A Comparative Longitudinal Study of Research Outputs in EPSCoR versus Non-EPSCoR States

Abstract

Some states in the U.S. have traditionally received less federal research funding than other states. The National Science Foundation (NSF) created a program in 1979, called the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) to enhance the research competitiveness in such EPSCoR states. While it is well established that the EPSCoR states receive significantly less federal research funding than non-EPSCoR states, the overall impact of federal funding on research performance of EPSCoR and non-EPSCoR has not been previously studied. In the current study, we compared the combined research productivity of Ph.D. granting institutions in EPSCoR versus the non-EPSCoR states to better understand the scientific impact of the federal investments in sponsored research across all states. The research outputs we measured included journal articles and books published, citations of journal articles, presentations at scientific conferences, and patents. Unsurprisingly, results indicated that the non-EPSCoR states received significantly more federal research funding than their EPSCoR counterparts, which correlated with higher number of faculty members in the non-EPSCoR vs EPSCoR states. Also, in the overall research productivity expressed on per capita basis, the non-EPSCoR states fared better than EPSCoR states. However, when the research output was measured based on per $1M investment of federal research funding, EPSCoR states were found to perform significantly better than the non-EPSCoR states in all research productivity indicators except patents. Together, this study found preliminary evidence that EPSCoR states performed very well in overall research productivity despite receiving significantly fewer federal research dollars. Limitations and next steps of this study are discussed.