Network Dynamics to Evaluate Performance of an Academic Institution

Statistical assessments of performance are common in industry and for individual scientists, but the use of such measures to assess productivity in scientific organizations has lagged behind. The need for defined performance measures has grown as team science has begun to play a larger role in biomedical research, such as in the area of translational medicine. We used a metric, node degree over time, to measure the change in the rate of collaboration over the past five years within an organization, the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT). The number of collaborative papers and grants roughly doubled over the past five years among investigators within but not outside of ITMAT. Also, collaborations within institutions and departments were more frequent than those between them--an actionable area of improvement.