Case Study: Biomedical Research Infrastructure Program
Connecting Research and Researchers
ORCID is improving accuracy in scholarship and scientific research, one 16 digit number at a time.
GOALS
Our Biomedical Research Infrastructure Program was designed to lower barriers to discovery through preclinical infrastructure development.
***Please note that the Biomedical Research Infrastructure Program is actively winding down and we are no longer accepting proposals for new grants in this field.***
THE OPPORTUNITY
Advances in biomedical research are essential to produce breakthrough discoveries for the improvement of human health. However, the research enterprise currently faces a number of systemic challenges that increasingly threaten its productivity. Among these are four prominent issues:
- Publication in top journals is imperative to scientists’ securing faculty positions, tenure and research funding, resulting in hyper‐competition for these positions and resources;
- A focus on achieving positive results for publication often comes at the expense of reproducibility and quality of research;
- The most commonly used technologies and platforms for sharing data and results are frequently insufficient to access fundamental research materials and information; and
- Limited avenues exist to collaborate across fields and communicate research findings.
These systemic issues are linked to an alarming excess of wasted resources, including time, money and equipment; substantial growth in the number of retracted papers; and a lack of reproducible published studies – all of which place significant but avoidable limits on potential innovation within the biomedical sciences.
We believe a nontraditional focus on enhancing the underlying infrastructure for biomedical research can facilitate biomedical advances and catalyze a shift toward improved research practices.