The interplay of the size of the research system, ways of collaboration, level, and method of funding in determining bibliometric outputs

Tanel Hirv ()
Additional contact information
Tanel Hirv: University of Tartu

Scientometrics, 2022, vol. 127, issue 3, No 6, 1295-1316

Abstract: Abstract This article analyzes the effect of country size, level of funding, method of financing, and ways of collaboration on scientific publication output in terms of the number of articles published and citations received in the scientific literature across national research systems. This article takes an initial step toward integrating mentioned aspects into one analysis because previously, they have been studied incoherently as separate issues. The study encompasses European countries using data provided by Clarivate Analytics, the European Commission and Eurostat. Based on the empirical analysis, three conclusions emerge. Firstly, we have to reject the proposition that the function of scientific production exhibits increasing returns to scale. Secondly, transnationally coordinated research projects have a strong positive effect on countries’ number of articles and citations. Smaller countries participate proportionally more in transnationally coordinated research and are therefore more affected by the phenomena of hyperauthorship. This explains why several small nations perform above their weight in impact relative to spending. Thirdly, the share of competitive project-based funding does not affect the number of articles published but has a U-shaped relationship with research impact per article, pointing toward two alternative financing strategies for maximizing impact based on high or low share of project-based funding. Based on the analysis, we present strengths and weaknesses of European countries’ research systems for policy purposes.

Keywords: Research evaluation; Funding; Increasing returns to scale; Hyperauthorship; Project-based funding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-021-04232-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-021-04232-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-021-04232-2

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().