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Scientific Director’s Presentation
I shall now sum up what 2016 has meant for the CIBER-BBN, although you will find plenty more detailed information on this in the following pages.
The number of scientific publications in 2016 would seem to have dropped back in respect of previous years, a reduction which could be attributed to the economic situation and lower resources, mainly in
the numbers of contracted staff, the main asset of a research centre. We nevertheless go on keeping high quality standards in our scientific production, with over 70% of the production in first quartile journals and almost 28% in the first decile.
We should also stress the improvement in indicators as regards communication and visibility of our work for society. The number of appearances in the media and social networks, press releases, etc. has considerably improved as compared with previous years.
In 2016 a large number of intramural projects were started to describe the research work done by our thematic area, and which are being undertaken on a collaborative basis. After the evaluation by the ANEP, 30 projects were classified as excellence projects, and 39 as projects of recognised activity. Each project focusses on solving a clinical problem, cancer and neurological diseases being the pathologies most tackled by our researchers.
We are extremely satisfied with the increase in applications for competitive financing projects, on both national and international scales. The projects applied for by CIBER, either by several groups going in
for these as CIBER or by contracted researchers, have exceeded the ones presented in 2015 by 60%. The success rate has also consequently improved. At present CIBER-BBN researchers are taking part in several H2020 projects as partners or coordinators.
We are aware that we have to provide a response to the great challenge which we have been set, of bringing the results of our research closer to society and clinical practice, improving our indicators as regards transfer and translation. We continue to work to this end with the aim of improving the flow of our results into industry and supporting measures that include, amongst others, the co-financing of projects with companies.
In the scope of clinical cooperation, three clinical forums have been arranged in the framework of the latest sessions. These were of great interest due to the stimulus that was meant by bringing together medical doctors and the researchers who develop technologies.
In 2016 NANBIOSIS became established as a unique scientific infrastructure. The internal management of competitive access has been consolidated, awareness of this has been heightened in the professional biomedical sector nationwide and internationally, and its online positioning has improved.
In 2016 the criteria for annual assessment of research groups have furthermore been modified and simplified. As a result of this, no group has been put forward for discontinuity after the 2015 assessment.
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