Skip to main content
Log in

Global pattern of science funding in economics

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Based on the original data of 100,275 SSCI indexed papers in the field of economics in 2009–2014, this work applied scientometrics and network analysis methods to study the funding pattern of funding ratio, impacts, indices’ relationship and collaboration structure in major countries/territories. Results show that, unlike the notable standing of economics, the global funding ratio of economics in 2009–2014 is just 8.3 %, much lower than the average level of social sciences. Although USA seems to be far ahead in the innovation of economics, the coverage of its science funding has been not widespread. By contrast, the funding ratio of China ranks highest, but the effect of funding needs to be strengthened. We observe an approximate power–law relationship among three basic measures of funded economics papers, including citations, total numbers and h-indexes. The cooperation researches in economics present a key structure of three main components: USA as the central part, a core group of Asia Pacific and another core group of Europe. The collaboration pattern of continents is largely based on the connection between Europe and USA.

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

Notes

  1. By the retrieval and calculation and in WoS database, we found the funding ratio of SSCI indexed papers in management (‘MANAGEMENT’ category) in 2009–2014 is 16.9 %.

References

  • Azar, O. H. (2007). Behavioral economics and socio-economics journals: A citation-based ranking. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 36(3), 451–462.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bidault, F., & Hildebrand, T. (2014). The distribution of partnership returns: Evidence from co-authorships in economics journals. Research Policy, 43(6), 1002–1013.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Costanzaa, R., Sternb, D., Fisher, B., He, L. N., & Ma, C. B. (2004). Influential publications in ecological economics: A citation analysis. Ecological Economics, 50, 261–292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Du, Y., & Teixeira, A. A. C. (2012). A bibliometric account of chinese economics research through the lens of the china economic review. China Economic Review, 23(4), 743–762.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ebadi, A., & Schiffauerova, A. (2016). How to boost scientific production? A statistical analysis of research funding and other influencing factors. Scientometrics,. doi:10.1007/s11192-015-1825-x).

    Google Scholar 

  • Ebadia, A., & Schiffauerovaa, A. (2015). How to become an important player in scientific collaboration networks? Journal of Informetrics, 9(4), 809–825.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Egghe, L. (2005). Power laws in the information production process: Lotkaian informetrics. Oxford: Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guimarães, P. (2002). The state of Portuguese research in economics: An analysis based on publications in international journals. Portuguese Economic Journal, 1(1), 3–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific out-put. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(46), 16569–16572.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson, M. G., & Rothman, H. (1999). The editors and authors of economics journals: A case of institutional oligopoly? The Economic Journal, 109(453), 165–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoepner, A. G. F., Kant, B., & Scholtens, B. (2012). Environmental and ecological economics in the 21st century: An age adjusted citation analysis of the influential articles, journals, authors and institutions. Ecological Economics, 77, 193–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schymura, M., & Löschel, A. (2014). Incidence and extent of co-authorship in environmental and resource economics: Evidence from the journal of environmental economics and management. Scientometrics, 99(3), 631–661.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapira, P., & Wang, J. (2010). Follow the money. Nature, 468(7324), 627–628.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sutter, M., & Kocher, M. G. (2001). Power laws of research output. Evidence for journals of economics. Scientometrics, 51(2), 405–414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sutter, M., Kocher, M., & Masic, R. (2002). Representation and educational background of European economists in top journals of economics. Empirica, 29(4), 275–288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tan, A. M., Zhao, S. X., & Ye, F. Y. (2012a). Characterizing the funded scientific collaboration network. Current Science, 103(11), 1261–1262.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tan, A. M., Zhao, S. X., & Ye, F. Y. (2012b). Funds promote scientific output. Current Science, 102(4), 542–543.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ubfal, D., & Maffioli, A. (2011). The impact of funding on research collaboration: Evidence from a developing country. Research Policy, 40(9), 1269–1279.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vardakas, K. Z., Tsopanakis, G., Poulopoulou, A., & Falagas, M. E. (2015). An analysis of factors contributing to PubMed’s growth. Journal of Informetrics, 9(3), 592–617.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wagstaffa, A., & Culyerb, A. J. (2012). Four decades of health economics through a bibliometric lens. Journal of health Economics, 31(2), 406–439.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, X., Liu, D., Ding, K., & Wang, X. (2012). Science funding and research output: A study on 10 countries. Scientometrics, 91(2), 591–599.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, J., & Shapira, P. (2011). Funding acknowledgement analysis: An enhanced tool to investigate research sponsorship impacts: the case of nanotechnology. Scientometrics, 87(3), 563–586.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xu, X., Tan, A. M., & Zhao, S. X. (2015). Funding ratios in social science: The perspective of countries/territories level and comparison with natural sciences. Scientometrics, 104(3), 673–684.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, S. X. (2015). Uncitedness of reviews. Current Science, 109(8), 1377–1378.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, X., Gao, X., & He, P. (2009). The h-index of science funding: Comprehensive characterization of the quantity and impact of funded papers. Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China, 23(1), 15–18. (in Chinese).

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, S. X., & Ye, F. Y. (2011). h-Efficiency: Measuring input–output performance of research funds. Current Science, 101(1), 21–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, S. X., & Ye, F. Y. (2013). Power–law link strength distribution in paper cocitation networks. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 64(7), 1480–1489.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, S. X., Zhang, P. L., Li, J., Tan, A. M., & Ye, F. Y. (2014). Abstracting the core subnet of weighted networks based on link strengths. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(5), 984–994.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou, P., & Tian, H. (2014). Funded collaboration research in mathematics in China. Scientometrics, 99(3), 695–715.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from NSFC (No. 71503083) and Social Science Foundation of Shanghai (No. 2015BTQ002). We also would like to thank Prof. Fred Y. Ye, Ms. Lu Sun and Mr. Zhiguang Zhou for their kind suggestion and help in the preparation of this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Haiyan Yu.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhao, S.X., Yu, S., Tan, A.M. et al. Global pattern of science funding in economics. Scientometrics 109, 463–479 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1961-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1961-y

Keywords

Navigation