The Science and Science Careers' annual Top Employers Survey polls employees in the biotechnology, biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical, and related industries to determine the driving characteristics of the best employers and to determine the 20 best employers in these industries. Respondents to the web-based survey were asked to rate companies based on 23 characteristics, including financial strength, easy adaptation to change, and a research-driven environment.
This year, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, receives the top honor in a ranking of the world's most respected biopharmaceutical employers. This is the first time that Vertex has placed in the top position in the 10 years that Science and Science Careers has carried out this survey. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals of Tarrytown, New York, comes in a close second, with Genentech of South San Francisco, California, completing the top three.
The rankings, determined from a study conducted by an independent research firm commissioned by the Science /AAAS Custom Publishing Office, will appear online on 16 September 2011 and in a special feature of the 7 October 2011 print issue Science .
Like Science and Science Careers' 2010 ranking of biopharma employers, the 2011 survey sought to identify the companies with the best reputations as employers, based on 3,784 survey responses from readers of Science and other survey invitees. Survey participants came from North America (80%), Europe (12%), and Asia/Pacific Rim (6%); 89 percent worked in private industry.
Survey responses were analyzed by The Brighton Consulting Group, which used a mathematical process to assign a unique score to rate each company's employer reputation. Each company received a ranking, for example, on the basis of whether it treats its employees with respect, whether its work-culture values align with employees' personal values, and other factors.
For the complete feature along with individual company rankings, go to www.sciencecareers.org/TopEmployers2011.
The article will be posted at this URL address the evening of 15 September 2011.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journals, Science (www.sciencemag.org), Science Signaling (www.sciencesignaling.org), and Science Translational Medicine (www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org). Science Careers is the careers component of Science that scientists rely on for career information and job postings. AAAS was founded in 1848, and serves 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, reaching 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.