Is research from government agencies more favored by policymakers? Empirical evidence from a scientometric analysis

Xiaoying Yu, Qianjin Zong (), Lixue Lin and Hongjin Xu
Additional contact information
Xiaoying Yu: South China Normal University
Qianjin Zong: South China Normal University
Lixue Lin: South China Normal University
Hongjin Xu: South China Normal University

Scientometrics, 2025, vol. 130, issue 9, No 18, 5227-5247

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates whether research articles authored by government agencies are preferred by different types of policymakers, specifically government sectors, think tanks, and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). As government agencies have increasingly become “producers” of science by publishing scientific papers as authors, it remains unclear how this shift influences the uptake of their research in evidence-based policymaking. To address this, we analyzed citations from policy documents to research articles published in five leading economics journals between 2000 and 2020 (n = 8030). Negative binomial regression (NBREG) and zero-inflated negative binomial regression (ZINB) models were used to examine the effects of government authorship on policy citations from the three policymaker types. Our results show that government sectors significantly prefer research authored by government agencies, while think tanks and IGOs do not exhibit a significant preference. Robustness checks, including Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM), confirmed these findings. Our findings highlight variability in how different policymakers select scientific evidence and enhance our understanding of the interaction between science authorship and policymaking.

Keywords: Evidence selection bias; Citing behavior; Authorship analysis; Research Organization Registry (ROR); Intellectual independence; Transparent evidence-informed policymaking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-025-05405-z 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:130:y:2025:i:9:d:10.1007_s11192-025-05405-z

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-025-05405-z

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 ().