Skip to main content
Log in

Science funding and research output: a study on 10 countries

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Boyack, K., & Borner, K. (2003). Indicator-assisted evaluation and funding of research: Visualizing the influence of grants on the number and citation counts of research papers. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(5), 447–461.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, L. (2001). Revisiting bibliometric issues using new empirical data. Research Evaluation, 10(1), 59–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Debackere, K., & Glanzel, W. (2004). Using a bibliometric approach to support research policy making: The case of the Flemish BOF-key. Scientometrics, 59(2), 253–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jain, A., Garg, K., Sharma, P., & Kumar, S. (1998). Impact of SERC’s funding on research in chemical sciences. Scientometrics, 41(3), 357–370.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, L., & Wagner, C. (2009). Macro-level indicators of the relations between research funding and research output. Journal of Informetrics, 3(4), 353–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sandstrom, U. (2009). Research quality and diversity of funding: A model for relating research money to output of research. Scientometrics, 79(2), 341–349.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, X. W., Liu, D., Ding, K., & Wang, X. R. (2011), Impact of Funding on Research Output: An Empirical Study on 10 Countries. In E. Noyons, P. Ngulube & J. Leta (Eds.), Proceedings of ISSI 2011—the 13th international conference on scientometrics and informetrics (pp. 848–854), Durban, 4–7 July 2011.

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Social Science Foundation of China (10CZX011; 08BTQ025), Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20090041110001). We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of 13th ISSI, and also thank the comments from Grant Lewson, Katy Borner, Jonathan Levitt, Richard Klavans et al. in ISSI meeting in Durban. Suggestions from Prof. Zeyuan Liu in WISE Lab, Dalian University of Technology are also acknowledged.

An extended version of a paper presented at the 13th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, Durban (South Africa), 4–7 July 2011 (Wang, X. W., Liu, D., Ding, K., & Wang, X. R., 2011).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xianwen Wang.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Wang, X., Liu, D., Ding, K. et al. Science funding and research output: a study on 10 countries. Scientometrics 91, 591–599 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0576-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0576-6

Keywords

Navigation