期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2010
卷号:107
期号:21
页码:9556-9561
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0915002107
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:A bibliometric analysis of the Bacillus anthracis and Ebola virus archival literature was conducted to determine whether negative consequences of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" (USA PATRIOT) Act and the 2002 Bioterrorism Preparedness Act on US select agent research could be discerned. Indicators of the health of the field, such as number of papers published per year, number of researchers authoring papers, and influx rate of new authors, indicated an overall stimulus to the field after 2002. As measured by interorganizational coauthorships, both B. anthracis and Ebola virus research networks expanded after 2002 in terms of the number of organizations and the degree of collaboration. Coauthorship between US and non US scientists also grew for Ebola virus but contracted for the subset of B. anthracis research that did not involve possession of viable, virulent bacteria. Some non-US institutions were dropped, and collaborations with others intensified. Contrary to expectations, research did not become centralized around a few gatekeeper institutions. Two negative effects were detected. There was an increased turnover rate of authors in the select agent community that was not observed in the control organism (Klebsiella pneumoniae) research community. However, the most striking effect observed was not associated with individual authors or institutions; it was a loss of efficiency, with an approximate 2- to 5-fold increase in the cost of doing select agent research as measured by the number of research papers published per millions of US research dollars awarded.
关键词:biosecurity policy ; research productivity ; research networks ; Bacillus anthracis ; Ebola virus