PhD students’ excellence scholarships and their relationship with research productivity, scientific impact, and degree completion

This paper examines the relationship between excellence scholarships and research productivity, scientific impact, and degree completion. Drawing on the entire population of doctoral students in the province of Québec, this paper analyzes three distinct sources of data: students, excellence scholarships, and scientific publications. It shows that funded students publish more papers than their unfunded colleagues, but that there is only a slight difference between funded and unfunded PhD students in terms of scientific impact. Funded students, especially those funded by the federal government, are also more likely to graduate. Finally, although funding is clearly linked to higher degree completion for students who did not publish, this is not true of those who managed to publish at least one paper during the course of their PhD The paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of the findings for Canadian science policy.À partir de trois différentes sources de données relatives à l’ensemble de la population de doctorants du Québec (listes d’étudiants, de boursiers et d’articles savants), le présent article examine les liens qui existent entre les bourses d’excellence et la productivité en recherche, l’impact scientifique et l’obtention d’un diplôme. Il démontre que les étudiants financés publient davantage que ceux qui ne le sont pas, mais qu’il n’existe qu’une infime différence entre les deux groupes d’étudiants en termes d’impact scientifique. Par ailleurs, les étudiants financés sont plus susceptibles d’obtenir leur diplôme, et cette relation est encore plus forte si le financement provient du gouvernement fédéral. Enfin, bien que le financement soit clairement associé à un taux plus élevé d’obtention de diplôme chez les étudiants qui n’ont rien publié pendant leurs études doctorales, cette relation disparaît chez les étudiants qui ont publié au moins un article. Une discussion portant sur les conséquences des résultats obtenus sur la politique scientifique du Canada conclut le présent article

Is Research Funding Always Beneficial? A Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of UK Research 2014-20

The search for and management of external funding now occupies much valuable researcher time. Whilst funding is essential for some types of research and beneficial for others, it may also constrain academic choice and creativity. Thus, it is important to assess whether it is ever detrimental or unnecessary. Here we investigate whether funded research tends to be higher quality in all fields and for all major research funders. Based on peer review quality scores for 113,877 articles from all fields in the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, we estimate that there are substantial disciplinary differences in the proportion of funded journal articles, from Theology and Religious Studies (16%+) to Biological Sciences (91%+). The results suggest that funded research is likely to be higher quality overall, for all the largest research funders, and for all fields, even after factoring out research team size. There are differences between funders in the average quality of the research they support, however. Funding seems particularly beneficial in health-related fields. The results do not show cause and effect and do not take into account the amount of funding received but are consistent with funding either improving research quality or being won by high quality researchers or projects. In summary, there are no broad fields of research in which funding is irrelevant, so no fields can afford to ignore it. The results also show that citations are not effective proxies for research quality in the arts and humanities and most social sciences for evaluating research funding

Impact of Public Funding on the Development of Nanotechnology : A Comparison of Quebec, Canada and the US

RÉSUMÉ : La nanotechnologie est la haute technologie la plus prometteuse de ce siècle. L’investissement mondial dans cette technologie a augmenté rapidement dans les deux dernières décennies. En outre, cet investissement va probablement contribuer de façon non négligeable à la croissance économique future. La recherche dans cette nouvelle technologie basée sur la science nécessite un financement public important pour faciliter la production de connaissances, réduire les incertitudes et les risques connexes, et assurer le succès du développement de la nanotechnologie. Compte tenu de son potentiel dans une large variété de domaines, les gouvernements et les décideurs politiques ont cherché à allouer efficacement des fonds, afin de maximiser les avantages économiques. Il est donc essentiel d’améliorer et d’approfondir notre compréhension concernant la façon dont les financements publics pourront influencer la performance de la recherche. Le but principal de cette thèse consiste à analyser l’impact du financement public sur le développement de la nanotechnologie, avec un accent tout particulier sur les résultats de la recherche scientifique et technologique. Les objectifs de la recherche portent sur deux volets : Tout d’abord, nous cherchons à examiner l’influence du financement. Le deuxième volet consiste à explorer l’impact de la collaboration et des réseaux innovants sur le développement de la nanotechnologie. Ensuite, notre but est de comparer l’impact du financement et des réseaux de collaboration de nanotechnologie entre le Canada et les États-Unis. Cette recherche porte sur les extrants importants de la recherche académique : les publications et les brevets. Elle permet de caractériser les réseaux de collaboration en utilisant les liens de co-publication et de co-invention entre les scientifiques et les inventeurs. Cette thèse contribue de manière significative aux questions de recherche suivantes : Comment l’augmentation du financement public pour les scientifiques œuvrant en nanotechnologie peut améliorer les publications et les brevets liés aux nanotechnologies en terme de nombre (a) et en terme de qualité (b)? Est-ce que les chercheurs qui détiennent une position plus influente au sein des réseaux de co-publication/co-invention sont plus productifs et plus cités? Est-ce que l’influence du financement public sur les recherches en nanotechnologie est différente au Canada par rapport aux États-Unis? Pour répondre à ces questions, des informations sur les articles de nanotechnologie, les brevets et le financement ont été extraites à partir de diverses bases de données au Canada et aux États-Unis. De plus, cette information a été utilisée pour construire les réseaux scientifiques et technologiques, et pour analyser l’influence du financement par des analyses économétriques. En ce qui concerne la première question de recherche, nos résultats montrent que le financement public fait augmenter généralement le nombre et la qualité des publications et brevets. Toutefois, cet impact positif est plus important aux États-Unis. Le financement est également moins susceptible d’influencer les brevets de nanotechnologie au Canada. En ce qui concerne l’analyse du financement de l’industrie au Québec, les fonds privés sont moins susceptibles de faire augmenter la qualité des publications. Quant à notre deuxième question de recherche, les études montrent que les résultats scientifiques et technologiques sont en corrélation avec la position des chercheurs dans les réseaux de collaboration. Les résultats de la recherche en nanotechnologie, particulièrement au Canada, montrent que le rendement est plus élevé au niveau des publications, des brevets et des réseaux de collaboration. Enfin, bien que l’impact entre le Canada et les États-Unis soit légèrement différent, cette recherche suggère que le financement et les réseaux de collaboration jouent un rôle important dans la stimulation de la quantité ainsi que de la qualité de la recherche académique.----------ABSTRACT : Nanotechnology is considered to be the most promising high technology of this century. Worldwide investment in this technology has rapidly increased in the past two decades, and it will likely drive future economic growth. Research in this new science-based technology requires significant public funding to facilitate knowledge production, reduce related uncertainties and risks, and ensure the success of nanotechnology development. Given its potential in a wide range of domains, governments and policymakers have sought to efficiently allocate funding to maximize economic benefits. It is therefore essential to further our understanding of how public funding influences research performance. The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze the impact of public funding on nanotechnology development, with a special focus on scientific and technological research outputs. The research objectives are twofold: we first seek to examine this funding influence, and second to explore the impact of collaboration and related scientific and innovative networks on nanotechnology development. Afterwards, our goal is to compare the impact of funding and of nanotechnology collaborative networks between Canada and the US on scientific and technological research outputs. This research deals with the prominent outputs of academic research, publications and patents, and characterizes collaborative networks using the co-publication and co-invention links between scientists and inventors. This thesis contributes significantly to the following research questions: how increased public funding to nanotechnology scientists enhances nanotechnology-related publications and patents in terms of (a) number and (b) quality? Are researchers who hold a more influential network position in co-publication/co-invention networks more productive and more cited? Is the influence of public funding on nanotechnology research different in Canada compared with the US? To answer these questions, information about nanotechnology articles, patents and funding was extracted from various databases in Canada and in the US and was used to build the scientific and innovation networks, and to analyze the influence of funding by econometric analyses. Regarding the first research question, our results show that public funding generally increases the number and quality of these outputs. However, this positive impact is more significant in the US and funding is less likely to influence nanotechnology patents in Canada. Regarding the analysis of industry funding in Quebec, private funds are less likely to increase the quality of publications. Concerning our second research question, results show that scientific and technological outputs are correlated with the position of researchers in collaborative networks. Nanotechnology research outputs particularly in Canada show greater returns on publications and patents on network collaborations. Finally, although the impacts are somewhat different between Canada and the US, this research suggests that both funding and collaborative networks play an important role in boosting the quantity and quality of academic research

Impact of Funding on Scientific Output and Collaboration

This dissertation reports the results of a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the inter-relations among research funding, scientific output, and collaboration. The research employed various methods and methodologies (i.e. data and text mining, statistical analysis, social network analysis, bibliometrics, survey data analysis, and visualization techniques) to investigate the impact of influencing factors on researchers’ performance, their amount of funding, and collaboration patterns. Moreover, a machine learning framework was suggested and validated for scientific evaluation of the researchers based on their productivity and level of funding. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) was selected as the source of funding in this research since it is the main federal funding organization in Canada and almost all the Canadian researchers in natural sciences and engineering receive at least a basic research grant from NSERC. The required data on the scientific publications (e.g. co-authors, their affiliations, year of publication) was collected from Elsevier’s Scopus. SCImago was selected for collecting the impact factor information of the journals in which the articles were published in as well as the annual citation counts of publications. The data was gathered and integrated for the time span of 1996 to 2010. The most significant contributions are: 1) the unique data extraction and gathering procedure that enhanced the accuracy of the target data, 2) the comprehensive triangulation technique which was employed in this research that included various methodologies and used new variables for assessing the inter-relations, 3) the proposed machine learning framework for classifying researchers and predicting their productivity and level of funding