This analysis is intended as a starting point for understanding where FemTech is growing and where major gaps remain. Using Dimensions AI data, I analyzed grant funding, patent filings, and clinical trials from the past 10 years. I assigned results to broad women’s health categories using keyword matching in titles and abstracts. 

Some grants, patents, and trials may appear under multiple categories if they are relevant to more than one area (e.g., a menstruation tracking app could be tagged as relevant to fertility and PCOS management). As a result, category totals should not be summed together to avoid double-counting. Instead, the charts provide a relative comparison of activity across FemTech areas and show which topics receive more research, investment, and commercialization efforts. Additionally, while patents indicate where commercialization is happening, they do not guarantee market success or regulatory approval.

Where is FemTech Research Growing?

Fertility Innovation Leads Research and Commercialization

Over the past 10 years, global funding agencies such as NIH, the European Commission, and NIHR have awarded $1.06 billion in grants for FemTech-related research. The top-funded areas include:

• Fertility –  43.1% of total funding
• Pregnancy –  31.4% of total funding
• Breast cancer – 10.9% of total funding.

Notably, menopause remains an underfunded area, receiving just 0.55% of total research dollars. This pattern of underfunding in menopause research may reflect broader research biases in women’s health, which leads to non-reproductive aging conditions receiving less attention. Endometriosis and menopause remain starkly underrepresented, reinforcing the pattern of underinvestment in midlife women’s health.

Are We Seeing Innovation? (Patents & Clinical Trials Trends)

Patents Show Market Interest, But Only in Select Areas

While research funding drives exploration, patent filings can indicate where private sector innovation is happening. My analysis finds that like grant funding, FemTech patents are unevenly distributed across key areas of women’s health:

• Fertility – 48% of total patents. This reflects strong market demand, heavy private investment, and ongoing consumer interest in reproductive health solutions.
• Pregnancy – 32% of total patents, reinforcing continued industry attention on maternal health
• Breast cancer – 11.5% of total patents, indicating continued investment but less dominance compared to fertility and pregnancy-related innovations.

Clinical Trials Reveal an Innovation Gap

Clinical trials provide a window into what is actually being tested for real-world use, and the results show clear misalignments:

• Fertility – 41.8% of all clinical trials
• Pregnancy – 29.7% of clinical trials 
• Breast cancer 11% of clinical trials
• Sexual health is significantly under-tested, representing only 3.4% of trials, despite strong consumer interest in solutions for sexual wellness.

Bridging the Gap Between Research, Innovation, and Commercialization in FemTech

While research funding drives exploration, patent filings indicate where private sector innovation is happening. Our analysis finds that FemTech commercialization is highly concentrated, but there are some differences between innovation-heavy areas and those struggling to reach clinical validation.

• Fertility technology has a far higher ratio of patents to clinical trials than any other category (4.21 patents per trial). This patent volume  reflects strong market demand, heavy private investment, and rapid technological advancements in assisted reproduction. However, the gap between patents and trials suggests companies may be prioritizing direct-to-consumer models over clinical validation, or facing regulatory hurdles in testing fertility innovations.
• Pregnancy-related innovation has a balanced ratio (0.25 patents per trial), indicating steady research and commercialization efforts moving in parallel.
• Breast cancer technology follows a similar trend (0.24 patents per trial), showing consistent investment across both innovation and clinical validation.
• Menopause (0.18 patents per trial) and gynecological cancers (0.16 patents per trial) see even less commercialization, reinforcing concerns that midlife women’s health remains a lower priority for investment.
• Sexual health and contraception have some of the lowest patent-to-trial ratios (0.07 and 0.03, respectively) which may indicate that commercialization is still lagging behind research.
• Endometriosis has clinical trials but almost no patents, confirming that diagnostic and treatment innovation remains stagnant.

Implications:

• Are regulatory pathways slowing down fertility tech adoption?
• Are companies prioritizing patents in high-demand markets (like fertility) while ignoring other health needs?
• Should funding agencies reallocate resources toward under-commercialized areas like endometriosis, menopause, and contraception, or will demographic trends inevitably increase commercial investment in some of these areas?

Technology Trends in FemTech: AI, Wearables, and Digital Health

Beyond funding and commercialization trends, an analysis of patents and clinical trials reveals which technologies are shaping FemTech innovation. Three key areas dominate:

AI-Driven Diagnostics

Machine learning and AI are being integrated into fertility tracking, ovulation prediction, and personalized reproductive health solutions. Patents in AI-based reproductive health are on the rise, reflecting growing interest in automated health insights. Breast cancer detection AI is another expanding area, with startups and researchers developing algorithmic screening tools.

Wearable Devices for Women’s Health

FemTech wearables can range from cycle-tracking smart rings to pelvic floor training sensors and are emerging as a major category in innovation. Key areas of innovation include fertility tracking, pregnancy monitoring, and menopause symptom management. While patents for wearable tech are increasing, clinical trials remain limited, indicating that many of these products have not yet reached large-scale medical validation. 

Telemedicine & Digital Health

Telemedicine is playing an increasing role in FemTech commercialization, particularly in clinical research. Examples range from virtual genetic counseling, menopause support apps, and AI-powered health coaching for reproductive and sexual health.

Implications:

• AI-driven diagnostics and wearable devices are growing fast in patents but lagging in clinical trials, which may suggest regulatory or adoption challenges.
• Telemedicine is further along in implementation, likely due to faster regulatory pathways for software-based interventions compared to hardware or pharmaceuticals.

Regulatory, Privacy, and Access Challenges in FemTech

FemTech is advancing rapidly, but policy frameworks are not keeping pace. Many innovations in AI-driven diagnostics, wearable health devices, and digital therapeutics face fragmented regulatory approval pathways that differ by region.

Privacy Concerns are a key issue, as many FemTech solutions collect sensitive health data. This raises concerns about data ownership, consent, and third-party sharing. Access Disparities are also a concern. Low-income populations face significant barriers to accessing affordable, approved, and accessible FemTech solutions.

These issues have been explored in the broader mHealth research movement in recent years, and prior work in these areas may be useful for informing policy and regulatory issues in FemTech. Moving forward, policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders must work together to ensure that FemTech innovations are ethically developed, widely accessible, and properly regulated.

Conclusion & Call to Action

FemTech is at a high-visibility moment. Fertility solutions are flourishing, while other critical areas like menopause, sexual health, and non-hormonal contraception continue to be neglected. The imbalance in research funding, innovation, and clinical validation reflects both structural funding priorities and market incentives.

At the same time, women’s health funding in the U.S. is facing new uncertainties. It is clear that changes in public health funding priorities will impact the future of research and commercialization in the FemTech space as well as women’s health more broadly .

Ensuring sustained investment will be critical to keeping FemTech innovation moving forward. History has shown that fluctuations in funding can significantly impact the pace of innovation. As policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders navigate these changes, cross-sector collaboration will be key.

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About the Author

Emily Alagha, Senior Director of Research Analytics & Support | Digital Science

Emily Alagha is a Senior Director of Research Analytics & Support at Digital Science, where she leverages AI-powered platforms like Dimensions to support data-driven strategies to optimize research funding and enhance research management practices. With a background in medical librarianship, she is passionate about health literacy and ensuring research is accessible to all. She is also a neurodivergent self-advocate committed to amplifying autistic voices and increasing autistic representation in research.

The post Tracking the FemTech Research Boom: What Data Tells Us About Innovation & Gaps appeared first on Digital Science.

Traditionally, September and October have always been one of the busiest – and most interesting – times to be in the publishing industry. Back in the day, September would be the deadline for the first of the following year’s issues to be collated by editors, while in more recent times big events like the ALPSP Conference, the Frankfurt Book Fair and Open Access Week have set the agenda for the remainder of the year and beyond.

In 2024, this period has perhaps more intrigue than most given a number of deadlines and political events occurring in the next 12 months or so, many of them revolving around open access (OA) and its further adoption. But will things pan out the way people anticipate, and are there solutions that can be used to help forge a path through so many uncertainties about the future?

Conference season

At the recent ALPSP Conference in Manchester in September, there was a good deal of discussion about how open access had developed this year, and its potential progress in 2025 and beyond. Perhaps unsurprisingly at a conference full of publishers, the mood was a little downbeat when it came to the theme of OA, but not for the reasons one might think. Reading between the lines, there was a frustration at the shifting sands many felt they had to constantly navigate, in the shape of changing or newly introduced policies, and a sense that innovation was being stymied as a result.

For example, the tone for OA seemed to have been set by the JISC report on transformative agreements (TAs) which was published in the UK earlier in 2024. This made for somber reading, with the headline prediction that while the UK’s transitioning to OA was faster than most countries, based on the journal flipping rates observed between 2018–2022 it would take at least 70 years for the big five publishers to flip their TA titles to OA. 

With this in mind, the fact that there were deadlines for Plan S set for 2025 around transition that seemed unlikely to be met, and with the OSTP memo in the US mired in committees and a potential change on the cards in the White House, the belief among many publishers was that the move to OA was not happening at the pace or in the direction that many thought it would.

Geopolitical calculations

In addition to what is happening in the UK, Europe and in the US, events further afield are also causing publishers to take stock of their medium-to-long-term strategies. The publication of authors based in Russia has declined sharply since the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, and collaboration between US authors and those based in China have also decreased, possibly due to policy changes by the Chinese government favoring publication in China-based journals, but also potentially due to fears about research security issues in the US and in other countries. 

China’s move to OA is also happening at a much lower level than many countries, which is significant as it takes up such a high percentage of published articles, passing the US a few years ago as the world’s most prolific publisher of research articles. As a result, despite the increase in the number of TAs being agreed with universities, publishers are still seeing a high degree of uncertainty in the transition to OA.

Forward motion

This uncertainty will be in the back of publishers’ minds when celebrating OA Week this year, coming as it does every year on the back of major conferences such as ALPSP and Frankfurt, and in the midst of fine tuning budgets for the following year. At Digital Science, we understand this predicament given how closely we work with publishers as customers, and also because many of us have worked in the publishing industry ourselves. As such, we have been analyzing how Digital Science solutions can help publishers steer a path forward on OA and transformative agreements, and have created this use case for Dimensions in support of our community.

This resource has been designed to reflect the period of change that the publishing industry is undergoing, supporting the need for publishers to create, evaluate and negotiate TAs by delivering a strong range of historical and predictive data through Dimensions. Using the Dimensions database – which now holds data on almost 150m publications as well as details on funding, grants and patents – publishers can easily find and analyze data surrounding authorship across categories such as country, geography, institution and funder. Understanding a given discipline’s current or future state of play can complement publishers’ own data and inform their strategies accordingly.

Solid state

The theme of this year’s OA Week – ‘Community over Commercialization’ – is a deliberately provocative one, and should engender a good deal of debate during the week and beyond. It should also broaden the conversation to adjacent areas such as open research and open science, as here we have policy and geopolitics making waves for everyone involved in the research ecosystem. 

The origin of some of these ripples can be seen in two upcoming reports from Digital Science. At the end of October, a new report on Research Transformation includes substantial input from those involved in academia on how OA is impacting on their work, while November sees the ninth annual State of Open Data report, tracking how researchers see open data issues developing as part of their work. Without giving too much away, both of these reports call for greater awareness of – and support using – the myriad of fast-developing technologies that are starting to impact academics and their institutions. As such, the community of interest that supports OA Week every year needs to work together in the ecosystem they all inhabit if those OA deadlines are to be met.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Will 2025 be a turning point for Open Access? appeared first on Digital Science.

Author’s note about identify-first language

In this post, I am using identity-first language (e.g., ‘autistic person’) to honor the preference of many in the autism community who embrace their identity as an integral part of who they are. This approach reflects the values of empowerment and self-identification.

The Rise of Participatory Research

There’s a growing recognition in the research community that individuals with lived experience of a condition or phenomenon can offer unique and valuable insights to the design of scientific studies. This collaborative approach is often referred to as participatory research and actively involves individuals with lived experience in all stages of the research process. Dimensions data (visualized below) reveals a steady increase in research articles using terms related to participatory research, suggesting a growing embrace of this approach within the scientific community. This shift reflects a move towards more inclusive research practices that empower individuals and communities to actively participate in knowledge creation that is directly relevant to the needs and priorities of those it aims to serve.

This post examines recent trends in a specific subset of participatory research that highlights lived experience contributions, as identified through publication authorship and acknowledgments. Focusing on autism research, I will delve into this trend by leveraging Dimensions data to analyze autistic authorship and acknowledged collaborative support. I’ll also compare the trajectory of this movement to similar trends in mental health and chronic illness research. Finally, I’ll discuss the implications of these findings for research impact and visibility and advocate for greater inclusion of those with lived experience in shaping future studies.

Characterizing Autistic Contributor Representation in Autism Research Articles

Methodology

Individual contributions to research studies are most often represented by the author and acknowledgements sections of publications. To investigate how autistic contributions are characterized in the literature, I leveraged the capabilities of the Dimensions database to search within the raw affiliation and acknowledgements fields of research publications. I used a combination of search strategies to focus on publications related to autism research and specifically targeted publications that either:

• Included autistic or neurodiverse authors in the raw affiliations section OR
• Acknowledged autistic people, patient networks, or advisory groups in their acknowledgments section AND
• Mentioned autism-related keywords in their full text

I examined author affiliations and acknowledgments to identify the most common language used to represent contributions from autistic people. I also explored bibliometric indicators such as citation counts, Field Citation Ratio (FCR), and Altmetric Attention Scores to assess the impact and reach of autism research with autistic contributors compared to the broader field of autism studies. Finally, I applied the same approaches to explore how lived experience contributions are characterized in other fields to identify avenues for potential future growth of autistic representation in research.

The Rise of Autistic Authorship

To understand how autistic authors represent themselves, I conducted a qualitative review of author affiliations in participatory autism research to identify common phrases and terms. These range from explicit identifiers like “Autistic Researcher” or “Independent Autistic Scholar,” to affiliations with advocacy organizations such as the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and roles emphasizing lived experience like “Expert by Experience” or “Lived Experience Professional.” While the number of publications authored by self-identified autistic individuals is currently limited (231), these publications offer valuable insights into the unique perspectives and contributions of autistic researchers.

This network visualization represents a preliminary attempt to identify leading neurodivergent researchers engaged in autism and neurodiversity scholarship. While the search terms were designed to highlight self-identified neurodivergent researchers and allies, it’s important to note that this method may not be fully accurate, and not all individuals included may identify as neurodivergent. The visualization highlights key figures like Sonia Johnson, Fiona Ng, and Dora Madeline Raymaker, who are known for their work in this area and could provide valuable leadership on best practices for autistic inclusion in research.

Highlighting specific examples of impactful, autistic-led research with high citation counts and Altmetric Attention Scores (a measure of online attention and engagement) demonstrates the influence of these authors on the broader research conversation.

Top Cited Research Article among Autistic Lived Experience Authors:

• Nicolaidis, C., Raymaker, D., McDonald, K., Dern, S., Boisclair, W. C., Ashkenazy, E. & Baggs, A. (2013). Comparison of Healthcare Experiences in Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey Facilitated by an Academic-Community Partnership. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 28(6), 761–769. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-012-2262-7  

This study compares the healthcare experiences of autistic and non-autistic adults through an online survey, uncovering significant disparities for autistic people. Autistic collaboration involves authors from the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE). The high citation count of this study underscores its impact on shaping subsequent research around healthcare access and equity for autistic people.

Top Altmetric Score and Field Citation Ratio among Autistic Lived Experience Authors:

• Pearson, A. & Rose, K. (2021). A Conceptual Analysis of Autistic Masking: Understanding the Narrative of Stigma and the Illusion of Choice. Autism in Adulthood, 3(1), 52–60. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2020.0043  

This conceptual analysis investigates autistic masking as a response to stigma. Collaborators include Kieran Rose of The Autistic Advocate and Infinite Autism. The high Altmetric score and Field Citation Ratio (a measure of a study’s influence within its specific field) highlight the broad reach and impact of this work on online platforms and in further research.

These examples illustrate the power of autistic-led research to generate new insights and draw attention to often overlooked topics. Having examined the influence of key autistic researchers, it’s essential to explore the broader scope of autistic involvement in research, beyond authorship.

Broadening the Scope: How do Papers Characterize Autistic Contributions Beyond Authorship? 

While authorship provides a clear indicator of direct contribution, it doesn’t capture the full spectrum of autistic involvement in research. I expanded the analysis to include the acknowledgments section of publications to gain additional insight into how autistic people contribute to and shape research. Acknowledgments often reveal a wider range of roles and contributions, such as participation in advisory boards or community networks.

Expanding the analysis to include publications that acknowledge autistic or neurodiverse people, patient networks, or advisory groups in the acknowledgments section significantly broadened the dataset to 703 publications (as of September 25, 2024). Throughout this post, I use the term ‘autistic-contributor research’ to describe these studies where autistic individuals are explicitly acknowledged or listed as co-authors. This term represents a narrower subset of participatory autism research, specifically focusing on visible contributions through acknowledgments or authorship, rather than all potential forms of participatory involvement.

As the chart below illustrates, this expanded search demonstrates that autistic contributions extend beyond authorship and can be recognized in several different capacities.

Patient Representation: The term “patient” emerges as a frequent descriptor in research acknowledgments. It can encompass diverse roles like “patient partner,” or refer to administrative functions related to patient involvement. However, the meaning of “patient” in the author affiliation and acknowledgements section can be ambiguous, sometimes signifying autistic individuals themselves, other times denoting individuals with different conditions within the study.

While widely used, “patient” has limitations in autism research. It centers on pathology and potentially overlooks the broader spectrum of autistic experiences beyond the clinical realm. Not all autistic people identify with this label, as it may imply illness or deficit. While “patient” may suggest autistic involvement in healthcare research, it also highlights the need for more precise language that recognizes the multifaceted roles of autistic people beyond the traditional patient-provider dynamic.

Independent Researchers and Advocates: The presence of terms like “advocate,” “self-advocate,” “lived experience,” and “independent researcher” highlights several ways autistic people contribute to research both as individuals and as part of broader groups of expertise. The use of “independent researcher” in affiliations suggests a recognition of the contributions made by autistic researchers working outside traditional academic institutions.

Group Advisory Roles: The prevalence of terms like “advisory board,” “advisory panel,” “community network”, and “working group” underscores the importance of structured mechanisms to ensure that autistic perspectives and lived experiences directly inform research design and implementation. These groups may not always be composed of autistic people, but they often have close ties to communities with lived experience and aim to represent those perspectives. 

How do studies integrate autistic voices into the study design? Autistic-contributor research is more likely to use qualitative or mixed-methods approaches

Autistic-contributor studies in this dataset are significantly more likely to employ qualitative or mixed-methods approaches when compared to all autism research. Qualitative methods, such as interviews and focus groups, allow autistic people to express their unique perspectives and insights in their own words. Some examples of how studies may integrate autistic voices include co-creating research questions with autistic people, adapting methods to be more accessible, including autistic researchers on the team, and involving autistic participants in data analysis and communication of findings. These collaborative approaches can help studies be more directly relevant to the autism community.

Who is leading in these types of autistic-contributor collaborations? 

It can be useful to explore leading organizations in this dataset to understand where and how investments in autistic-contributor collaborations are happening. Affiliation, funding, and geographic data in Dimensions highlight the United Kingdom’s prominent role in fostering research collaborations involving autistic people. The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) are the leading funders, while University College London and King’s College London are at the forefront of institutions publishing participatory approaches in this field. These data suggest a strong commitment within the UK to promoting inclusive research practices. However, it’s important to acknowledge that this analysis primarily reflects English-language publications, and there may be additional contributions in other languages that use different terminology to acknowledge autistic participation.

Comparing Autistic-Contributor Autism Research with all Clinical Autism Research

What topics are addressed by autism research that acknowledges autistic partners in the author or acknowledgements fields?

In a concept analysis of autistic-contributor research literature, I found a clear emphasis on lived experience, health services, and support systems. Instead of primarily asking “What causes autism?” or “How can we diagnose autism?”, this research asks “How can we improve the lives of autistic people?”. This emphasis is reflected in the prominence of terms like “improve access” and “health system” in the autistic-contributor research network visualization above. 

This focus contrasts with broader clinical autism research, which emphasizes cognitive and behavioral aspects of autism. In the clinical autism concept network above, the strongest themes are diagnosis, social skills, and behavior. 

The distinction is further reinforced by how research is categorized. Clinical autism research falls under Field of Research (FoR) classifications of Psychology and Biomedical Sciences, while autistic-led research leans towards Health Sciences and Health Services. This highlights a fundamental difference in priorities. 

It’s also worth considering the potential impact of age on these research approaches. Autistic-led research may naturally involve more adults, given the complexities of participating in research design. This could lead to a greater focus on issues relevant to autistic adults, an area often overlooked in traditional research.

How does impact look compared to all autism research?

Data sourced: 25 September 2024.

Though still in its early stages, autistic-contributor research shows promising signs of greater impact in both academic citations and public reach. 

Citation, Field Citation Ratio (FCR), & Citation Rate: The average Field Citation Ratio (FCR) for autistic-contributor research is 5.30, compared to 2.31 for all autism research. The citation rate for autistic-contributor autism research (76.65%) is slightly higher than the overall citation rate for autism research (65.57%). Additionally, autistic-contributor research demonstrates a comparable average number of citations per publication (22.76) to the broader field of autism research (23.28). These figures indicate that autistic-contributor research is cited more frequently within the scientific community.

Altmetric Attention Score & Societal Impact: Autistic-contributor research in autism exhibits an average Altmetric Attention Score of 8.6, notably higher than the average of 4 for all autism research. This indicator shows that autistic-contributor autism research sparks more conversations outside of academia than broad autism research.

Translation into Policy, Practice & Innovation: Autistic-contributor research in autism has a higher rate of citation in policy documents (4.7%) compared to the broader field of autism research (2.0%). It also maintains a comparable rate of citation in clinical trials (0.7% vs. 1.2%). However, when it comes to citations in patents, autistic-contributor research lags behind with only 0.4% of publications cited compared to 2.2% in the broader field. These figures suggest that while involving autistic people in research may lead to findings that are more readily translatable into policies and clinical practices, there’s room for growth in terms of fostering innovation and generating patentable discoveries.

Autistic-contributor research in autism represents a small subset of the overall autism literature, but its higher FCR scores and Altmetric Attention Score, comparable citation averages, and stronger translation into policy collectively show the value and influence of research that actively involves autistic people. 

Learning from Other Fields: Comparison to Chronic Illness and Mental Health Research Literature with Lived Experience Contributions

Both chronic illness and mental health research fields have a strong track record of including people with lived experience as active contributors. We can gain valuable insights to enhance autistic representation in research by analyzing language used to acknowledge lived experience contributions in these fields. If we were to standardize language used to describe these collaborations, would it be easier to measure these types of collaborations? What terms would be best to use across fields?

“Patient” and “patient advocates” are some of the most highly used terms across both mental health and chronic illness participatory research, but may present challenges in the context of autism research where some participants do not want to pathologize autism. An emphasis on “lived experience” as an authorship and acknowledgement phrase is also common across all three fields, and may be a better approach to recognize contributions in autism research. Another structure sometimes used in the author affiliation fields is “with [condition]”, such as “researcher with chronic illness” or “advisor with bipolar disorder”. This structure is difficult to standardize across research areas and may make it harder to discover experts with relevant lived experience.

Additionally, there is an emphasis on group collaborators across all three fields. The prevalence of working groups and advisory panels demonstrates the effectiveness of these structures in facilitating meaningful participation and ensuring that diverse perspectives are heard. 

Implications and Recommendations

Despite the promising rise in participatory autism research, it still constitutes a small fraction of the overall autism literature. Much of the research remains rooted in clinical or mechanistic approaches and often overlooks the contributions of those with lived experience. To address this gap, funders, researchers, and institutions must prioritize participatory research approaches that actively incorporate autistic perspectives at every stage of the research process. 

Recommendations:

• Funders and Institutions: Prioritize funding and support for participatory research initiatives that actively involve autistic people in all stages of the research process.
• Researchers: Embrace collaborative approaches and methodologies, establish meaningful partnerships with autistic and neurodivergent communities, and ensure that research designs and methodologies are inclusive and accessible.
• Publishers: Consider metadata fields which standardize how participatory collaborations are described, in collaboration with the research community Consistent language can improve the discoverability of lived experience collaborators.
• Autistic Individuals: Seek out opportunities to participate in research, share your expertise and insights, and advocate for greater representation and inclusion within the research community.

By actively involving autistic people in the research process, researchers in the field can improve the relevance of their work and address the real-world challenges and needs of the community. This evidence can inform policy decisions and advocacy efforts that lead to more equitable and supportive systems for autistic people and foster a deeper understanding of autism.

Special thanks to Holly Wolcott, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research Analytics at Digital Science, for her insightful feedback on this blog post.

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About the Author

Emily Alagha, Senior Director of Research Analytics & Support | Digital Science

Emily Alagha is a Senior Director of Research Analytics & Support at Digital Science, where she leverages AI-powered platforms like Dimensions to support data-driven strategies to optimize research funding and enhance research management practices. With a background in medical librarianship, she is passionate about health literacy and ensuring research is accessible to all. She is also a neurodivergent self-advocate committed to amplifying autistic voices and increasing autistic representation in research.

The post Embracing Lived Experience: A Data-Driven Look at Autistic Involvement in Autism Research appeared first on Digital Science.

At this year’s World Conference on Research Integrity, a team of researchers from Digital Science led by Pritha Sarkar presented a poster with findings from their deep dive on conflict of interest (COI) statements. Entitled Conflict of Interest: A data driven approach to categorisation of COI statements, the initial goal was to look at COI statements with a view to creating a binary model that determines whether a Conflict of Interest statement is present or not in an article. 

However, all was not as it seemed. While some articles had no COI and some had one present, those present covered a number of different areas, which led the team to think COIs might represent a spectrum rather than binary options.

Gold standard

Conflict of interest is a crucial aspect of academic integrity. Properly declaring a COI statement is essential for other researchers to assess any potential bias in scholarly articles. However, those same researchers often encounter COI statements that are either inadequate or misleading in some way even if they are present. 

The Digital Science team – all working on research integrity with Dimensions – soon realized the data could be leveraged further to better explore the richness inherent in the nuanced COI statements. After further research and analysis, it became clear that COI statements could be categorized into six distinct types:

1. None Declared
2. Membership or Employment
3. Funds Received
4. Shareholder, Stakeholder or Ownership
5. Personal Relationship
6. Donation

This analysis involved manually annotating hundreds of COI statements with Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools. The aim was to create a gold standard that could be used to categorize all other COI statements, however despite the team’s diligence a significant challenge persisted in the shape of ‘data skewness’ – which can be defined as an imbalance in the distribution of data within a dataset that can impact data processing and analytics.

Fatal flaw

One irresistible conclusion to the data skewness was a simple one – that authors weren’t truthfully reporting their conflicts of interest. But could this really be true?

The gold standard approach came from manually and expertly annotating COI statements to develop an auto-annotation process. However, despite the algorithm’s ability to auto-annotate 33,812 papers in just 15 minutes, the skewness that had been initially identified persisted, leading to the false reporting theory for authors (see Figure 1 of COI Poster). 

To firm up this hypothesis, when the Retraction Watch database was analyzed, the troubling trend, including the discrepancy between reported COI category and retraction reason, became even more apparent (see Figure 2 of the COI Poster). 

Moreover, when the team continued with the investigation, they found there were 24,289 overlapping papers in Dimensions GBQ and Retraction Watch, and among those papers, 393 were retracted due to conflict of interest. Out of those 393 papers, 134 had a COI statement, however 119 declared there was no conflict to declare.

Conclusion

Underreporting and misreporting conflict of interest statements or types can undermine the integrity of scholarly work. Other research integrity issues around paper mills, plagiarism and predatory journals have already damaged the trust the public has with published research, so further problems with COIs can only worsen the situation. With the evidence of these findings, it is clear that all stakeholders in the research publication process must adopt standard practices on reporting critical trust markers such as COI to uphold the transparency and honesty in scholarly endeavors. 

To finish on a positive note, this research poster was awarded second-place at the 2024 World Conference on Research Integrity, showing that the team’s research has already attracted considerable attention among those who seek to safeguard research integrity and trust in science.

You can find the poster on Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25901707.v2

Partial data and the code for this project are also available on Figshare.

For more on the topic of research integrity, see details of Digital Science’s Catalyst Grant award for 2024, which focuses on digital solutions around this topic.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Shining a light on conflict of interest statements appeared first on Digital Science.

Last week, one of the world’s largest charitable organizations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, changed its policy on open access. In a major shift, it decreed that from 2025 it would no longer fund authors’ article processing charges (APCs) to be published in open access journals. Instead, it will mandate authors to make their articles available as ‘preprints’, which are available to read by everyone but require no fee to post online in a repository. 

Quite clearly, this move is designed to build on the advantages of making medical research openly accessible, as well as capturing the frustration that many share of not being able to discover key information about potentially life or death medical issues – whether that is due to paywalls on articles, or the sometimes hefty APCs that are charged. It was these advantages and frustrations that resulted in the open access (OA) movement forming in the 1990s, and as we detailed here last year fuelled the growth in OA over the last quarter of a century. 

But as we celebrate National Public Health Week and World Health Day on 7th April, what has been the impact of OA in opening up research to the public at large?

Research Transformed

Articles supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) make up a sizeable corpus of texts in the medical literature – according to Dimensions, in 2023 there were 4,494 publications that acknowledged funding from the Foundation,  appearing in journals published by major publishers such as Elsevier (855 articles funded by BMGF), Springer Nature (780) and Wiley (347). While there are already substantial numbers of articles published in major journals funded by BMGF – and the new mandate does not appear to stop them being published in such journals subsequent to posting as preprints – we may see some changes as a result of the ‘preprint first’ policy.

Changing our focus to looking back at how health research such as that funded by BGMF has been made available to all as open access articles, we can see from the chart below that there has been a marked increase in the amount of medical research that is now openly accessible over the last 20 years or so. And significantly, we can also see this using the free web app of Dimensions.

In 2003 there were 1.66 million article publications, according to Dimensions, with just a quarter of them available as open access articles. We can see in the chart that some of the main health categories made up a sizable number of these OA articles in 2003, which was just three years after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was first formed. 

Fast forward 10 years, and medical research had started to transform in terms of its accessibility to the public. In 2013 there were 3.1 million articles published, of which 1.3 million, or 42%, were now OA. Looking at health research specifically, the percentages were much bigger as adoption in these fields outpaced others: In Biomedical and Clinical Sciences 48% of articles were OA, in Clinical Sciences it was 45% and in Biological Sciences it was already over half at 57%.

Further acceleration in the adoption of open access in the last decade has seen the accessibility of health research grow even further. Not only has the total number of articles published increased by well over 50%, but the proportion of articles in medical research that are open access are well over 60%, and nearly 70% in the case of Biological Sciences. 

New perspectives

Since its inception, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made grant payments totalling over $71 billion to support gender equality, global development and global health programs. Its aim has been to create a world where each individual has the opportunity to lead a healthy, productive life, and you can see from its commitment to OA that it views access to the most current research as being part of that mission. As we reflect on and celebrate National Public Health Week and World Health Day, it is clear how important access to data is in supporting underserved communities to take advantage of the benefits that access to health research brings. To learn more about how research impacts society, see our latest TL;DR campaign on Research Transformation.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Healthy increase in access to Medical Research appeared first on Digital Science.

For many researchers, the ongoing hype around recent developments with Generative AI (GAI) has left them feeling nonplussed, with so many new, unknown solutions for them to use. Added to well-reported questions over hallucinations and responsibly-developed AI, the advantages that GAI could offer have been offset by some of these concerns.

In response, Digital Science has developed its first custom GPT solution, which combines powerful data from Dimensions with ChatGPT’s advanced AI platform; introducing Dimensions Research GPT and Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise. 

Dimensions Research GPT’s answers to research queries make use of data from tens of millions of Open Access publications, and access is free to anyone via OpenAI’s GPT Store; Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise provides results underpinned by all publications, grants, clinical trials and patents found within Dimensions and is available to anyone with an organization-wide Dimensions subscription that has ChatGPT enterprise account. Organizations keen to tailor Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise to better meet the needs of specific use cases are also invited to work with our team of experts to define and implement these.

These innovative new research solutions from Dimensions enable users of ChatGPT to discover more precise answers and generative summaries by grounding the GAI response in scientific data – data that comes from millions of publications in Dimensions – through to the increasingly familiar ChatGPT’s conversational interface. 

These new solutions have been launched to enable researchers – indeed anyone with an interest in scientific research – to find trusted answers to their questions quickly and easily through a combination of ChatGPT’s infrastructure and Dimensions’ well-regarded research specific capabilities. These new innovations accelerate information discovery, and represent the first of many use cases grounded in AI to come from Digital Science in 2024.

How do they work?

Dimensions Research GPT and Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise are based on Dimensions, the world’s largest collection of linked research data, and supply answers to queries entered by users in OpenAI’s ChatGPT interface. Users can prompt ChatGPT with natural language questions and see AI-generated responses, with notifications each time any content is based on Dimensions data as a result of their queries on the ChatGPT platform, with references shown to the source. These are in the shape of clickable links, which take users directly to the Dimensions platform where they can see pages with further details on the source records to continue their discovery journey. 

Key features of Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise include: 

• Answers to research queries with publication data, clinical trials, patents and grant information
• Set up in the client’s private environment and only available to client’s end users
• Notifications each time content generated is based on Dimensions data, with references and citation details.

What are the benefits to researchers?

The main benefit for users is that they can find scientifically grounded, inherently improved information on research topics of interest with little time and effort due to the combination of ChatGPT’s interface and Dimensions’ highly regarded research specific capabilities. This will save researchers significant time while also giving them peace of mind by providing easy access to source materials. However, there are a number of additional key benefits for all users in this new innovation:

• Dimensions AI solutions makes ChatGPT research-specific – grounding the answers in facts and providing the user with references to the relevant documents
• It calls on millions of publications to provide information specific and relevant to the query, reducing the risk of hallucination of the generative AI answer while providing an easy route to information validation
• It can help overcome challenges of sheer volume of content available, time-consuming tasks required in research workflows and need for trustworthy AI products.

What’s next with AI and research?

The launch of Dimensions Research GPT and Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise represents Digital Science’s broader commitment to open science and responsible development of AI tools. 

These new products are just the latest developments from Digital Science companies that harness the power of AI. In 2023, Dimensions launched a beta version of an AI Assistant, while ReadCube also released a beta version of its AI Assistant last year. Digital Science finished 2023 by completing its acquisition of AI-based academic language service Writefull. And 2024 is likely to see many more AI developments – with some arriving very soon! Dimensions Research GPT and Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise, alongside all Digital Science’s current and future developments with AI, exemplify our commitment to responsible innovation and bringing powerful research solutions to as large an audience as possible. If you haven’t tested ChatGPT yet as part of your research activities, why not give it a go today?

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Fast forward: a new approach for AI and research appeared first on Digital Science.

The question, however, is just as important for academic institutions looking to check the data on their research programs: have you done your due diligence on that? If not, then a linked database such as Dimensions can help you.

Strategic Objectives

At a recent panel discussion hosted by Times Higher Education (THE) in partnership with Digital Science on optimizing research strategy, the question of due diligence was framed by looking at the academic research lifecycle and the challenges emanating from the increased amount of data now accessible to universities. More specifically, how universities could extract and utilize verified data from the ever–increasing number of sources they had at their disposal. 

Speaking on the panel, Digital Science’s Technical Product Solutions Manager Ann Campbell believes there are numerous benefits to using new modes of data to overcome problems associated with data overload. “It’s important to think holistically, of not only the different systems that are involved here but also the different departments and stakeholders,” she said. “It’s better to have an overarching data model or a perspective from looking at the research life cycle instead of separate research silos or different silos of data that you find within these systems.”

The panel recognized that self–reporting for academics could lead to gaps in the data, while different impact data could also be missed due to a lack of knowledge or understanding on behalf of faculty members. 

Digital Science seeks to address these problems by adding some power to its Dimensions linked database in the shape of Google BigQuery. By marrying this computing power to the size and scope of Dimensions, academics and research managers are empowered to identify specific data from all stages of the research lifecycle. This allows researchers to seamlessly combine external data with their own internal datasets, giving them the holistic view of research identified by Ann Campbell in the discussion. 

Data Savant

The theme of improving the capabilities of higher education institutions when it comes to data utilization has been most vividly described by Ann Campbell in her November presentation to the Times Higher Education Digital Universities conference in Barcelona in October. Memorably, she compared universities’ use of data to the plot of popular TV drama Game of Thrones. Professors as dragons? Rival departments as warring families? Well not quite, but what Ann did observe was that there are many competing elements within HEIs – research management, research information, academic culture, the library – and above them are senior management who have key questions that can only be answered using data and insights across all of them:

• Which faculties have a high impact? Should we invest more in them?
• Which faculties have high potential but are under–resourced?
• How can we promote our areas of excellence?
• How can we identify departments with strong links to industry?
• What real–world research impact can we feed back into our curriculum?
• Are we mitigating potential reputational risk through openness and transparency? 

Bringing these disparate challenges together requires a narrative, which is another reason why the Game of Thrones analogy works so well as we see that for all the moving parts of the story to work, a coherent story is required. This can be how an institution’s research culture strategy is working with a rise in early career international collaborations, how an increase in new funding opportunities followed a drive to increase interdisciplinary collaborations, or how the global reputation of a university could be seen to have improved its impact rankings position due to increased SDG–related research. 

Any good story needs to have the right ingredients, and where Digital Science can really help an institution is to bring together those ingredients from across an organization into viewable and manageable narratives. 

Telling Stories

But the big picture is not the whole story, of course. There are other, smaller narratives swirling through HEIs at any given time that reflect the different specialisms, hot topics or focus areas of the university. Three of these focus areas most commonly found in modern universities are research integrity, industry partnerships and research impact, and these were discussed recently at another collaborative webinar between THE and Digital Science: Utilising data to deliver research integrity, industry partnerships and impact. 

This panel discussion was a little more granular, and teased out some specific challenges for institutions when it came to data utilization. For research integrity, certain data relating to authorship can be used as ‘trust markers’, based around authorship, reproducibility and transparency. Representing Digital Science, Technical Product Solutions Manager Kathryn Weber–Boer went through the trust markers that form the basis of the Dimensions Research Integrity solution for universities. 

But why are these trust markers important? The panel discussion also detailed that outside universities’ realm of interest, both funders and publishers were increasingly interested in research integrity and the provenance of research emanating from universities. As such, products like Dimensions Research Integrity were forming a key part of the data management arsenal that universities needed in the modern research funding environment.  

In addition, utilization and scrutiny of such data can help move the dial in other important areas, such as changing research culture and integrity. Stakeholders want to trust in the research that’s being done, know it can be reproduced, and also see there is a level of transparency. All of these factors then influence the promotion and implementation of more open research activities.

Another important aspect of research integrity and data utilization is not just having information on where data is being shared in what way, it is also whether it is being shared as it has been recorded as, and where it is actually located. As pointed out in the discussion, Dimensions is a ‘dataset of datasets’ and allows the cross–referencing of these pieces of information to understand if research integrity data points are aligned. 

Positive Outlook

Discussions around research integrity and data management can often be gloomy affairs, but there is some degree of optimism now there are increasing numbers of products on the markets to help HEIs meet their goals and objectives in these spheres of activity. Effective data utilization will undoubtedly be one of THE critical success factors for universities in the future, and it won’t just be for the effective management of issues like research integrity or reputations. With the lightning fast development, adoption of Generative AI in the research space and increasing interest in issues like research security and international collaboration, data utilization – and who universities partner with to optimize it – has never been higher up the agenda. 

You can view the webinars here on utilizing new modes of data and delivering research integrity.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Putting Data at the Heart of your Organizational Strategy appeared first on Digital Science.

How old is Open Access? In some ways it is as old as research itself, as at least some results have always been shared publicly. However, since the first journals were published in 1665, accessibility has been an issue, with distribution of paper journals limiting potential readership. When the internet came along, it lowered the barriers to access considerably and opened up the pathway towards Open Access. But that process has been a gradual one.

As a tutor for ALPSP and course leader for some of its industry training modules, I have to be wary of approaching topics such as Open Access. Not because it is especially contentious or difficult, but because as someone who has been involved in scholarly communications for over 20 years, it still feels relatively ‘new’ to me, whereas for most attendees it is simply part of the modern furniture of publishing.

However, as Churchill once said, the longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward, so this year’s OA Week seems as good a time as any to review how its development has progressed over the years. Luckily, in Dimensions we have a tool which can look at millions of articles, both OA and closed access, published over the last quarter of a century.

Back story

Pointing to a specific time to say ‘this is when OA started’ is difficult, as experiments with OA publishing arrived with the internet in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Perhaps the first rallying cry in support of OA came in 1994 when Stevan Harnad published his Subversive Proposal. However, in 1998 several things happened which started to shape the way OA would develop, including the setting up of a number of support networks for authors to advise how to follow the OA path, as well as the founding of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). New tools and services introduced then started to re-engineer how academic publishing operated, which were only amplified by the global adoption of the internet.

Such developments were followed in subsequent years by major declarations from academics and institutions in support of OA, mainly from European cities starting with ‘B’ – both Budapest and Berlin were the basis for such declarations that propelled Open Access forward and firmly onto the agendas of all stakeholders. Some countries and academic cultures adopted OA principles quickly such as Brazil, however it wasn’t until the 2010s that we started to see significant policy changes in Global North countries such as the US and the UK. 

These OA policies have now not only become commonplace, but have strengthened with initiatives like Plan_S in Europe and the OSTP (or Nelson) Memo in the US driving forward the transition towards fuller OA. It feels like the rate of change has increased in the last few years, but is this true and what does the picture look like globally?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

As we can see in the chart below using Dimensions, growth in OA research article publications has been relatively steady over the last 25 years, with a steeper rise in recent years followed by a shallower rise in 2022. This can perhaps be attributed in part to the introduction of Plan_S in 2018 and the introduction of funder mandates, but also the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic which drove OA publications upwards in 2020 and 2021, not least through the avenue of OA preprints.

However, appearances can be deceptive. While the chart may seem to plot a steady increase, the 12-fold rise over 25 years is significantly faster than the four-fold rise seen from all research articles, with all OA articles now making up well over half of all articles.

Looking more closely at the type of OA article recorded on Dimensions, if we look just at Gold OA research articles over time (ie. those published in journals, typically after payment of an article processing charge (APC)), we see a similar development, albeit with a slower take off and steeper rise in recent times.

However, if we look at Green OA research articles made available over the same period, we see a much more complex development, with higher rates of adoption in the early years of OA following a shallower trajectory before a huge spike in 2020, driven by the aforementioned pandemic. 

We can see the change more markedly below if we look at all publications (as opposed to just research articles) in more recent years, with Green and Gold running neck-and-neck until they diverged over the last decade or so. For many early proponents of Green Open Access who were opposed to the high profit margins enjoyed by many, this highlights how Green OA has failed in comparison to Gold Open Access. 

Looking ahead

What do these data tell us about the next 25 years? Perhaps the key takeaway is that shifts in behaviour of authors can be caused by concerted policymaking. Indeed, even the commitment to future mandates can be a catalyst for change as publishers prepare the groundwork quickly for upcoming changes. However, the biggest single shift towards OA happened during something wholly unforeseen (the pandemic), and as geopolitics is in its most volatile state in the whole 25 year period, maybe the biggest changes in OA are just round the corner. 

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About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is also a COPE Trustee and ALPSP tutor, and holds Masters degrees in Philosophy and International Business.

The post From subversive to the new normal: 25 years of Open Access appeared first on Digital Science.

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Digital Science’s flagship product Dimensions has announced a new solution for research institutions and industry, helping to identify risks associated with government research security requirements. Why is the Dimensions Research Security app the right choice for your research operations?

Universities and industry involved in research and development are no strangers to the need to protect intellectual property and mitigate against risk. Nevertheless, organizations around the world – from the FBI in the United States to Universities UK – are increasingly calling for these risks to be taken more seriously.

Inevitably, additional government regulations and recommendations have followed, requiring research institutions – and individual researchers who receive government funding – to demonstrate compliance within their local jurisdictions. Failing to do so can result in penalties and loss of reputation, as well as the impact on research, and economies that rely on that research.

The complexity of these issues combined with the vast networks of research globally means that institutions often can’t “go it alone” – they need something to shine a stronger, brighter spotlight on research security compliance, and to provide the right information to assist in making the best decisions.

Dimensions – among the world’s largest linked research databases – is perfectly placed to be a beacon of light on these issues.

The new Dimensions Research Security app

The Dimensions Research Security app includes a visual dashboard that enables research organizations to obtain information quickly and easily.

Reviewing research collaborations for compliance? Dimensions Research Security enables you to thoroughly and efficiently conduct due diligence on potential research collaborations, helping you to save on time and resources.

With Dimensions Research Security, you can:

• Efficiently verify disclosures
• See all research collaborations – via grant funding information or co-authorship on publications, in patents or in clinical trials
• Surface multiple affiliations for individual researchers
• Screen for restricted entities or individuals
• Pinpoint countries of interest
• Uncover direct and indirect funding sources
• Reveal undisclosed collaborations or international funding sources that could put grant applications at risk.

Research organizations are then able to assess and prioritize potential risks, with the power of world-leading information at their fingertips.

Find out more about the new Dimensions Research Security app at the Dimensions blog site, or ask for a demonstration today.

About Dimensions

Part of Digital Science, Dimensions is among the world’s largest linked research database and data infrastructure provider, re-imagining research discovery with access to grants, publications, clinical trials, patents and policy documents all in one place. www.dimensions.ai. Follow @DSDimensions on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.

About the Author

David Ellis, Press, PR and Social Manager | Digital Science

David has 30 years’ experience in media and communications. With a background in broadcast journalism, his career focus has been in research communication – including science, health science and medicine – spanning 25 years of service in the university sector. His experience also includes both internal and external communications in the health and manufacturing sectors.

The post Dimensions shines a spotlight on research security appeared first on Digital Science.