Paper short abstract:

We present exploratory studies on research prioritization in the cases of avian flu and obesity. Research priorities are revealed by semantic analysis on abstracts and keywords from publications and project data.

Paper long abstract:

Although it is often argued that research priorities are not well aligned with societal needs (Sarewitz and Pielke, 2007), the actual distribution of resources across competing research topics is often unclear or contested. In this presentation, we will introduce methods to quantitatively estimate the relative investment across competing research options, explore mechanisms that may shape investments and contrast priorities with societal needs.

First, in the case of obesity, we analyse question records in the EU parliaments as an instance of social demand (as "captured" by decision makers). We use topic modelling to reconstruct thematic structures in both parliamentary data and publications. We compare them with publication maps to explore (mis)alignments between societal concerns and scientific outputs. We find that research is more concerned about the biomedical mechanisms leading to obesity, whereas political questions focus on the socio-economic mechanisms that cause obesity.

Second, we analyse priorities in avian flu with project and publication data. We investigate how priorities are shaped by three institutional contexts: (i) pharmaceutical industry, (ii) publishing and public research funding pressures, and (iii) the mandates of international and national science-based policy or public health organizations. These results are significant not only for informing resource allocation, but also to take a broad perspective of research governance that explicitly takes into account underlying incentive structures when defining priorities.