The impact of research funding on scientific outputs: Evidence from six smaller European countries

We investigate the relationships between the citation impacts of scientific papers and the sources of funding which are acknowledged as having supported those publications. We examine several relationships potentially associated with funding including first citation, total citations and the chances of becoming highly cited. Furthermore, we explore evidence on the links between citations and types of funding by organization and also with combined measures of funding. In particular, we examine the relationship between funding intensity and funding variety and citation. Our empirical work focuses on six small advanced European economies, applying a zero inflated negative binomial model to a set of more than 240,000 papers authored by researchers from these countries. We find that funding is not related to the first citation but is significantly related to the number of citations and top percentile citation impact. Additionally, we find that citation impact is positively related to funding variety and negatively related with funding intensity. Finally there is an inverse relationship between the relative frequency of funding and citation impact. The results presented in the paper raise insights for the design of research programs and the structure of research funding and for the behavior and strategies of researchers and sponsoring organizations.