(Sept. 15, 2014) Thomson Reuters Research Analytics has rated EU-AIMS – the autism research program of the European Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – as the initiative’s best-performing area. The rating is based on the number and quality of scientific papers coming out of the program.
“This is truly excellent news that provides objective evidence of the impact of our investments as both an investor and partner in EU-AIMS, the world’s largest autism research project,” says Autism Speaks Chief Science Officer Rob Ring.
EU-AIMS stands for European Autism Interventions – A Multicentre Study for Developing New Medications. Autism Speaks is a sponsor and major participant in the program, which is dedicated to speeding the development of safe and effective medicines for autism. IMI, the program's funder, is the world’s largest public-private partnership for biological research, with a budget of $4.27 billion (€3.3 billion) over the next ten years.
EU-AIMS represents the world’s largest single investment in autism research. It brings together a wide range of university research teams with European pharmaceutical companies investing in autism research.
Measuring scientific impact
As evidence of scientific impact, the Reuters report notes that recent studies by EU-AIMS researchers are being cited in other scientific journal articles at a rate nearly four times the world average for published research.
In all the report counts 26 scientific, peer-reviewed papers coming out of the EU-AIMS research program in the last two years (2012 and 2013). Eleven of these studies stand out as “highly cited” in subsequent research papers by other investigators. The scientific community widely uses citation frequency to gauge a given study’s importance and influence in advancing research.