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Evaluating "payback" on biomedical research from papers cited in clinical guidelines: applied bibliometric study
J Grant1, R Cottrell, F Cluzeau
1Policy Unit, Wellcome Trust, London NW1 2BE. jgrant@wellcome.ac.uk
Objectives:
To develop a methodology for evaluating the impact of research on health care, and to characterise the papers cited on clinical guidelines.
Design:
The bibliographic details of the papers cited in 15 clinical guidelines, developed in and for the United Kingdom, were collated and analysed with applied bibliometric techniques.
Results:
The median age of papers cited in clinical guidelines was eight years; most papers were published by authors living in either the United States (36%) or the United Kingdom (25%)-this is two and a half times more than expected as about 10% of all biomedical outputs are published in the United Kingdom; and clinical guidelines do not cite basic research papers.
Conclusion:
Analysis of the evidence base of clinical guidelines may be one way of tracking the flow of knowledge from the laboratory to the clinic. Moreover, such analysis provides a useful, clinically relevant method for evaluating research outcomes and different strategies in research and development.