What happens when national research funding is linked to differentiated publication counts? A comparison of the Australian and Norwegian publication-based funding models

Jesper Wiborg Schneider · Kaare Aagaard · Carter Walter Bloch

53 citations0/0 files storedResearch Evaluation

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

scientometrics and bibliometrics research Higher Education Governance and Development Research, Science, and Academia

Abstract

The experiences from Australia where undifferentiated publication counts were linked to funding of universities in 1993 is well known. Publication activity increased, but the largest increase was in lower-impact journals, leading to a general drop in overall citation impact for Australia. The experience from Australia has been a warning for what would most likely happen if funding were linked to publication activity. Nevertheless, in 2005, a performance-based model based on differentiated publication counts was implemented in Norway. The model was specifically developed to counter adverse effects like those identified in the Australian case. In the present article, we examine ‘what happens at the aggregated level of publication and citation activity when funding is linked to differentiated publication counts’. We examine developments in Norwegian publication activity, journal publication profiles, and citation impact. We also examine developments in publication activities at the individual level and developments in research and development resource inputs. We compare experiences in Australia to those in Norway. The results show that for the Norwegian case, overall publication activity goes up, impact remains stable, and there is no indication of a deliberate displacement of journal publication activities to the lowest-impact journals. Hence, we do not see the same patterns as in Australia. We conclude that the experience in Norway with differentiated publication counts linked to funding has been different from the experience in Australia with an undifferentiated model. This is an important observation because currently the Norwegian model is being or has been adopted in several European countries.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 53 citations exist upstream.

References

2011Performance-based university research funding systems 1988Making It Count: The Improvement of Social Research and Theory 2002Explaining Australia’s increased share of ISI publications—the effects of a funding formula based on publication counts 2012The Leiden ranking 2011/2012: Data collection, indicators, and interpretation 1989Statistical models and shoe leather 2002The evolution of research activity in Spain 2003Modifying publication practices in response to funding formulas 2015How incentives trickle down: Local use of a national bibliometric indicator system

Cited by

2016Expert-based versus citation-based ranking of scholarly and scientific publication channels 2021The effect of publication traditions and requirements in research assessment and funding policies upon the use of national journals in 28 post-socialist countries 2018Pros and cons of the new financial support policy for Turkish researchers 2018Measuring changes in publication patterns in a context of performance-based research funding systems: the case of educational research in the University of Gothenburg (2005–2014)

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.