title: Toward a sustainable biomedical research enterprise: Finding consensus and implementing recommendations.
abstract: The US research enterprise is under significant strain due to stagnant funding, an expanding workforce, and complex regulations that increase costs and slow the pace of research. In response, a number of groups have analyzed the problems and offered recommendations for resolving these issues. However, many of these recommendations lacked follow-up implementation, allowing the damage of stagnant funding and outdated policies to persist. Here, we analyze nine reports published since the beginning of 2012 and consolidate over 250 suggestions into eight consensus recommendations made by the majority of the reports. We then propose how to implement these consensus recommendations, and we identify critical issues, such as improving workforce diversity and stakeholder interactions, on which the community has yet to achieve consensus.
authors.affiliation: Office of Public Affairs, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rockville, MD 20852; cpickett@asbmb.org.
authors.forename: Christopher L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Pickett
authors.affiliation: Office of Public Affairs, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rockville, MD 20852;
authors.forename: Benjamin W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Corb
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605;
authors.forename: C Robert
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Matthews
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112;
authors.forename: Wesley I
authors.initials: WI
authors.lastname: Sundquist
authors.affiliation: Department of Computational and Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA 15261.
authors.forename: Jeremy M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Berg
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research; D032921:Consensus; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D012109:Research Support as Topic; D014146:Training Support; D014481:United States
keywords: biomedical workforce; graduate training; postdoc training; research funding; research regulation