The Effects of Research & Development Funding on Scientific Productivity: Academic Chemistry, 1990-2009

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between Research & Development (R&D) funding and the production of knowledge by academic chemists. Using articles published, either raw counts or adjusted for quality, we find a strong, positive causal effect of funding on knowledge production. This effect is similar across subsets of universities, suggesting a relatively efficient allocation of R&D funds. Finally, we document a rapid acceleration in the rate at which chemical knowledge was produced in the late 1990s and early 2000s relative to the financial and human resources devoted to its production.

External Tests of Peer Review Validity Via Impact Measures

“…Interpretation of these results is difficult because it is challenging to dissociate the productivity effect of funding from the validity of the review decision. However, while general research funding is related to scientific productivity and knowledge production Rosenbloom et al, 2015) and papers with funding acknowledgments are linked to higher citation counts (Gok et al, 2016), the effect of specific funding on an individual's productivity is not clear; some research looking at ex ante and ex post bibliographic levels for funded applicants show no effect of funding at all (Langfeldt et al, 2012;Robitaille et al, 2015), although it seems the length of time used to capture ex post bibliometric data is an important factor (Van den Besselaar and Sandstrom, 2015). Once again, many of these studies show significant type II errors (where unfunded applicants perform well) and sometimes only limited or no differences are found between funded and unfunded applicants with similar review scores or performance (Bornmann et al, 2008b(Bornmann et al, , 2010Pion and Cordray, 2008;Jacob and Lefgren, 2011a;Van den Besselaar and Sandstrom, 2015;Gush et al, 2017) although some similar comparisons do find differences (Robitaille et al, 2015).…”

Is Scientific Performance a Function of Funds?

“…It is natural to assume that the scientific outcome is presented to the scientific community through publication channels. Previous studies demonstrate that the research funding has positive impact on the knowledge production and publication output (Jacob and Lefgren 2011, Boyack and Borner 2003, Payne and Siow 2003, Rosenbloom et al 2015, Bolli and Somogyi 2011, Carayol and Matt 2004. Using both bibliometric and regression analyses Ebadi and Schiffauerova (2015) and Ebadi and Schiffauerova (2016) confirm a strong relation between allocated funds and the productivity of researchers.…”

“…Summing up the literature, we propose the following hypothesis: The allocation of TPF to researchers, as a result of a highly competitive peer-review process, is based inter alia on the prior research work. Beaudry and Allaoui (2012), Nag et al (2013), Rosenbloom et al (2015 show that past scientific productivity positively affects the likeliness of obtaining grants.…”

“…institutes, faculties or departments (Bolli andSomogyi 2011, Dyckhoff et al 2009). Few studies compare the bibliometric indicators with funds on the micro-level of research groups or university chair level (Jansen et al 2007, Carayol and Matt 2004, Rosenbloom et al 2015). Undertaking analysis on the level of individuals and subsequently merging outcomes into groups of interest could yield more robust and reliable results.…”

Look Better: Single Atoms in Chemistry and Single Atoms in Physics

“…Accordingly, Rosenbloom and co‐workers reported in 2015 a dramatic growth in knowledge production in chemistry between 1990 and 2009, which could not be explained by increasing financial expenditure but can be rather considered “a proxy for technological change”, and for information technology‐mediated change in particular, “given the coincidence of its timing with the spread of automatic laboratory data collection and analysis using personal computers and the internet” …”