Research by pathologists not funded by external grant agencies: a success story

The paradigm of pathology research as an endeavor among grant-funded principal investigators resulting in first-author publications is unsupported by quantitative examination of author profiles extracted from the scientific literature. Publications in six pathology journals (Modern Pathology, American Journal of Surgical Pathology, Human Pathology, Acta Cytologica, Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and American Journal of Clinical Pathology) and three general science journals (Science, New England Journal of Medicine, and Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences) were reviewed. Twenty articles per journal from each of three years (1987, 1989, and 1991) were examined (a total of 520 articles). Of these, 295 articles were first-authored by a member of a department of pathology. Of the 295 articles first-authored by a member of a pathology department, 47 (16%) articles listed competitive grant support. Of the grant-supported articles, 20 articles listed NIH support, but only four had an NIH-supported principle investigator as the first author of the article. Unfunded research represented the vast majority (84%) of work produced by pathologists. A review of the ISI Citation Index showed that those articles written by funded pathologists averaged 8.7 (S.D. 7.8) citations per article, compared to 10.4 (S.D. 12.1) citations per article for unfunded pathologists. Results suggest that unfunded research accounts for the majority of pathology research activity as well as their resulting literature citations.