Assessing research network and disciplinary engagement changes induced by an NSF program

Jon G. Garner, Alan L. Porter, Nils C. Newman and Todd A. Crowl

Research Evaluation, 2012, vol. 21, issue 2, 89-104

Abstract: To assess the success of the National Science Foundation's Research Coordination Network (RCN) program, a set of publication measures and visualization tools were used to determine how effective the program is in enhancing interdisciplinary publication and information sharing. The publication patterns of a set of researchers were compared before and after receiving RCN awards. These analyses show significant increases in basic collaboration measures--authors per paper and institutions per paper--following RCN support. Various indications suggest increased linkage among the RCN researchers in terms of extent of co-authoring and of cross-citing each other's work. RCN support appears to foster more interdisciplinary research. Diffusion scores (a new metric) showed that the diversity of articles citing RCN-related articles was similar to those citing control group research. Finally, the articles generated by the project activities showed as especially influential; they appear in high impact journals and are more highly cited. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/reseval/rvs004 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:rseval:v:21:y:2012:i:2:p:89-104

Access Statistics for this article

Research Evaluation is currently edited by Julia Melkers, Emanuela Reale and Thed van Leeuwen

More articles in Research Evaluation from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().