Impact of Funding on Scientific Output and Collaboration: A Survey of Literature

Abstract

This document critically reviews the papers that investigated the impact of funding on scientific output and on scientific collaboration. For the output, the focus is on the number of articles as a measure of the scientific productivity and the number of citations that a paper received as an indicator of the quality. Various methodological approaches have been adopted (e.g. bibliometrics (a set of methods to analyse the scientific literature quantitatively), statistical analysis) for this purpose. Reviewing the literature revealed that although the general assumption of the positive effect of funding on scientific development is completely (or partially) acknowledged in some studies, one can also find some contradictory results. In addition, we note that analysing the impact of funding on scientific output has attracted more attention of the researchers while investigating the impact of funding on collaboration has been only recently taken into consideration. The paper concludes by comparing the major results and methodologies of the reviewed studies while highlighting the research gaps.