The Swiss Cancer Research Foundation and the Swiss Cancer League do an excellent job in promoting Swiss cancer research. They support research projects of excellent quality, resulting in many significant publications – with top scores in international comparisons. These are the results of an independent, externally conducted evaluation.
A bibliometric analysis was conducted to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the publications of the research supported in the period 1998-2006. Result: The Swiss Cancer Research Foundation and the Swiss Cancer League support research of excellent quality. In particular, projects in basic research, epidemiological and laboratory-based clinical research achieve publications of great scientific importance in the respective field.
The comparison with the results of nine Central and Northern European funding institutions is very gratifying: The projects supported by the two Swiss organizations achieve the highest number of citations per publication. The funding efficiency also scores excellently in an international comparison.
Survey: predominantly positive feedback from researchers
In a second analysis, more than 450 researchers who submitted research proposals in the last five years were surveyed about the quality of proposal submission and evaluation. A good 240 researchers took part. With values between 70 and 80%, the vast majority assess the importance of Cancer Research Switzerland and the Swiss Cancer League for their own research activities as great to very great and as positive to very positive for Swiss cancer research as a whole. 86% of the researchers rate the evaluation process as transparent, fair and of good quality. For almost 30% of those applicants whose project was not funded, this assessment is negative. Especially when the commission responsible for the appraisal has recommended a project for funding, but it could not be funded due to lack of funds.
2012: more than 20 million Swiss francs for over 150 projects
Thanks to the numerous donors, Swiss cancer research was supported with more than 20.2 million Swiss francs in 2012. A total of 119 research projects from the entire spectrum of oncology research, ten grantees, six Swiss research organizations and 22 scientific congresses, workshops and international organizations were supported. 68% of the funding came from Cancer Research Switzerland, 16% was contributed by the Swiss Cancer League and 16% by the cantonal and regional leagues.
Further information: www.krebsliga.ch/ff-evaluation
InFo Oncology & Hematology 2014; 2(1): 3.
