Funding Data from Publication Acknowledgements: Coverage, Uses and Limitations

Nicola Grassano, Daniele Rotolo, Joshua Hutton (), Frederique Lang () and Michael M. Hopkins ()
Additional contact information
Joshua Hutton: SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
Frederique Lang: SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
Michael M. Hopkins: SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

SPRU Working Paper Series from SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: This article contributes to the development of methods for analysing research funding systems by exploring the robustness and comparability of emerging approaches to generate funding landscapes useful for policy making. We use a novel dataset of manually extracted and coded data on the funding acknowledgements of 7,510 publications representing UK cancer research in the year 2011 and compare these `reference data' with funding data provided by Web of Science (WoS) and MEDLINE/PubMed. Findings show high recall (about 93%) of WoS funding data. By contrast, MEDLINE/PubMed data retrieved less than half of the UK cancer publications acknowledging at least one funder. Conversely, both databases have high precision (+90%): i.e. few cases of publications with no acknowledgement to funders are identi ed as having funding data. Nonetheless, funders acknowledged in UK cancer publications were not correctly listed by MEDLINE/PubMed and WoS in about 75% and 32% of the cases, respectively. `Reference data' on the UK cancer research funding system are then used as a case-study to demonstrate the utility of funding data for strategic intelligence applications (e.g. mapping of funding landscape, comparison of funders' research portfolios).

Keywords: funding data; acknowledgments; precision; recall; bibliometrics; scientometrics; cancer research; MEDLINE/PubMed; ISI Web of Science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/swps2016-08 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Funding Data from Publication Acknowledgments: Coverage, Uses, and Limitations (2017)
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:sru:ssewps:2016-08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SPRU Working Paper Series from SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by University of Sussex Business School Communications Team ().