Comparison To Basic Research or Applied Research
Translational research is a paradigm for research alternative to the dichotomy of basic research and applied research. It is often applied in the domain of medicine but has more general applicability as a distinct research approach. It is also allied in practice with the approaches of participative science and participatory action research.
The traditional categorization of research identifies just two categories: basic research (also labelled fundamental or pure research) and applied research. Basic research is more speculative and takes a long time – often decades – to be applied in any practical context. Basic research often leads to breakthroughs or paradigm-shifts in practice. On the other hand, applied research is research that can have an impact in practice in a relatively short time, but often represents an incremental improvement to current processes rather than delivering radical breakthroughs.
The cultural separation between different scientific fields makes it difficult to establish the multidisciplinary and multi-skilled teams that are necessary to be successful in translational research. Other challenges arise in the traditional incentives which reward individual principal investigators over the types of multi-disciplinary teams that are necessary for translational research. Also, journal publication norms often require tight control of experimental conditions, and these are difficult to achieve in real-world contexts.
In medicine, translational research is increasingly a separate research field. A citation pattern between the applied and basic sides in cancer research appeared around 2000. Since 2009, the field has also a specialized journal, the American Journal of Translational Research.
Outside medicine, translational research can be applied more generally where researchers try to shorten the time-frame and conflate the basic-applied continuum, to ‘translate’ fundamental research results into practical applications. It is necessarily a much more iterative style of research, with low and permeable barriers and much interaction between academic research and industry practice. Practitioners help shape the research agenda by supplying difficult problems to which applied research would only offer incremental improvements.
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