcare but also in education, government, not for profits, etc that science is funded for the development of new pharmaceutical products aimed at transforming lives.

Further, the geography of the pharmaceutical industry’s participation in this area of research indicates perhaps the start of a growing commitment to its involvement in addressing the access to medicine in all areas in the world and evidence of collaboration across the Global North and Global South, however small, shows a level of responsibility being taken by the industry.

Finally, on a general note, a survey by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry in 2022 found that ‘industry-academic links were at an all time high and identified several trends pointing to the continued support of the pharmaceutical industry for students training and research all across the UK and worldwide’.^[27]

References

^[1] https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/responsibility/global-health-and-health-security/improving-access-to-healthcare/

^[2] Wirtz VJ, Hogerzeil HV, Gray AL, Bigdeli M, de Joncheere CP, Ewen MA et al. Essential medicines for universal health coverage. Lancet. 2017;389(10067):403–76

^[3] https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/essential-medicines/fair-price/chapter-medicines.pdf?sfvrsn=adcffc8f_4&download=true

^[4] https://unglobalcompact.org/library/1011

^[5] https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/responsibility/global-health-and-health-security/improving-access-to-healthcare/

^[6] https://www.unido.org/our-focus-advancing-economic-competitiveness-investing-technology-and-innovation-competitiveness-business-environment-and-upgrading/pharmaceutical-production-developing-countries

^[7] https://www.astellas.com/en/sustainability/access-to-medicines

^[8] Pecoul, Bernard et al. 1999. “Access to Essential Drugs in Poor Countries: A Lost Battle?” Journal of the American Medical Association. January 27, 281:4, pp. 361–67

^[9] https://www2.hawaii.edu/~noy/362texts/pharma.pdf

^[10] https://accesstomedicinefoundation.org/medialibrary/2022_access-to-medicine-index-1669982470.pdf

^[11] https://accesstomedicinefoundation.org/medialibrary/2022_access-to-medicine-index-1669982470.pdf

^[12] https://www.stoptb.org/facilitate-access-to-tb-drugs-diagnostics/global-drug-facility-gdf

^[13] https://www.science.org/content/article/major-drug-company-bends-battle-over-access-key-tb-treatment?utm_source=Nature+Briefing%3A+Translational+Research&utm_campaign=89b7cf8e10-briefing-tr-20230726&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_872afe2a9a-89b7cf8e10-47896968

^[14] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/indias-economic-ambitions-pharmaceutical-industry

^[15] https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-booming-biopharmaceuticals-market-innovation-investment-opportunities/

^[16] https://www.efpia.eu/media/637143/the-pharmaceutical-industry-in-figures-2022.pdf

^[17] https://aijourn.com/press_release/pharmaceutical-glass-packaging-global-market-report-2023-growth-of-pharmaceutical-industry-in-emerging-economies-drives-sector-researchandmarkets-com/

^[18] https://unctad.org/news/covid-19-heightens-need-pharmaceutical-production-poor-countries

^[19] Saied, AbdulRahman A.a,b,*. Africa is going to develop their own health capabilities for future challenges – Correspondence. International Journal of Surgery 99():p 106585, March 2022. | DOI: 10.1016/j.ijsu.2022.106585

^[20] https://www.who.int/news/item/13-12-2017-world-bank-and-who-half-the-world-lacks-access-to-essential-health-services-100-million-still-pushed-into-extreme-poverty-because-of-health-expenses

^[21] https://www.un.org/ldcportal/content/what-ldc-graduation-will-mean-bangladesh%E2%80%99s-drugs-industry

^[22] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/255355/9789241512442-eng.pdf

^[23] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6316355/

^[24] https://www.abpi.org.uk/media/news/2022/september/new-survey-shows-collaboration-between-pharmaceutical-industry-and-uk-academia-is-growing/#:~:text=This%20year’s%20survey%20shows%20that,3%2Dfold%20increase%20since%202015.

^[25] https://www.astrazeneca.com/content/dam/az/Sustainability/2023/pdf/Sustainability_Report_2022.pdf

^[26] The small numbers in part might be the result of the pharmaceutical industry being less eager to publish their funded research in this area, though the topic of the search for “access to medicine’ is less ‘confidential’ in comparison to research published on a potentially new pharmaceutical ingredients etc.

^[27] https://www.abpi.org.uk/facts-figures-and-industry-data/industry-and-academia-links-survey-2022/

The post A tale of two pharmas – Global North and Global South appeared first on Digital Science.

This title for a campaign might seem unexpected, and the reader may wonder what the drivers and scope are for such a theme of seemingly unlimited reach. This article sets out what we mean by fragmentation in the context of research, and how we will explore the topic through a variety of lenses during the campaign.

A connected yet fragmented world

Undoubtedly, we live in an ever more connected yet fragmented world affecting all walks of life, and the entire research ecosystem is no exception to this. Keeping up with developments in and around research is extremely challenging – be it about the literature and keeping abreast of the latest technologies and methodologies, or applying new tools and software that are capable of analysing the exploding number and size of datasets churning out information. With these developments comes the risk of disruption, inequalities and more uncertainties in a fragmented research ecosystem today.

One of the first questions that comes to mind is, if fragmentation can relate to components of the research system, does this mean there is a fragmentation of research itself? Or, to perhaps put it more simply: is research fragmented, and if so, how? This raises a series of further questions which we aim to address in a number of themes within our campaign, where we will focus on relevant topics, their relationship with fragmentation, and how to tackle them. We will highlight structural features of fragmentation, analytical approaches and consolidating concepts. We do this by focusing on those Digital Science tools which are relevant to the work we are doing throughout the campaign.

What is fragmentation?

The term fragmentation, defined as “the process or state of breaking or being broken into fragments” (link), in itself doesn’t lend itself as a particularly enticing concept. Neither is it particularly mysterious or perhaps, of great interest. However, on further examination of the term, there is something intriguing when looking at ‘fragmentation’ that is perhaps well worth exploring.

We can start by looking simply at the common use of the word in a Google search (statistics here) and how often ‘fragmentation’ was entered into the search bar and used as a first point interest (here). When compared to other phrases e.g. ‘consolidation’, the use of ‘fragmentation’ reveals an uninspiring baseline (link) confirming the rather mundane, infrequent use of the word (Fig 1a).

However, the frequency of ‘fragmentation’ as a term in a research context can be seen to be consistently on the rise as evidenced by a Dimensions database search of the scientific literature. (Fig 1b)

Fragmentation in a research context

What does fragmentation represent in the research world? Humankind developed and applied technologies in order to make things better and to solve big issues, however looking at it retrospectively, our problems haven’t been solved at all, if anything we can hardly keep pace with this ever changing fragmented research world. 

So, could fragmentation be about pieces (or fragments as per dictionary definition) or is it about fragmented processes? Meanings can be plentiful and diverse. What, for example, does it mean in the context of research and the corporate world? Is it about business based on geography (Global North vs Global South)? These are interesting questions which we aim to explore across the campaign and we highlight a number of specific items in the context of ‘Fragmentation: The pieces and the processes’.

We will look at how businesses in the corporate world react and make use of fragmentation in the context of their research and development endeavours. Corporates thrive in a fragmented research world in particular and we will highlight examples on how they engage with ‘fragmentation’ using the modern technologies they have at their disposal. One such example is modern drug discovery in pharmaceutical and agrochemical industry – both suffered over the last decades by exuberant costs for no real new results (measurable by active ingredients for new medicines and pesticides) – starting with high throughput screens and chemical compound libraries until in the early 2000s, screening for new drugs and Mode of Action detection got a new life by using fragment based drug design. Even more recent technical advances make use of fragments or fragmented states and to this end we will look at particular new trends in Pharmaceutical Research & Development and how Digital Science contributes to this by applying its state of the art technologies to gather insights.

Fragmentation as a research topic across time

Equipped with our Dimensions database, we are able to consider the emergence of ‘fragmentation’ in the research literature, and its distribution across the disciplinary ‘fields of research’ (FoRs) where we can see that, for example, from the 1960’s to the 1980’s research looking at fragmentation was predominately a domain of the Chemical Sciences, but in the last 20 to 30 years the Biological Sciences and Biomedical & Clinical Sciences both focus on the term along with Chemical Sciences.

Zooming in on what researchers might find intriguing about fragmentation we can take the concepts which are included in more recent research on fragmentation. Using a Dimensions tool (Landscape and Discovery) we can focus on the concepts (keywords) of research and their networks), in this case research including ’fragmentation’ to see the chemical (chain transfer polymerization, mass spectrometry) and biological concepts ( habitat, genetic diversity) – where interestingly a cluster of concepts focussing on human rights and sustainable development emerge too. 

This reveals that fragmentation (the pieces) as a research topic is alive and thriving in a number of disciplinary areas and which will be explored during this campaign.

Fragmentation: The divided research world

The processes aligned with fragmentation are more difficult to capture. However, we will shed light on these through an understanding of the processes in research, including its contributors, segments and the tools making up the research ecosystem; these will form the basis of our analysis. This campaign is also tied closely into one of Digital Science’s key missions: “Advancing the research ecosystem — together, we make open, collaborative and inclusive research possible“, and we look forward to working with the community throughout this work.

We start our campaign with a focus on global divides, where we explore some of the geographic aspects of a fragmented world, for example in the Global North and Global South countries where we know there are many disparities. We also examine global challenges though the lens of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and evaluate global issues including big data for sustainable development.

The campaign then moves into the domain of siloed knowledge, where we concentrate our attention on areas of research where a lack of integration can result in research findings remaining isolated, limiting their broader applicability across the research ecosystem. Bridging the fragmented nature of research knowledge gaps and promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration is another area where we provide insights. 

As outlined in our sub-themes above, fragmentation applies to many aspects of the research lifecycle across different contributors from academia, organisations, research funders, governments and businesses. Each are delicately networked, and none are immune to the effects of fragmentation.

Is there a solution to fragmentation? Is one needed?

Thinking about an end to (or overcoming of) fragmentation in the research ecosystem, one may think about processes in the research ecosystem such as interdisciplinarity & collaboration, inclusion, fusion or assimilation, which, in a corporate Research & Development context can be exemplified by looking at the merger and acquisition activities in the agrochemical industry in late nineties and early 2000s that led to a consolidation in this area of the corporate world (reviewed for ‘Mode of Action’ detection here or global seed companies here).

But what about the academic research world? We highlight one important area of the research ecosystem that is concerned with the communication of the results of research. Scholarly communication is by definition “ the ​process of academics, scholars and researchers sharing and publishing their research findings so that they are available to the wider academic community and beyond”. 

The traditional way of communicating results is via a publishing process that is very well established. However that got challenged in recent years by a number of developments and pressures from outside for which the core wasn’t any longer suitable. New developments required new solutions hence a plethora of innovative tools and solutions found their way into the researchers daily life to cope with new demands & expectations (e.g. OA) and challenges (the rise of social media). These developments were very neatly captured by a chart from the University of Utrecht – see here presented on Figshare – clearly showing the fragmented state of the art when it comes to tools and innovation in the space of scholarly communications.

Immediately the question arises if there is a need for consolidation analogous to the merger and acquisition in the corporate R&D world? We’d argue that there isn’t a need for consolidation, however, under the caveat that any change in workflow is an improvement and accepted by the community. And the stream of communication is not negatively affected in any way or format that would undermine the purpose of the communication of the results of research.

So, in this and in any other context then, is fragmentation in any aspect of the research ecosystem a good or a bad thing? Clearly a diversity of approaches and tools are necessary and vital to progress in the strive for research and development to overcome the divides that arise and we touch upon in our themes for this campaign -be it the geography, the discipline, the segment or any other player in the research ecosystem. 

We have seen unstructured, big fragmentations, particularly in the corporate world, with the result of consolidation of markets and (number of) companies in a particular space – see the example of seed companies and MoA detection to the benefit of better streamlined and more cohesive R&D approaches.

Digital Science was originally conceived of to provide new solutions in the fragmented space with its broad portfolio of companies covering various aspects of the day-to-day research life and its necessities. We understand the fragmented state of research affairs, offering bespoke solutions for individual niches.

This campaign is about analysing and telling stories of the fragmented research world, shedding a light on places where fragmentation occurs (be it, for example, silos of knowledge or global divides) and demonstrating how we can better understand the diversity of research to future-proof—and provide solid foundations for—the global research endeavour.

The post Exploring fragmentation: A divided research world appeared first on Digital Science.

Is a fragmented research ecosystem slowing global progress?

Research has the power to change lives, break down barriers and create unity & equity. When the research community solves problems together extraordinary breakthroughs can happen.

But post-pandemic, fragmentation in the research ecosystem remains one of the biggest challenges to the ability of researchers to make a real-world difference. We want to challenge the status quo, highlight the issues, and share positive ways to create better synergy and collaboration, helping to unite a divided research world.  

A new campaign

Today, 25th September 2023, we at Digital Science are launching a new campaign focusing on ‘Fragmentation – A divided research world?’.

We live in an ever more connected yet fragmented world, and the research ecosystem is no exception to this. An important question comes to mind: if components of the research ecosystem are fragmented, does this mean there is fragmentation of research itself? Or, to perhaps put it more simply: is research fragmented, and if so, how?

Our campaign aims to highlight the structural features of fragmentation, by consolidating concepts and by demonstrating a number of analytical approaches through the use of Digital Science tools such as Dimensions.

There is also something intriguing about ‘fragmentation’ that we think is worth exploring in the context of the research ecosystem, and we asked ourselves what fragmentation represents in the world of research. What does it mean in academia?  What does it mean in the corporate sector? 

The processes aligned with fragmentation are difficult to capture. However, we will shed light on these through an understanding of the processes in research, including its contributors, segments and the tools making up the research ecosystem; these will form the basis of our analysis. This campaign is also tied closely into one of Digital Science’s key missions: “Advancing the research ecosystem — together, we make open, collaborative and inclusive research possible“, and we look forward to working with the community throughout this work.

Global divides and siloed knowledge

We start our campaign with a focus on global divides, where we explore some of the geographic aspects of a fragmented world, for example in the Global North and Global South countries where we know there are many disparities.  We also examine global challenges though the lens of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and evaluate global issues including big data for sustainable development.  

The campaign then moves into the domain of siloed knowledge, where we concentrate our attention on areas of research where a lack of integration can result in research findings remaining isolated, limiting their broader applicability across the research ecosystem. Bridging the fragmented nature of research knowledge gaps and promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration is another area where we provide insights. 

Bridging the divides in research

Fragmentation applies to many aspects of the research lifecycle across different contributors from academia, organisations, research funders, governments and businesses. Each are delicately networked, and none are immune to the effects of fragmentation. 

Digital Science was originally conceived of to provide new solutions in the fragmented space with its broad portfolio of companies covering various aspects of the day-to-day research life and its necessities. We understand the fragmented state of research affairs, offering bespoke solutions for individual niches.

This campaign is about analysing and telling stories of the fragmented research world, shedding a light on places where fragmentation occurs (be it, for example, silos of knowledge or global divides) and demonstrating how we can better understand the diversity of research to future-proof—and provide solid foundations for—the global research endeavour.

Featured articles

Rank Outsiders

Can a new ranking reverse fragmentation in higher education?

A tale of two pharmas – Global North and Global South

Perspectives on funding & collaboration, and the localisation of SDGs in the pharmaceutical industry, via a bibliometric evaluation of scientific publications.

Exploring fragmentation: a divided research world.

This article sets out what we mean by fragmentation in the context of research, and how we will explore the topic through a variety of lenses during the campaign.

A multi-dimensional approach to assessing the impact of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

In this short interview, Dr Briony Fane and Dr Juergen Wastl explain the methods behind their work on assessing how global research ties into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

SDGs: A level playing field?

A new white paper on the UN SDGs shows more can be done to raise up funding and research recognition for the developing world.

Reaching out

If you’d like to find out more about what Digital Science does, or have an idea for and article or a topic we should cover during this campaign, please get in touch.

You can also meet our colleagues from across Digital Science at events & webinars throughout the year, including our recently relaunched Speaker Series and #FuturePub community events.

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