The effect of funding on the outputs of biomedical research

Abstract

The Research Outputs Database (ROD) has been used to investigate the effects of different input variables, including the numbers of funding bodies, on the impact of research papers in a biomedical subfield (gastroenterology). This was determined by the medium-term impact of the journals in which they were published. It was shown that, when account was taken of the effects of the other input factors, the mean impact for a group of papers increased with the number of authors, the type of research (basic more than clinical), and with the number and identity of the funding bodies. However it decreased slightly if there were more addresses; whether the paper was multinational had no significant effect. Previous work showing that multi-institution or multi-country papers are more highly cited reached this conclusion because it did not take into account the confounding effect of multiple funding sources, and possibly other factors.

Exploring the Interdependencies of Research Funders in the UK

“…As the number of funders increase the proportion of highly cited paper increases up to 6-7 funders when the relationships shows decreasing returns. 10 The results confirm prior research that suggests papers supported by more funders are more highly cited (Lewison and Dawson 1998). Notes.…”

The drivers of citations in management science journals

“…As well as this, keywords actually represent the fields of this article. Field is believed to be a major factor affecting the number of citations (Bazerman 1996;Hagstrom 1971;Hurt 1987;Klamer and Van Dalen 2002;Lewison and Dawson 1997) and it is no doubt that paper written on hot topics can get easily published and be more frequently cited. However, it is difficult to determine the appropriate fields for a paper.…”

Web of Science Research Funding Information: Methodology for its use in Analysis and Evaluation

“…Several studies have indeed shown this to be the case. [5,7,8] The system of coding and analysis that we have described has some limitations. First, the three-letter codes assigned to individual funders may not be enough in the future when many countries develop a multiplicity of funding sources.…”

“…[2,3] The second reason for the interest in funding data is that it has now been established that papers with more acknowledged funding sources tend to be more highly cited, [4][5][6] and that this effect swamps the supposed benefits of multiple addresses which are actually negative, at least up to about five addresses. [7,8] An evaluation of groups of papers that does not take account of funding information is thus ignoring a major factor influencing the likely citation scores.…”