Research productivity grants: Physical Education, Physical Therapy, Speech Pathology, and Occupational Therapy

Abstract

The research productivity grants (PQ) distributed annually by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico -CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) have generated a number of concerns in the scientific community. It is the purpose of this editorial to shed light on the criteria adopted by the Multidisciplinary Health Advisory Committee (AC) for granting PQ grants.A key point is to emphasize that the PQ grants of this AC are distributed primarily to researchers with initial training in the areas of the committee and with institutional ties to units, departments, or graduate programs of these areas. Supervision of candidates in programs that are not accredited by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Ensino Superior -CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) are ineligible, as are scientific works not related to the areas of the committee.It should be noted that there are minimum entry criteria for each level, which are publicly available on the CNPq website. Regrettably, the AC continues to receive numerous applications that do not meet those criteria, including applications from undergraduate or graduate students.A diagnosis of the situation of the AC is in order at this point. Physical Education currently has 85 existing grants, Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy have 65 grants and Speech Pathology has 51 PQ grants. The Physical Education grants are distributed among eight states of the Federation, with 40% allocated to teachers in the state of São Paulo. The Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy grants are allocated to researchers in seven states, with 63% of grant holders working in the state of São Paulo. In Speech Pathology, the grants are concentrated in six states, with 71% allocated to researchers with ties to institutions in São Paulo.Of the total AC grants, 62.5% are level 2, 18.5% are level 1D, 5.5% are 1C, 8.5% are 1B, and 5.0% are 1A. These percentages are at odds with CNPq standards, which recommend 10% of grants in levels 1A and 1B and 50% at level 2. The AC has forwarded documents to the senior management at CNPq requesting a review of this scenario and an increase in level 1 grants, particularly 1A and 1C. It is also worth noting that, in the last three appraisals, there was no allocation of new grants for our AC. The matter was also discussed in a recent document forwarded to senior management at CNPq.We will now present some information about the appraisal of PQ grants in 2015. The most complex task of the assessment was to define the indicators to be included in the calculation algorithm, with respective weights. The AC has chosen to use five indicators, with the following weights: scientific production during the study period (35%), supervision (25%), H index from the Institute of Scientic Information -ISI (20%), average number of citations per paper based on data from the Scopus database (15%), and submitted research project (5%). It should be noted that these criteria were used only for the applica...