The Effect of Public Funding on Research Output: the New Zealand Marsden Fund

Abstract

We estimate the impact of participating in the NZ Marsden Fund on research output trajectories, by comparing the subsequent performance of funded researchers to those who submitted proposals but were not funded. We control for selection bias using the evaluations of the proposals generated by the grant selection process. We carry out the analysis in two data frames. First we consider the researcher teams behind 1263 second-round proposals submitted [2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008], and look at the post-proposal publication and citation performance of the team as a whole, as a function of pre-proposal performance, the ranking of the proposal by the panel, and the funding. This estimation does not deal with individual researchers' multiple proposals and funding over time. To disentangle these effects, we consider the 1500 New Zealand researchers who appeared on any of these proposals, and estimate a model predicting annual individual performance as a function of previous performance, recent proposal activity, ranking of any recent proposals, and funding received through recent proposals. Overall, we find that funding is associated with a 6-15% increase in publications and a 22-26% increase in citation-weighted papers for research teams. For individuals, funding is associated with a 3-5% increase in annual publications, and a 5-8% increase in citation-weighted papers for 5 years after grant; however, the lag structure and persistence of this effect post-grant is difficult to pin down. Surprisingly, we find no systematic evidence that the evaluation of proposals by the Marsden system is predictive of subsequent success. We conclude that the Marsden Fund is modestly successful in increasing scientific performance, but that the selection process does not appear to be effective in discriminating among second-round proposals in terms of their likely success.

The important thing is not to win, it is to take part: What if scientists benefit from participating in research grant competitions?

“…However, these relationships are likely to be significant and positive because the range of their confidence intervals lies mostly in the strictly positive domain and their coefficients, albeit small, are also positive 20 . This observation is consistent with the literature on the impact of funding on research, finding little but positive effect of funding on standard bibliometric outcomes (Arora and Gambardella, 2005;Jacob and Lefgren, 2011;Gush et al, 2015;Azoulay et al, 2015;Carayol and Lanoë, 2017). However, concerning our novel measures, we observe that co-applicants of an awarded project have greater chances to co-author with each other than co-applicants of a non-awarded project.…”

“…Despite a growing demand for an evaluation of publicly supported scientific research, extant studies do not provide convergent findings on the effect of receiving funds on researchers' scientific outcomes. The results suggest a limited impact of funding on the main scientific outcomes of scientists, but the magnitude of the effects and the outcomes analyzed vary across studies (Arora and Gambardella, 2005;Jacob and Lefgren, 2011;Gush et al, 2015;Azoulay et al, 2015;Carayol and Lanoë, 2017).…”

Bibliometric analysis of scientific publications on “sustainable development goals” with emphasis on “good health and well-being” goal (2015–2019)

“…At the USA level, the foundation aims to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology. Funding is a major driving force for publications, growth of scientific collaboration, and enhanced impact of scientific articles [ 45 – 49 ].…”