Effectiveness of research grants funded by European Research Council and Polish National Science Centre

Abstract

• WEIG - a new measure for efficiency of research grant is introduced. • Grants for young scientists are more efficient than for experienced researchers. • ERC and NSC preserved overall efficiency while increasing their budgets year by year. • Polish NSC grants are more efficient than European Research Council projects. • The source data and results are publicly available. We propose WEIG – Wroclaw Effectiveness Indicator for Grants . This new scientometric measure is an aggregated quality measure of scientific papers published with the grant support divided by its budget. Several WEIG variations have been considered with respect to journal quality indicators like Impact Factor (IF), Article Influence Score (AIS), and Average Journal Impact Factor Percentile (IF%). Projects from two public agencies were analysed utilising the WEIG measures: European Research Council (ERC) and National Science Centre, Poland (NSC). The studies revealed that NSC grants are overall more effective than ERC ones, constantly 2–3 times more for Physical Sciences and Engineering (PE). There are four NSC panels distinctively more efficient than their counterparts in ERC: Mathematics (PE1), Fundamental Constituents of Matter (PE2), Computer Science and Informatics (PE6) and Universe Sciences (PE9). The most efficient NSC funding schemes are Etiuda, Preludium, and Harmonia. The higher average effectiveness of programmes aimed at young scientists has been observed: the ERC Starting Grants have greater effectiveness than Advanced Grants. Both agencies manage to keep overall efficiency regardless of increasing their budget over the years. Limitations of the proposed approach to assess project effectiveness, especially for Social Sciences and Humanities, are also discussed.