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NIH funding

Thousand-citation papers are outliers

Nature volume 492, page 356 (2012)Cite this article

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Joshua Nicholson and John Ioannidis suggest that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is failing to fund the most impactful researchers in favour of more conformist scientists with interests similar to those of the grant reviewers (Nature 492, 34–36; 2012). For presumably practical reasons, Nicholson and Ioannidis define these high-impact scientists as authors of a paper(s) with at least 1,000 citations. But setting the bar so high could yield unrepresentative outliers in the analysis.

Many of these authors are unlikely to repeat this level of impact consistently, so their papers become anecdotal rarities and atypical of career performance. And as the Comment revealed, several authors of papers with 1,000 or more citations had varied and justifiable explanations for not holding NIH funding. Also, agencies such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute skim off some of the high-performing researchers, effectively removing them from the NIH system because they are considered to be well funded.

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  1. Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    James Woodgett

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  1. James Woodgett
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Correspondence to James Woodgett.

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Woodgett, J. Thousand-citation papers are outliers. Nature 492, 356 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/492356b

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  1. Amit Vikram

    I believe that an effort to reduce network should be undertaken. Although beneficial at times, network or familial bias is not productive for every endeavor. Presence of bias during peer review process may lead to selection of less competitive project over a more competitive project submitted by an obscure or new to the group person. It is seen very often during peer review process with manus cripts from lesser known or new groups having a higher rejection rate versus established scientist.

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