Objectives

Non-publication and publication bias are topics of considerable importance to the scientific community. These issues may limit progress toward the 3R principle for animal research, promote waste of public resources, and generate biased interpretations of clinical outcomes. To investigate current publishing practices and to gain some understanding of the extent to which research results are reported, we examined publication rates of research projects that were approved within an internal funding program of the Faculty of Medicine at a university medical center in Germany, which is exemplary for comparable research funding programs for the promotion of young researchers in Germany and Europe.

Methods

We analyzed the complete set (n = 363) of research projects that were supported by an internal funding program between 2004 and 2013. We divided the projects into four different proposal types that included those that required an ethics vote, those that included an animal proposal, those that included both requirements, and those that included neither requirement.

Results

We found that 65% of the internally funded research projects resulted in at least one peer-reviewed publication; this increased to 73% if other research contributions were considered, including abstracts, book and congress contributions, scientific posters, and presentations. There were no significant differences with respect to publication rates based on (a) the clinic/institute of the applicant, (b) project duration, (c) scope of funding or (d) proposal type.

Conclusion

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore publication rates associated with early-career medical research funding. As >70% of the projects ultimately generated some form of publication, the program was overall effective toward this goal; however, non-publication of research results is still prevalent. Further research will explore the reasons underlying non-publication. We hope to use these findings to develop strategies that encourage publication of research results.

中文翻译：

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德国某大学医学中心内部资助计划的研究项目的发表率：回顾性研究（2004-2013年）

目标

不发表和发表偏见是对科学界相当重要的主题。这些问题可能会限制动物研究在3R原理方面的进展，增加公共资源的浪费，并对临床结果产生偏见。为了调查当前的出版实践并获得对研究结果报道程度的某种理解，我们研究了德国大学医学中心医学部内部资助计划批准的研究项目的发表率。在促进德国和欧洲年轻研究人员的可比研究资助计划方面堪称典范。

方法

我们分析了2004年至2013年间由内部资助计划支持的整套研究项目（n = 363）。我们将这些项目分为四种不同的提案类型，其中包括需要伦理投票的提案类型，包括动物提案的提案类型，既包含两个要求又包含两个要求的项目。

结果

我们发现，有65％的内部资助研究项目至少产生了一份同行评审的出版物。如果考虑其他研究贡献，包括摘要，书籍和大会贡献，科学海报和演讲，则增加到73％。基于（a）申请人的诊所/研究所，（b）项目期限，（c）资金范围或（d）提案类型，发布率没有显着差异。

结论

据我们所知，这是第一项探索与早期医学研究资助相关的发表率的研究。由于超过70％的项目最终产生了某种形式的出版物，因此该计划总体上实现了这一目标。但是，尚未公开发表研究结果。进一步的研究将探究未公开的潜在原因。我们希望利用这些发现来制定鼓励发表研究成果的策略。