It was last autumn, with cooler temperatures than this mid summer’s, that we published some interesting reflections by Ramon Gomis on biomedical research in Catalonia mentioning the CAPRIS programme (Advisory Board in Research and Innovation Policy) and the ICREA programme (Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies).
These questions marked the start of a powerful reflection by Núria Radó about nursing research where the aspects of participation and impact of research were combined (multifactorial), and where the aspect of involvement came into play. All of this in the context of SARIS (The Health Research and Innovation Assessment System) and PERIS (Strategic Plan for Research and Innovation in Health 2016-2020).
Doing research and publishing on this research are actions which often go hand in hand, be it in scientific contexts (articles, communications at congresses) or in informative contexts (the traditional media or social networks).
In this study we saw an analysis of the critical tone of news about medical innovations published in the daily written press. These are the generous reflections by Gaietà Permanyer on the reservations of a doctor when publishing in newspapers or books of a non-professional nature, of the concepts of patient autonomy, of informed decisions and health literacy, and of how everything fits together, to ideally arrive at balanced information in non-specialist media.
We continue highlighting publications. However, we are now focusing on scientific publications and the impact that can be derived from two very different but inspiring subjects:
On the one hand we saw the phenomenon known as “the sleeping beauties of science” thanks to Joan MV Pons and the case of a discovery (published) by Francis Mojica (25 years ago) which has been key in the development of the CRISPR genome editing technique..
“Sleeping Beauties is also said of those scientific articles which seem to go by unacknowledged until someone comes to their late rescue and gives them the recognition they deserve”
On the other hand, two days before the start of spring, we had the collaboration of Ernest Abadal from Newcastle who explained the altmetrics and the strengths and weaknesses of systems (traditional and not so traditional) in the assessment of the quality of a scientific publication.
“From 2010, people started talking about altmetrics, a set of indicators (for example, how often an article is shared, its re-dissemination, the comments it has generated, mentions (likes), etc…) that measure the presence of a publication in social and academic networks, which complement citation indexes considerably”
The aspect of involvement also comes up here:
“From a researcher’s perspective, it is clear that at present publishing an article in a journal is not enough and one needs to be fully involved in its dissemination in social networks and also in academic networks so as to give visibility to the contents published”
We end this journey on the assessment and impact of research with Ion Arrizabalaga with the challenge of measuring involvement in this context.
“Participation of the actors in research is a key element in research to transform and generate impact in society”
If you would like to read more about participation and research, we recommend reading these two documents published at AQuAS: