February 2012
Dan Stokols, Chancellor's Professor, Psychology and Social Behavior, Planning, Policy and Design, along with colleagues at the National Cancer Institute, conducted a longitudinal study to compare bibliometric indicators of scientifıc collaboration, productivity, and impact of NIH center-based transdisciplinary team science initiatives and traditional investigator-initiated grants in the same fıeld. Following an initial lag period, the transdisciplinary research center grants achieved higher overall publication rates than the investigator-initiated (NIH R01) grants. On average, publications produced by the research center grants had greater numbers of coauthors but similar journal impact factors as compared with publications produced by investigator-initiated grants. The group's research was recently published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.