Comparing research investment to United Kingdom institutions and published outputs for tuberculosis, HIV and malaria: a systematic analysis across 1997–2013 - Springer

The “Unfinished
Agenda” of infectious diseases is of great importance to policymakers
and research funding agencies that require ongoing research evidence on
their effective management. Journal publications help effectively share
and disseminate research results to inform policy and practice. We
assess research investments to United Kingdom institutions in HIV,
tuberculosis and malaria, and analyse these by numbers of publications
and citations and by disease and type of science.

Information on
infection-related research investments awarded to United Kingdom
institutions across 1997–2010 were sourced from funding agencies and
individually categorised by disease and type of science. Publications
were sourced from the Scopus database via keyword searches and filtered
to include only publications relating to human disease and containing a
United Kingdom-based first and/or last author. Data were matched by
disease and type of science categories. Investment (United Kingdom
pounds) and publications were compared to generate an ‘investment per
publication’ metric; similarly, an ‘investment per citation’ metric was
also developed as a measure of the usefulness of research.

Total research
investment for all three diseases was £1.4 billion, and was greatest for
HIV (£651.4 million), followed by malaria (£518.7 million) and
tuberculosis (£239.1 million). There were 17,271 included publications,
with 9,322 for HIV, 4,451 for malaria, and 3,498 for tuberculosis. HIV
publications received the most citations (254,949), followed by malaria
(148,559) and tuberculosis (100,244). According to UK pound per
publication, tuberculosis (£50,691) appeared the most productive for
investment, compared to HIV (£61,971) and malaria (£94,483). By type of
science, public health research was most productive for HIV (£27,296)
and tuberculosis (£22,273), while phase I–III trials were most
productive for malaria (£60,491). According to UK pound per citation,
tuberculosis (£1,797) was the most productive area for investment,
compared to HIV (£2,265) and malaria (£2,834). Public health research
was the most productive type of science for HIV (£2,265) and
tuberculosis (£1,797), whereas phase I–III trials were most productive
for malaria (£1,713).

When comparing
total publications and citations with research investment to United
Kingdom institutions, tuberculosis research appears to perform best in
terms of efficiency. There were more public health-related publications
and citations for HIV and tuberculosis than other types of science.
These findings demonstrate the diversity of research funding and
outputs, and provide new evidence to inform research investment
strategies for policymakers, funders, academic institutions, and
healthcare organizations.