Page 4 - MemoriaSAM-Eng

ORGANIZATION

Letter from the Scientific Director

These pages contain the CIBERSAM scientific report for 2013. The fundamental aspect
of this report is not only the maintenance of research activity but rather the increase

in productivity despite the decrease in funding received in recent years. Logically, we

wonder what the situation would have been like if we had not had this economic crisis
and how long we will be able to put up with this situation. The internationalization of

our research with an increasing number of European projects has undoubtedly allowed
maintaining the working rhythm achieved in previous years. In 2013, we successfully

compensated in part the decrease in national public funding in recent years with in-

ternational and private funding. Unquestionably, our Centre is turning into a structure
that is increasingly competitive at the international level, attracting the interest of

private industry to enable safely and efficiently developing projects with assured qual-

ity. Our Centre provides such assured quality with competitive and determining annual
evaluations for the continuity of the groups and of the structure itself under national

and international scrutiny.

In 2013, like every year since its creation, this CIBER conducted an annual evalua-
tion of each of the groups. This comprehensive evaluation, which I believe should be

extended to other public research structures in order to break away from the highly

bureaucratic research that is so typical of us and causes so much harm to this country,
results in a more efficient distribution of the resources available for research of excel-

lence. Research groups inside and outside this CIBER are dynamic groups with varying

research quality over the years. We believe that a Centre receiving private funding
cannot have groups outside the institution which are better than groups inside it. One

of the greatest strengths of this Centre is that it is a dynamic structure which can and
must adapt to internal and external changes by means of transparent and objective

evaluation mechanisms. There is no system more inefficient than that which allows

those joining an institution to remain in said institution regardless of their effort, abil-
ity and results. This ancient, outdated and inefficient system that has been with us for
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so long must now become part of our history. The call for proposal for the incorpora- 0
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tion of new groups will undoubtedly enrich this CIBER which, following the principle of RT
equality, will continue to give priority to competitive groups, even at the expense of O
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dispensing with less productive groups currently forming part of this Centre.
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In 2013, all the principal investigators of this CIBER worked on and approved the U
2014-2016 Strategic Plan. According to our recently released Strategic Plan, we have NN
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continued with an ambitious quality plan with measurable markers, and it serves as /
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the basis for agreeing on areas to be improved. The words innovation and competi- SA
tiveness play a key role and guide our Centre’s vision provided in said Strategic Plan.
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The main objective of favoring translational research of excellence in mental health is CI

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sought through programmes and platforms. All the programmes (depression, schizo-

phrenia, bipolar disorder, therapeutic innovation, child and adolescent psychiatry and