Tackling the "so what" problem in scientific research: a systems-based approach to resource and publication tracking.

Peer-reviewed publications are one measure of scientific productivity. From a project, program, or institutional perspective, publication tracking provides the quantitative data necessary to guide the prudent stewardship of federal, foundation, and institutional investments by identifying the scientific return for the types of support provided. In this article, the authors describe the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research's (VICTR's) development and implementation of a semiautomated process through which publications are automatically detected in PubMed and adjudicated using a "just-in-time" workflow by a known pool of researchers (from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Meharry Medical College) who receive support from Vanderbilt's Clinical and Translational Science Award. Since implementation, the authors have (1) seen a marked increase in the number of publications citing VICTR support, (2) captured at a more granular level the relationship between specific resources/services and scientific output, (3) increased awareness of VICTR's scientific portfolio, and (4) increased efficiency in complying with annual National Institutes of Health progress reports. They present the methodological framework and workflow, measures of impact for the first 30 months, and a set of practical lessons learned to inform others considering a systems-based approach for resource and publication tracking. They learned that contacting multiple authors from a single publication can increase the accuracy of the resource attribution process in the case of multidisciplinary scientific projects. They also found that combining positive (e.g., congratulatory e-mails) and negative (e.g., not allowing future resource requests until adjudication is complete) triggers can increase compliance with publication attribution requests.

StarBRITE: the Vanderbilt University Biomedical Research Integration, Translation and Education portal.

StarBRITE is a one-stop, web-based research portal designed to meet the day-to-day needs of the Vanderbilt University and Meharry Medical College research community during the planning and conduct of research studies. StarBRITE serves as the main online location for research support addressing issues such as identification and location of resources, identification of experts, guidance for regulatory applications and approvals, regulatory assistance, funding requests, research data planning and collection, and serves as a central repository for educational offerings. To date, there have been more than 590,038 StarBRITE hits by more than 6582 cumulative users. We present here StarBRITE design objectives, details about technical infrastructure and system components, status report and activity metrics for the first 2.75-years of operation, and a report of lessons learned during organizing, launching and refining the portal.