How to find biomedical research publications that are 'guaranteed' to be 'basic' (rather than applied) science?
September 1, 2011 6:57 PM Subscribe
A biomedical research paper that leads to a new evidence-based treatment guideline could be called the 'gold standard' of clinically-relevant research. Is there a 'gold standard' that defines a 'basic science' biomedical research paper?
I work at a place that gives grants for biomedical research. We are often asked how the research we support is impacting health and healthcare in the near term. I want to train research assistants to 'rate' the publications that come out of the research we support. I want them to rate which publications have the potential to immediately impact health ('drug A shown to be better than drug B') vs. those that would only impact health in the longer term ('new molecular pathway in tumor growth found'). To train them (and test them) I need some examples of clinically-relevant and non-clinically-relevant biomedical research papers. I know how to find 'gold standard' clinically-relevant papers - but how do I find 'gold standard' basic science papers? Papers that an independent observer would agree are pretty much guaranteed not to be clinically relevant?
I work at a place that gives grants for biomedical research. We are often asked how the research we support is impacting health and healthcare in the near term. I want to train research assistants to 'rate' the publications that come out of the research we support. I want them to rate which publications have the potential to immediately impact health ('drug A shown to be better than drug B') vs. those that would only impact health in the longer term ('new molecular pathway in tumor growth found'). To train them (and test them) I need some examples of clinically-relevant and non-clinically-relevant biomedical research papers. I know how to find 'gold standard' clinically-relevant papers - but how do I find 'gold standard' basic science papers? Papers that an independent observer would agree are pretty much guaranteed not to be clinically relevant?
I'm clinical, but couldn't you just look through the past few months of issues of Science or Nature and use some of their featured articles (rather than say JAMA or New England Journal or Lancet). I'm sure they wouldn't be running this stuff unless they thought it was pretty high quality, again I'm no researcher but from what I understand getting papers in there is highly competitive.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 12:02 AM on September 2, 2011
posted by treehorn+bunny at 12:02 AM on September 2, 2011
On the less-immediately clinically relevant end of academia, here: Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, Journal of Cell Science, Cell, Nature Biomaterials contain papers that are much more likely to be along the lines of "we found this tiny piece of this protein signalling pathway on cancer cells", or "Hey, it turns out that cells in vitro don't die when in contact with this new adhesive." All are very well-respected in the basic science community. JBMR in particular is going to be mostly populated by writers with zero clinical background, possibly not even much of a bio background; they'll be focusing more on the materials fabrication and properties (not sure if that's what you're looking for).
Such papers can be found in a lot of other journals too, but your hit rate will be pretty high on those. There are also some relevant IEEE journals as well (Biomedical Engineering, Medical Imaging, Nanobiotechnology, off the top of my head) that would get you there quick, they're a bit less prestigious, I think, and are even more likely to be done by folks who are nowhere near the clinic.
posted by tchemgrrl at 9:41 AM on September 2, 2011
Such papers can be found in a lot of other journals too, but your hit rate will be pretty high on those. There are also some relevant IEEE journals as well (Biomedical Engineering, Medical Imaging, Nanobiotechnology, off the top of my head) that would get you there quick, they're a bit less prestigious, I think, and are even more likely to be done by folks who are nowhere near the clinic.
posted by tchemgrrl at 9:41 AM on September 2, 2011
So what you're looking for are papers that drive investigations throughout the field, right?
I'd say what Cold Lurkey says, about foundational papers, is on the mark, but I'd caution that sometimes you see these flareups - IgG2 disulfide isomerism for example - that are surprising and generate a lot of buzz since it was a totally unexpected thing that presumably had been there all along, but in the grand cosmic scheme of things, didn't really mean much other than to explain some odd observations here and there.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:10 PM on September 2, 2011
I'd say what Cold Lurkey says, about foundational papers, is on the mark, but I'd caution that sometimes you see these flareups - IgG2 disulfide isomerism for example - that are surprising and generate a lot of buzz since it was a totally unexpected thing that presumably had been there all along, but in the grand cosmic scheme of things, didn't really mean much other than to explain some odd observations here and there.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:10 PM on September 2, 2011
As a researcher, I think "gold-standard" research is any paper that makes sound conclusions from thorough, unambiguous, well-controlled experiments. In other words, the breadth and quality of the experiments absolutely justify the title of the paper. A paper that the authors could send to their harshest critics, who have the most to lose from the findings, and still convince them of the results.
But that probably doesn't help you much, since you need to really be part of the field to identify them. Which is why Faculty of 1000 is your friend (unfortunately requires subscription, but I think you can join for free for 30 days or so), because it comprises evaluations by the scientists within the field.
The other approach is to look at what makes its way into the higher impact factor papers (Cell, Science, Nature etc.), as treehorn+bunny mentioned. But beware, not all of it is good. Science and Nature will just as often accept sensational findings that aren't grounded in super-convincing science because of the impact the findings might have if they're true (think melanoma stem cells, for example).
At the researcher level, we are impressed by people who achieve the goals of the field, which of course differs depending on the discipline. I would recommend reading the News and Views sections in the journals that have them (e.g. Latest Science News and Analysis here), since they put the contents of a particular paper into the context for other scientists who are not in the field, and can be very good at explaining why a particular paper is worthy of attention.
I know that the primary goal of many biomedical researchers is to find the molecular mechanism that underlies a particular biological phenomenon (it certainly is in my field). It is a near prerequisite to get an article into Cell and lacking a mechanism is common reason given by editors not to accept a paper ("yes i's interesting that cell/drug x causes cell y to perform function z, but how?"). If you find papers that convincingly demonstrate 'new molecular pathway in tumor growth found' or some such research at the molecular level, then they can be considered "gold-standard" examples.
Best of luck!
posted by kisch mokusch at 11:32 PM on September 2, 2011
But that probably doesn't help you much, since you need to really be part of the field to identify them. Which is why Faculty of 1000 is your friend (unfortunately requires subscription, but I think you can join for free for 30 days or so), because it comprises evaluations by the scientists within the field.
The other approach is to look at what makes its way into the higher impact factor papers (Cell, Science, Nature etc.), as treehorn+bunny mentioned. But beware, not all of it is good. Science and Nature will just as often accept sensational findings that aren't grounded in super-convincing science because of the impact the findings might have if they're true (think melanoma stem cells, for example).
At the researcher level, we are impressed by people who achieve the goals of the field, which of course differs depending on the discipline. I would recommend reading the News and Views sections in the journals that have them (e.g. Latest Science News and Analysis here), since they put the contents of a particular paper into the context for other scientists who are not in the field, and can be very good at explaining why a particular paper is worthy of attention.
I know that the primary goal of many biomedical researchers is to find the molecular mechanism that underlies a particular biological phenomenon (it certainly is in my field). It is a near prerequisite to get an article into Cell and lacking a mechanism is common reason given by editors not to accept a paper ("yes i's interesting that cell/drug x causes cell y to perform function z, but how?"). If you find papers that convincingly demonstrate 'new molecular pathway in tumor growth found' or some such research at the molecular level, then they can be considered "gold-standard" examples.
Best of luck!
posted by kisch mokusch at 11:32 PM on September 2, 2011
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This is part due to the pastiche effect of science. You will not be able, outside of the triumphant review or two that really encapsulates all the relevant factors, to find a single paper that hits every ball out of the park. So "gold standard" may be setting the bar a bit high.
Alternatively, and not knowing any specifics, if you want to look at foundational papers, ones that really made the ballpark what it is, you should look at the back-citations for all the clinical and follow-up papers. There should be one founding paper that they all cite religiously. For this, I like to use ISI's Web of Knowledge, which unfortunately requires a subscription. Google scholar and others can also help. i.e. if you're looking at a clinical trial paper, go back and see what papers they cite, which also cited that paper, which cites paper 0.
The only caution is that there may not be just one paper, it may be a composite of a few, temporally related or otherwise publications that really lay the groundwork.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 9:51 PM on September 1, 2011