Big Science vs. Little Science: How Scientific Impact Scales with Funding.

ABSTRACT:

Agencies that fund scientific research must choose

is it more effective to give large grants to a few elite researchers, or small grants to many researchers? Large grants would be more effective only if scientific impact increases as an accelerating function of grant size. Here, we examine the scientific impact of individual university-based researchers in three disciplines funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). We considered four indices of scientific impact: numbers of articles published, numbers of citations to those articles, the most cited article, and the number of highly cited articles, each measured over a four-year period. We related these to the amount of NSERC funding received. Impact is positively, but only weakly, related to

SUBMITTER: Fortin JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3686789 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature