Science funding and research output: a study on 10 countries

• DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0576-6
• Publication Date: 2011-12-15T14:48:58Z
• Authors: Xianwen Wang; Di Liu; Kun Ding; Xinran Wang
• Keywords: 05 social sciences; 0509 other social sciences

This study reports research on analyzing the impact of government funding on research output. 500,807 SCI papers published in 2009 in 10 countries are collected and analyzed. The results show that, in China, 70.34% of SCI papers are supported by some research funding, among which 89.57% are supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Average grants per funding-supported paper in China is 2.95, when in the USA the number is 2.93 and in Japan it is 2.40. The results of funding agency analysis show that, China, Germany and Spain are single funding agency dominated countries, while USA, Japan, Canada and Australia are double funding agencies dominated countries, and the source of funding in UK, France and Italy is diversified.