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Funding acknowledgement analysis: an enhanced tool to investigate research sponsorship impacts: the case of nanotechnology

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Abstract

There is increasing interest in assessing how sponsored research funding influences the development and trajectory of science and technology. Traditionally, linkages between research funding and subsequent results are hard to track, often requiring access to separate funding or performance reports released by researchers or sponsors. Tracing research sponsorship and output linkages is even more challenging when researchers receive multiple funding awards and collaborate with a variety of differentially-sponsored research colleagues. This article presents a novel bibliometric approach to undertaking funding acknowledgement analysis which links research outputs with their funding sources. Using this approach in the context of nanotechnology research, the article probes the funding patterns of leading countries and agencies including patterns of cross-border research sponsorship. We identify more than 91,500 nanotechnology articles published worldwide during a 12-month period in 2008–2009. About 67% of these publications include funding acknowledgements information. We compare articles reporting funding with those that do not (for reasons that may include reliance on internal core-funding rather than external awards as well as omissions in reporting). While we find some country and field differences, we judge that the level of reporting of funding sources is sufficiently high to provide a basis for analysis. The funding acknowledgement data is used to compare nanotechnology funding policies and programs in selected countries and to examine their impacts on scientific output. We also examine the internationalization of research funding through the interplay of various funding sources at national and organizational levels. We find that while most nanotechnology funding is nationally-oriented, internationalization and knowledge exchange does occur as researchers collaborate across borders. Our method offers a new approach not only in identifying the funding sources of publications but also in feasibly undertaking large-scale analyses across scientific fields, institutions and countries.

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Notes

  1. Note that author countries and funding countries of publications do not necessarily correspond. It is possible that authors are affiliated with institutions in two countries but receive funding from only one country, or both countries, or even a third country. Additionally, the amount of funding is typically not reported in the acknowledgment text. For a paper reporting sponsorship from multiple countries or sponsors, we do not know the relative contributions provided by each country’s funding source or from individual sponsors. Hence, in our analysis, papers with multiple funding countries or sponsors are assigned equally to all indicated countries and sponsors, using whole counting. Thus, a paper with funding from country X and country Y is allocated 1 to country X and 1 to country Y. Similarly, a paper with funding from sponsor A and sponsor B is credited 1 to sponsor A and 1 to sponsor B.

  2. China in this paper refers to mainland China. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are treated separately as research in these regions is not funded through the same system as the one in mainland China.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) under National Science Foundation Award 0531194. The authors gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions received from Ismael Rafols, Luciano Kay and Abdullah Gok. The findings in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation and the others.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Administration, Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33199, USA

    Jue Wang

  2. Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    Philip Shapira

  3. School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0345, USA

    Philip Shapira

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  1. Jue Wang
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Correspondence to Jue Wang.

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Wang, J., Shapira, P. Funding acknowledgement analysis: an enhanced tool to investigate research sponsorship impacts: the case of nanotechnology. Scientometrics 87, 563–586 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0362-5

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