Understanding Decision-Making in Individual Research Project Selection: Insights from Biomedical Scientific Careers

This paper aims to understand decision-making in the selection of individual research projects. An individual research project is defined as a set of ideas and research lines explored within the same research topic (Laudel and Bielick 2018). The objective is to explore how these decisions are influenced by different stages of a scientific career and how they affect the construction of scientific knowledge.

The work uses the scientific career model by Gläser and Laudel (2015) as a reference framework. This model distinguishes between an organizational career (various positions and jobs within a professional trajectory), a community career (the researcher's network, collaborations, and prestige), and a cognitive career (different research themes developed over time).

Methodologically, the study combines in-depth interviews with bibliometric analysis. The field of study is biomedicine, where disciplinary culture and epistemic practices influence the selection of individual research projects to be explored. A total of 36 interviews (24 women and 12 men) were conducted with prominent researchers in Spain.

Several factors influencing the selection of research portfolios at different stages of a scientific career were identified. These include cognitive factors (scientific progress, new technologies, depletion of study objects), community factors (negotiations with principal investigators on continuing topics or establishing new collaborations, among others), and institutional factors (mobility, material constraints, funding...). Additionally, unforeseen situations (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) and personal factors (not covered in this study) were identified.

The empirical data and conclusions drawn may contribute to designing public policies that address these issues and potential challenges in scientific careers.