The Estimated Costs of Manuscripts Associated with OREF Funding

Information is expensive. Anyone who has attempted to accrue a substantial amount of new data realizes this, but apparently few have attempted to quantify such costs. Although we used a variety of computerized literature search strategies, it was not possible to identify any estimates of the costs of producing a research manuscript. Therefore, we undertook the following study to ascertain the costs of producing a publication in musculoskeletal research. First, we attempted to determine the costs of producing a published manuscript by using PubMed and a variety of literature search strategies. Although we searched through 2287 scientific references, it was not possible to identify a single article in which the costs of producing a research paper had been directly estimated. Two hundred and fifty-two recipients (principal investigators) of Research and Career Development Awards between 1985 and 1998 were then identified from Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) Award Summaries. This source provided data on the duration (typically two years) and total amount of the award, in addition to the investigator's name and institution and the title of the award. The type of award (Research or Career Development) and the degree of the principal investigator were identified. The research projects were classified into one of three categories: biological, biomechanical, or clinical. In most cases (88%), there was a final report from which the numbers of abstracts and publications could be ascertained. To ensure comparability of the costs of the papers, the award amounts were adjusted to 2001 dollars with use of the Consumer Price Index. Next, PubMed searches were conducted with use of the name of each principal investigator to determine the number of publications prior to the award, the number of publications in the area of the grant within three years after the completion of the grant period, the number …