Data collection and use in research funding and performing organisations. General outlines and first results of a project launched by Science Europe

A work strand planned by the Science Europe Working Group on Research Policy and Programme Evaluation aims at mapping the state of affairs in data collection and their use at European funding and research organisations. In particular, the project identifies and proposes solutions for issues experienced by the Member Organisations (MO) regarding collection, standardisation and treatment of data related to the analysis and ex-post evaluation of activities funded or performed by MOs. This is implemented through a survey sent to the MOs. The survey was analysed with special attention to the particular needs of funding and performing organisations. On the basis of the results and the discussion among the work strand members and within the WG, we draw a preliminary set of conclusions to produce guidance on relevant topics, including researcher and funding identification, potential, properties and limitations of data and indicators that are used in the context of measurement of research output and its assessment, classification systems used in sciences systems including their various types and issues of availability, confidentiality and harmonisation of data and indicators. Feedback from such discussions will be used to identify areas for further action by Science Europe.     

Driving factors of external funding and funding effects on academic innovation performance in university–industry–government linkages

This study focuses on analyzing the driving factors of government and industry funding and the effects of such funding on academic innovation performance in the Taiwan’s university–industry–government (UIG) collaboration system. This research defines the relationships of the triple helix in the UIG collaboration system as a complex intertwined combination that covers demography, financial support, and innovation performance. These relationships are simultaneously modeled by a multivariate technique, structural equation modeling, to investigate the causal-effect relationship among the antecedent factors on the subsequent ones. This model will enable us to investigate three questions: (1) Is government funding or industry funding tied to university demography, to university innovation performance, or to both? (2) Does government funding lead industry funding? (3) Is government funding or industry funding conducive to more university innovation performance? In addition to verifying the model against all participating universities in the UIG collaboration, we also categorize them into two tiers in terms of whether or not universities have been selected for the incentive programs of UIG collaboration so as to explore groups’ differences.     

A bibliometric and citation analysis of stroke-related research in Taiwan

As the population ages in Taiwan, stroke research has received greater attention in recent years. Strokes have significant impacts on the health and well-being of the elderly. To formulate future research policy, information on stroke publications should be collected. In this research, we studied stroke-related research articles published by Taiwan researchers which were indexed in the Science Citation Index from 1991 to 2005. We found that the quantity of publications has increased at a quicker pace than the worldwide trend. Over the years, there has been an increase in international collaboration, mainly with researchers in the U.S. Article visibility, measured as the frequency of being cited, also increased during the period. It appears that stroke research in Taiwan has become more globally connected and has also improved in quality. The publication output was concentrated in a few institutes, but there was a wide variation among these institutes in the ability to independently conduct research. A wide array of keywords indicated a probable lack of continuity in research. Nevertheless, there was an inverse relationship between stroke mortality and number of published articles in Taiwan. To improve the quality and efficiency of stroke research, continuity in research focuses needs to be maintained, and thus funding should be allocated on a long-term basis to institutes with a proven record of success.     

“Assessment of Metal Matrix Composites for Innovations” — intermediate report of a European Thematic Network

The Thematic Network “Assessment of Metal Matrix Composites for Innovations” (acronym MMC-ASSESS) is a consortium of 21 partners from industry, research organisations and universities involved in research, development and application of metal matrix composites (MMC). The general goal of the project is to increase market acceptance of MMC by collecting and evaluating information related to the engineering potential of these materials. The working groups of the network are referring to production, characterisation and properties as well as modelling and applications of MMC. These topics are considered as well specifically for the four categories of MMC: particulate, short fibre and whisker, continuous fibre, and monofilament reinforced metals. A web page has been established (http://mmc-assess.tuwien.ac.at/) as an ongoing dissemination activity. An intermediate report on the network's activities is presented, which started in October 1998 by funding of the European Commission for a 36 months period.     

Collaboration in theoretical population genetics speciality

Analyses the growth of funded and collaborative research publications and authors as reflected in selected theoretical population genetics literature from 1956–60 to 1976–80. Indicates that the number of funded and collaborated publications has not proportionally increased along with the growth of total research publications and authors with time, but however, there is a strong correlation between the two. Indicates the extent of multi-authored research publications in different countries, and studies the growth of multi-authored publications from 1956–60 to 1976–80. Studies the impact of funding and collaboration on the productivity of authors over a period of time. Concludes that the authors who are more productive are generally found to be more collaborative and funded. The average productivity per author is observed to be larger in funded and collaborated authors subset and smaller in non-funded and non-collaborated authors subset, than the average productivity per author in the total authors subset in all the five block years studied. There is a systematic increase with time in the average productivity per author in the funded and collaborated authors subset. Studies the nature and type of collaborated research from 1956–60 to 1976–80, and the role of funding. Highlights the research priorities of few important countries in collabortive research. Indicates the collaboration linkages among various countries in transnational collaborative research. Concludes that with time, the focus of research is slowly shifting from internal collaration to domestic and international collaboration, supported by increasing funding from government agencies in theoretical population genetics research.     

A multistage stochastic programming asset-liability management model: an application to the Brazilian pension fund industry

This paper proposes a multistage stochastic programming approach for the asset-liability management of Brazilian pension funds. We generate asset price scenarios with stochastic differential equations—Geometric Brownian Motion model for stocks and Cox–Ingersoll–Ross model for fixed income securities. Intertemporal solvency regulatory rules for Brazilian pension funds are considered endogenously in the model and enforced with a combinatorial constraint. A VaR probabilistic constraint is incorporated to obtain a positive funding ratio at each time period with high probability. Our approach uses multiple trees to provide a representative characterization of the uncertainty and is not computationally prohibitive. We evaluate the insolvency probability under different initial funding ratios through extensive simulations. The study reveals that the likely decrease of interest rate premiums in the next years will force pension fund managers to significantly change their portfolio strategies. They will have to take more risk in order to deliver the cash flows required to cover the liabilities and satisfy the regulatory constraints.     

The gap analysis between Chinese pharmaceutical academia and industry from 2000 to 2018

The publication number in pharmaceutics from Chinese academia globally ranked second in 2014. However, the R&D capability of Chinese pharmaceutical industry significantly lags behind its globally 2nd market with 373 billion USD. The study aims to analyze the gaps between Chinese academia and industry in pharmaceutics. Publication, national funding programs and postgraduate training were analyzed to identify the academic output. R&D expenses input, research scientists and marketed products were investigated to evaluate the industrial demand. The Chinese publication number in pharmaceutics grows sharply, ranking first globally in 2017. The hot fields from Chinese scholars focused on nanomedicine and gene delivery, while the majority of products in Chinese pharmaceutical companies were still conventional dosage forms (e.g. tablet, capsule and injection). On the other hand, the number of Ph.D. graduates in pharmaceutics maintained a quite low-level output from 2000 to 2018, which seriously unmet the growing demand of high-level formulation scientists from Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, the development of Chinese drug administration system from 1978 to 2018 was detailed summarized, analyzed and discussed because the government policies strongly influence the academia and pharmaceutical industry. Two suggestions are provided to bridge the gaps between Chinese academia and pharmaceutical industry. On the one hand, Chinese universities should shift the academic evaluation system from publication-orientation to more diverse science and demand-driven researches. On the other hand, more industry-oriented Ph.D. graduates should be trained to meet the increasing demand from the pharmaceutical industry. As the second largest market in the world, Chinese pharmaceutical industry will face the enormous progress in next 5–10 years.

     

Time series analysis of publication counts of a university: what are the implications?

Yearly publication counts of research institutions and universities continue to be a widely-used parameter to assess their research productivity, and such evaluations have been successfully used to analyze the influence of research support policies at various levels. This study was designed to analyze the yearly number of articles having an Akdeniz University address and that appeared in the Web of Science databases from 1996 to 2009. Time series analysis of the number of published articles was used to determine the impact of alterations in the number of faculty members and research funding as well as changes in the institutional and country-wide research support policies and encouragement mechanisms. It was observed that alterations in both the number of faculty members who are active in research and the total amount of research funding each year may explain the general pattern published articles. However, there is a period with significant deviations from the trend predicted by these relationships. This period, corresponding to the years 2002–2008, is discussed in terms of the effects of policy changes which may have positive and negative contributions to the predicted pattern. Mathematical analysis of publication time series, together with parameters expected to affect research output, may provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of research support mechanisms.     

Research quality and diversity of funding: A model for relating research money to output of research

We analyze the relation between funding and output using bibliometric methods with field normalized data. Our approach is to connect individual researcher data on funding from Swedish university databases to data on incoming grants using the specific personal ID-number. Data on funding include the person responsible for the grant. All types of research income are considered in the analysis yielding a project database with a high level of precision. Results show that productivity can be explained by background variables, but that quality of research is more or less un-related to background variables.     

Technology adoption and the challenges of inclusive participation in economic activities: Evidence from small scale oil palm fruit processors in southwestern Nigeria

The lack of technology adoption has been mentioned as a source of lack of inclusive participation of low income groups in economic activities leading to income disparity in developing countries. The study utilized an input-process-output framework to develop a set of indicators to inform the development of policies and practices to ensure the participation of low income groups in economic activities. The input element consists of technology adoption influencing factors such as socio-economic characteristics and innovating units and institutions that provide support for innovation activities. The process and output elements consist of the level of technology adoption in production processes and productivity measures respectively. Focusing on small-scale oil palm fruit processors in Nigeria, the study revealed that inadequate funding of the input processes lead to inadequate technology adoption in specific unit operations of palm oil production. Utilising selected physicochemical properties of palm oil as indicators of productivity, the samples of palm oil assessed were found to be unsuitable for industrial use and may limit the processors from participating in formal sectors of palm oil production. The study recommends policy levers that will enhance input factors through adequate funding to improve the technological base of the small-scale oil palm fruit processing.     

Science funding and research output: a study on 10 countries

This study reports research on analyzing the impact of government funding on research output. 500,807 SCI papers published in 2009 in 10 countries are collected and analyzed. The results show that, in China, 70.34% of SCI papers are supported by some research funding, among which 89.57% are supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Average grants per funding-supported paper in China is 2.95, when in the USA the number is 2.93 and in Japan it is 2.40. The results of funding agency analysis show that, China, Germany and Spain are single funding agency dominated countries, while USA, Japan, Canada and Australia are double funding agencies dominated countries, and the source of funding in UK, France and Italy is diversified.     

Underestimating or overestimating the distribution inequality of research funding? The influence of funding sources and subdivision

Research funding is a significant support for the development of scientific research. The inequality of research funding is an intrinsic feature of science, and policy makers have realized the over-concentration of funding allocation. Previous studies have tried to use the Gini coefficient to measure this inequality; however, the phenomena of multiple funding sources and funding subdivision have not been deeply discussed and empirically studied due to limitations on data availability. This paper provides a more accurate analysis of the distribution inequality of research funding, and it considers all of the funding sources in the funding system and the subdivision of funding to junior researchers within research teams. We aim to determine the influence of these two aspects of the Gini results at the individual level. A dataset with 68,697 project records and 80,380 subproject records from the Chinese Academy of Sciences during the period from 2011 to 2015 is collected to validate the problem. The empirical results show that (1) the Gini coefficient for a single funding source is biased and may be overestimated or underestimated, and the most common data source, which is the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), causes the Gini coefficient to be underestimated; and (2) considering the subdivision of research funding lowers the inequality of research funding, with a smaller Gini coefficient, although the decrease is moderate.     

On the horns of a dilemma: does more funding for research lead to more research or a waste of resources that calls for optimization of researcher portfolios? An analysis using funding acknowledgement data

Increasing pressure on budgets of funding bodies has led to discussion of how to make financial resources go further, and to the concern that some researchers take more money from funding bodies for a particular project than needed, a practice that has been termed “double-dipping”. Some evidence has emerged that this might be occurring, and in this context of suddenly increased funding scarcity, albeit in a system with greater forms of support, a proposal has been made that funding bodies monitor and manage individual researcher portfolios to optimize resource use. Our paper provides evidence relevant to both the “double dipping” issue and the proposal to manage portfolios. We show that where certain pre-conditions for “double dipping” are met (i.e. when funding comes from more than organisation, and the organisations fund research in a very similar area), and where therefore an argument to monitor researcher portfolios might be applicable, the research produced under these conditions has greater citation impact. We query the claim that when more funding is acknowledged this is inherently undesirable and we express our doubts that subjecting the allocation of funding to researchers to a bureaucratic management process will necessarily increase the impact of research.     

On the relationship of funding and research publications

The impact of 17 year period of funding in schistosomiasis research on publication outcome was examined. Two productivity and three quality indicators were used to compare the output from the entire population of schistosomiasis in this period with those associated with 351 funded researchers. A substantially higher productivity and citation impact were found. This consistency of direction points to the positive effect of a period of sustained funding commitment.Dedicated to the memory of Michael J. MoravcsikThis publication is supported in part by a NIH grant RO1-LM-04680 from the National Library of Medicine.     

Funding acknowledgement analysis: an enhanced tool to investigate research sponsorship impacts: the case of nanotechnology

There is increasing interest in assessing how sponsored research funding influences the development and trajectory of science and technology. Traditionally, linkages between research funding and subsequent results are hard to track, often requiring access to separate funding or performance reports released by researchers or sponsors. Tracing research sponsorship and output linkages is even more challenging when researchers receive multiple funding awards and collaborate with a variety of differentially-sponsored research colleagues. This article presents a novel bibliometric approach to undertaking funding acknowledgement analysis which links research outputs with their funding sources. Using this approach in the context of nanotechnology research, the article probes the funding patterns of leading countries and agencies including patterns of cross-border research sponsorship. We identify more than 91,500 nanotechnology articles published worldwide during a 12-month period in 2008–2009. About 67% of these publications include funding acknowledgements information. We compare articles reporting funding with those that do not (for reasons that may include reliance on internal core-funding rather than external awards as well as omissions in reporting). While we find some country and field differences, we judge that the level of reporting of funding sources is sufficiently high to provide a basis for analysis. The funding acknowledgement data is used to compare nanotechnology funding policies and programs in selected countries and to examine their impacts on scientific output. We also examine the internationalization of research funding through the interplay of various funding sources at national and organizational levels. We find that while most nanotechnology funding is nationally-oriented, internationalization and knowledge exchange does occur as researchers collaborate across borders. Our method offers a new approach not only in identifying the funding sources of publications but also in feasibly undertaking large-scale analyses across scientific fields, institutions and countries.     

A theoretical model of the relationship between the <Emphasis Type="Italic">h</Emphasis>-index and other simple citation indicators

In this study, we quantitatively compared the impact of mission-oriented research grants and curiosity-driven grants on the diversity of research subjects in Japan. First, we examined data for Japanese principal investigators receiving research funding between 2000 and 2010 in the field of nanotechnology and materials science, and identified groups of researchers whose publication performance was positively affected by the mission-oriented grant, CREST. We then compared the effect of CREST with that of the curiosity-driven grant, KAKENHI. The analysis uses both propensity score matching and difference in differences (PSM-DID) methodologies. Our results show that for participants in the CREST program there was an increase in number of publications of more than 10% per year, for periods of both 5 and 3 years after the funding ended, even though the observed average effect on citation was not statistically significant. Second, we evaluated the diversity of research subjects through analysis of the distribution of the classification codes applied to articles published between 1996 and 2013, utilizing the J-Global database, which has the finest granularity of category among existing bibliographic scientific publication databases. Research subjects were better conserved under the mission-oriented program than the curiosity-driven one, a finding contrary to predictions of conventional theory. We also found that under mission-oriented funding, there was an increase in diversity in the sense of marginal utility. These findings should be of use in the “diversity-aware” design of programs for the funding of fundamental research.     

The influence of scientific research output of academics on economic growth in South Africa: an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) application

An increasing number of researchers have recently shown interest in the relationship between economic growth of a country and its research output, measured in scientometric indicators. The answer is not only of theoretical interest but it can also influence the specific policies aimed at the improvement of a country’s research performance. Our paper focuses on this relationship. We argue that research output is a manifestation of the improvement of human capital in the economy. We examine this relationship specifically in South Africa for the period 1980–2008. Using the autoregressive distributed lag method, we investigate the relationship between GDP and the comparative research performance of the country in relation to the rest of the world (the share of South African papers compared to the rest of the world). The relationship is confirmed for individual fields of science (biology and biochemistry, chemistry, material sciences, physics, psychiatry and psychology). The results of this study indicate that in South Africa for the period 1980–2008 the comparative performance of the research output can be considered as a factor affecting the economic growth of the country. Similarly, the results confirm the results of Vinkler (2008) and Lee et al. (2011). In contrast, economic growth did not influence the research output of the country for the same period. Policy implications are also discussed.     

Econometric analysis of biomedical research publishing patterns

An econometric-type model was developed that describes the relationship between federal biomedical funding and the number, subject area and research level (clinical to basic) of published papers in biomedical journals. The study covered federal biomedical funding over the period 1962–1979 and biomedical literature counts over the period 1965–1979. A unique feature of the model was the explicit incorporation of the citation-based interrelationships among the various subfields and research levels of biomedicine.Publication counts in a particular subject area were modeled as a function of federal funding to the area and publication activity in related subject areas. In general, publication activity in related subject areas was found to be a significant explanatory variable over and above funding alone. Moreover, clinically oriented subject areas most often had publication counts in related basic research areas as explanatory variables.     

需求波动下政府补贴对低碳产品选择的影响

研究了需求波动下政府补贴对制造商生产低碳产品选择的影响。建立垄断和双寡头两种情形下的古诺博弈模型,分析不同生产策略对制造商产量和利润的影响,得出满足各均衡策略的条件。研究发现：制造商生产策略受政府补贴、市场流失率和市场偏好的影响;政府补贴可引导制造商生产低碳产品,但竞争会削弱补贴对生产低碳产品的激励作用;较大的政府补贴反而会增加碳排放;市场波动程度越大,政府补贴对制造商生产低碳产品的激励作用越弱。     

On the data and analysis of the research output of India and China: India has significantly fallen behind China

An analysis of the number of research papers from India and China in the fields of sciences and engineering between the years 1975 and 2012 is presented. The results show that while Indian research output has increased steadily, the Chinese research output has been increasing at a rate far outpacing that of India. The research output of China has been increasing with distinct inflection points that show an acceleration in output growth. The research output for India shows periodic inflection points that show either an acceleration or deceleration in output growth. The possible reasons for the inflection points are discussed. Simple statistical analyses are used to analyze the trends in output. Although multiple factors affect a nation’s research output, this paper highlights that the government programs targeted to increase the research output from universities may create inflection points resulting in a rapid increase in the research output. The article also highlights that India has fallen far behind China in terms of scientific and engineering research output, providing important clues for the future growth of the two countries.