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Funding information in Web of Science: an updated overview

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Abstract

Despite the limitations of funding acknowledgment (FA) data in Web of Science (WoS), studies using FA information have increased rapidly over the last several years. Considering this WoS’ recent practice of updating funding data, this paper further investigates the characteristics and distribution of FA data in four WoS journal citation indexes. The research reveals that FA information coverage variances persist cross all four citation indexes by time coverage, language and document type. Our evidence suggests an improvement in FA information collection in humanity and social science research. Departing from previous studies, we argue that FA text (FT) alone no longer seems an appropriate field to retrieve and analyze funding information, since a substantial number of documents only report funding agency or grant number information in respective fields. Articles written in Chinese have a higher FA presence rate than other non-English WoS publications. This updated study concludes with a discussion of new findings and practical guidance for the future retrieval and analysis of funded research.

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Notes

  1. For more information, see http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/webofscience/fundingsearch/.

  2. The search query we use on the WoS advanced search platform is: TS = ((fund or funded or funding) AND (“Web of Science” OR WoS)), Indexes = SCIE/SSCI, Timespan = 2016–2018. Data accessed on July 8, 2019. Unless otherwise specified, all document types are considered. All data used in this paper were retrieved in June 2019 via the library of Xi'an Jiao Tong University and crosschecked at the Fudan University Library.

  3. For more detail, please refer to https://images.webofknowledge.com/images/help/WOS/hp_full_record.html.

  4. As noted in Clarivate Analytics, ESCI indexes regional journals in natural sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

  5. If any of the above three funding-related fields of one record in WoS is NOT empty, the research document is deemed funded.

  6. In Tang et al.’s (2017) analysis conducted in 2015, only four out of 4.6 million publications contained information in the FO or FG but not the FT field. Thus, they suggested using the FT to retrieve WoS FA information.

  7. Paul-Hus et al. (2016) analyzes FA information using the in-house Leiden data. Due to data accessibility issues, we could not replicate and compare their retrieved hits with various combinations of searches in our paper.

  8. The blue bars in Fig. 1 represent the returned hits of search query 1, denoted [#1]; orange bars represent the returned hits of search query 6 ([#6]). As shown in Table 1, the returned hits of search query 4 ([#4]) equal the sum of [#1] and [#6] or the sum of [#5] and [#7]. So, another division can be recorded with information in FO or FG ([#5]), and records with information in FT but without data in FO or FG ([#7]). However, as [#7] can have as few as 103 results, we only use the subsets of [#1] + [#6].

  9. For more detailed information, see https://clarivate.com/essays/journal-selection-process/.

  10. For instance, the presence of FA information in the A&HCI dataset is higher for 2017 than for 2018.

  11. It should be noted that about 600 journals are both SSCI and SCIE indexed according to the 2018 Journal Citation Reports, suggesting that financial support information of SSCI publications in 2010 can be identified and retrieved if they are also indexed in the SCIE.

  12. For details about WoS policy on journal indexing, see https://support.clarivate.com/ScientificandAcademicResearch/s/article/Web-of-Science-Core-Collection-Submission-and-indexing-of-Journals-not-written-in-English-Language?language = en_US.

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Acknowledgements

This research draws on support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#71801189), the Ministry of Education of China (#18YJAZH027), and the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (#LQ18G030010). We would like to express our deep thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. The conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the funders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Management and Engineering, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, 310018, Zhejiang, China

    Weishu Liu

  2. School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Li Tang

  3. School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Guangyuan Hu

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  1. Weishu Liu
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  2. Li Tang
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  3. Guangyuan Hu
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Correspondence to Guangyuan Hu.

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Liu, W., Tang, L. & Hu, G. Funding information in Web of Science: an updated overview. Scientometrics 122, 1509–1524 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03362-3

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