Quantitative Analysis of Papers Sponsored by Natural Science Foundation of China

This paper studies the projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC),in terms of the number of papers published,their citations and the citations per paper,based on the Database of Chinese Scientific Technical Papers and Citations(CSTPCD) during the period between 1999 and 2009.The distributions of subjects,regions and institutions of NSFC sponsored papers are analyzed.The results show that the number of NSFC sponsored papers has increased rapidly in the 2000—2009 period with the average annual increase of 13.4 percent,and the citations of NSFC sponsored papers increase also steadily in the period of 1999—2009.However,according to Essential Science Indicators,the number of citations per paper of NSFC sponsored papers is slightly higher than that of CSTPCD and is still very low.