Evaluating the performance of sponsored Chinese herbal medicine research

Chinese herbal medicine has recently become a hot research field internationally; an increasing number of pharmaceutical researchers and scientists have dedicated themselves to such research work. Based on papers in the American Journal of Chinese Medicine from 2002 to 2004, 60% of papers published in the journal were sponsored by different institutions in the authors' countries. This fact indicates that researchers receive sponsorship for their work, and sponsors should pay more attention on the control of the researchers to use financial support more efficiency. This study applied Analytic Hierarchy Process, AHP to evaluating the performance of sponsored Chinese herbal medicine research, and this method can help sponsors weight evaluation elements without having to change the system of every category of research. To explain the process and application of AHP, a Taiwanese case study is presented. The analytical results presented in this study, provide a reference for institutes supporting research on Chinese Herbal Medicine.