Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Funding ratios in social science: the perspective of countries/territories level and comparison with natural sciences

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Research funding plays a key role in current science, thus it has become an aggregative interesting level in scientometric analysis. In this work, we try to explore the funding ratios of 21 major countries/territories in social science based on 813,809 research articles collected from the Web of Science and indexed by the Social Sciences Citation Index covering the period from 2009 to 2013. The results show that the funding ratios of sample countries/territories in social science are far below that in natural science and some specific subjects (chemistry, engineering, physics, neurosciences). However, there is a positive correlation between them. The funding ratios of People’s Republic of China, Sweden and Japan rank the top 3 (over 30 %). Generally, the funding ratios of the top 1 % and top 10 % highly cited articles are higher than those of the rest of articles, and for most cases, the high funding ratio of all articles is related to the high funding ratio of the highly cited articles.

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

Access this article

Log in via an institution

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

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Costas, R., & van Leeuwen, T. N. (2012). Approaching the “reward triangle”: General analysis of the presence of funding acknowledgments and “peer interactive communication” in scientific publications. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(8), 1647–1661.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cyranoski, D. (2014). Fundamental overhaul of China’s competitive funding. Nature News Blog, http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/10/fundamental-overhaul-of-chinas-competitive-funding.html.

  • Diaz-Faes, A. A., & Bordons, M. (2014). Acknowledgments in scientific publications: Presence in Spanish science and text patterns across disciplines. Journal of the Association for Information Science And Technology, 65(9), 1834–1849.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jowkar, A., Didegah, F., & Gazni, A. (2011). The effect of funding on academic research impact: A case study of Iranian publications. Aslib Proceedings, 63(6), 593–602.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lane, J. (2009). Assessing the impact of science funding. Science, 324(5932), 1273–1275.

    Google Scholar 

  • Li, J., & Li, Y. T. (2015). Patterns and evolution of coauthorship in China’s humanities and social sciences. Scientometrics, 102(3), 1997–2010.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Q., & Ding, R. C. (2014). Impacts of SSCI on the academic research of Chinese scholars: Taking education discipline as an example. Comparative Education Review, 7, 87–92. (in Chinese).

  • Pislyakov, V., & Shukshina, E. (2014). Measuring excellence in Russia: Highly cited papers, leading institutions, patterns of national and international collaboration. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(11), 2321–2330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Google Scholar 

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

    Google Scholar 

  • Tijssen, R. J. W., Visser, M. S., & van Leeuwen, T. N. (2002). Benchmarking international scientific excellence: Are highly cited research papers an appropriate frame of reference? Scientometrics, 54(3), 381–397.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, X. W., Liu, D., Ding, K., & Wang, X. R. (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 

  • Zhao, X., Gao, X. Q., & He, P. (2009). The h-index of science funding: Comprehensively measuring the quantity and impact of funded articles. Bulletin of National Natural Science Foundation of China, 2009(1), 15–18.

    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 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was improved by thoughtful comments of two anonymous reviewers and was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 12CTQ049). The authors acknowledge Dr. Lin Lili and Mr. Alejandro Alda for helping us to revise the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science, Business School, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Xin Xu & Star X. Zhao

  2. Department of Information Resource Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Alice M. Tan

Authors
  1. Xin Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alice M. Tan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Star X. Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Star X. Zhao.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Xu, X., Tan, A.M. & Zhao, S.X. Funding ratios in social science: the perspective of countries/territories level and comparison with natural sciences. Scientometrics 104, 673–684 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1633-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1633-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation