Outsourcing research to third parties
Outsourcing has been relatively rare in academia until now, but is that beginning to change? So ask Franz B. Pichler and Susan J. Turner of the University of Aukland in their Commentary in this month's Nature Biotechnology (25, 1093-1096; 2007). They write: "The rapid development of ever more complex and expensive technology coupled with the increasingly competitive environment in the life sciences is changing both how we access technology and how we conduct research. It is no longer possible to expect every technology to be readily available within a research institution, let alone a laboratory, yet access to such technology is often the difference between success and failure within today's competitive funding models. To fully embrace emerging technologies, scientists are increasingly reliant on outsourcing to contract technology providers (CTPs). In this context, CTPs are companies or institutes that conduct partial or entire experiments on a commercial basis."
The Commentary addresses the pros and cons of going out of house, and some of the strategies needed to make sure this novel form of collaboration works. On what side of the fence sit the authors? "Ultimately, science is more about the conceptualization of the experiment, its design, analysis and interpretation than the actuality of conducting an experiment. Provided that the experiment is performed to the required specifications, it should not matter that some or all of the work has been outsourced. As outsourcing can achieve significant efficiencies in research, we predict that it will become an increasingly common component of research programs, even in academia."