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The costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce
Analyses of the biomedical research workforce, the biomedical research enterprise, and its sustainability have identified a number of threats and offered many solutions to alleviate the problems. While a number of these solutions have been implemented, one solution that has not been broadly adopted,...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2020
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7876701/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33615153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1096/fba.2020-00091 |
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author | Schaller, Michael D. |
author_facet | Schaller, Michael D. |
author_sort | Schaller, Michael D. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Analyses of the biomedical research workforce, the biomedical research enterprise, and its sustainability have identified a number of threats and offered many solutions to alleviate the problems. While a number of these solutions have been implemented, one solution that has not been broadly adopted, despite being widely recommended, is to increase the number of staff scientists and reduce dependency on trainees. The perceived impediment of this is the cost. This paper explores the costs associated with laboratory personnel and the benefits, in terms of productivity, associated with different positions in the workforce. The results of this cost‐benefit analysis depend upon the values assigned to different metrics of productivity by individuals and institutions. If first and senior author publications are the most important metrics of productivity, a trainee‐dependent workforce is much more cost effective. If total publications are the most valued metric of productivity, the cost effectiveness of trainee and staff scientists is reasonably equitable. This analysis provides data for consideration when making personnel decisions and for the continued discussion of modification of the biomedical research workforce. It also provides insight into the incentives for modification of the workforce at the grass roots, which must be considered by institutions genuinely committed to workforce modification to sustain the biomedical research enterprise. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7876701 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-78767012021-02-18 The costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce Schaller, Michael D. FASEB Bioadv Research Articles Analyses of the biomedical research workforce, the biomedical research enterprise, and its sustainability have identified a number of threats and offered many solutions to alleviate the problems. While a number of these solutions have been implemented, one solution that has not been broadly adopted, despite being widely recommended, is to increase the number of staff scientists and reduce dependency on trainees. The perceived impediment of this is the cost. This paper explores the costs associated with laboratory personnel and the benefits, in terms of productivity, associated with different positions in the workforce. The results of this cost‐benefit analysis depend upon the values assigned to different metrics of productivity by individuals and institutions. If first and senior author publications are the most important metrics of productivity, a trainee‐dependent workforce is much more cost effective. If total publications are the most valued metric of productivity, the cost effectiveness of trainee and staff scientists is reasonably equitable. This analysis provides data for consideration when making personnel decisions and for the continued discussion of modification of the biomedical research workforce. It also provides insight into the incentives for modification of the workforce at the grass roots, which must be considered by institutions genuinely committed to workforce modification to sustain the biomedical research enterprise. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-12-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7876701/ /pubmed/33615153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1096/fba.2020-00091 Text en © 2020 The Authors. FASEB BioAdvances published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Schaller, Michael D. The costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce |
title | The costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce |
title_full | The costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce |
title_fullStr | The costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce |
title_full_unstemmed | The costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce |
title_short | The costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce |
title_sort | costs and benefits of a modified biomedical science workforce |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7876701/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33615153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1096/fba.2020-00091 |
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