Enriching metadata in an international agroforestry research repository with funding-related information by mining grey literature

Abstract

Funding acknowledgements in research papers are an important resource for studying the impact of funding on research, but also present a utility for mapping the funding landscape of a particular discipline, the portfolios of certain funding agencies, their co-funding activities as well as the research performance of scientists and their organizations. However, the usage and detail of funding acknowledgements in publications vary in depth and lacks consistency. As it becomes increasingly important for research organizations to show the impact of their work to donor agencies, grey literature such as technical project reports can serve as a valuable source of information to complement the missing funding acknowledgements in their research information management systems. This paper presents the results of a study on extracting funding-related information from grey literature through text mining and complementing the corresponding MARC 21 bibliographic records of an international agroforestry research repository.