  This paper aims at offering an evaluation framework of an Research and
Development programme in the Biomedical Sciences. It showcases the Spanish
Biomedical Research Networking Centres initiative (CIBER) as an example of the
effect of research policy management on performance. For this it focuses on
three specific aspects: its role on the national research output in the
biomedical sciences, its effect on promoting translational research through
internal collaboration between research groups, and the perception of
researchers on the programme as defined by their inclusion of their CIBER
centres in the address field. Research output derived from this programme
represents around 25 per cent of the country's publications in the biomedical
fields. After analysing a seven year period, the programme has enhanced
collaborations between its members, but they do not seem to be sufficiently
strong. With regard to the credit given to the initiative, 54.5 per cent of the
publications mentioned this programme in their address, however an increase on
the share of papers mention it is observed two years after it was launched. We
suggest that by finding the point in which the share of mentions stabilises may
be a good strategy to identify the complete fulfilment of these types of
Research and Development policies.
