Determining Impact of Fellowship Grants in Autism Research

Background:

Autism advocacy organizations have funded millions of dollars in pre- and post-doctoral fellowship programs that train emerging talents in autism science. Yet, there is little data on the short and long-term impact of these investments. Utilizing a logic-model framework two non-profit organizations separately examined the impact of their funding on a range of indicators relevant to scientific output, innovation, and career trajectory.

Objectives:

We conducted the first multi-year follow-up analysis of pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowship funding two autism research funding advocacy organizations to identify scientific and career impact of specific autism funding.

Methods:

Guided by a logic model approach to understanding impact of grant funding, the organizations implemented slightly different evaluation methodologies. Organization A tracked pre- and post-doctoral fellows and unfunded applicants outputs for a 4-year period and impact was measured through qualitative and quantitative metrics, and bibliometric analyses. Organization B assessed outcome of pre-doctoral fellowships for up to 9 years following funding. Both organizations utilized HRA reporter, powered by UberResearch’s flagship offering ‘Dimensions’, to track bibliometric impact and altimetric data. Other resources like PubMed data base, as well as professional networking data such as LinkedIn, ResearchGate, telephone interviews and other queries were used to document career trajectories of the funded fellows. Multiple outcomes were assessed related to scientific productivity, impact, and career trajectory, including reporting of retention in autism research, collaborations, careers in science, as well as quantitative measures of productivity including number of publications, citation index, collaborators, altimetric scores and attainment of additional funding.

Results:

Both organizations showed a similar 80% retention in autism research from funded fellows. Organization A estimated the impact of its fellowship by comparing data for funded fellows to those of fellows that were rejected. The retention rate in autism research for fellows funded was 80% whereas only 30% of non-funded fellows. Most funded pre-doctoral fellows were pursuing post-doctoral studies. Post-doctoral fellows had higher number of publications compared to pre-doctoral fellows. Both funded and unfunded fellows showed similar numbers of publications and impact factors for those publications, indicating that success in autism research, not scientific endeavors in general, were improved by autism-specific funding. For Organization B, the funded fellows brought $4 in form of funding from federal, state, and non-profit funding for every $1 invested towards fellowship support. Further the publications from fellows had an average citation rate of 27 per paper with a relative citation ratio of 2.6.

Conclusions:

Advocacy organizations should continue to support early career investigators, as the return on investment is high and most fellows remain engaged in autism research with a high volume of quality output. This combined analysis provides objective evidence of the value of fellowships on retention in autism research, and further demonstrates the utility of different outputs in determining the effectiveness of fellowship mechanisms.