Research funding and national academic performance: Examination of a Danish success story

The relationship between research policy and academic performance is highly relevant to policy. Yet our knowledge of the effects of different systemic factors is still limited and inconclusive. In an explorative, single country case study covering a timespan of three decades this study examines the effects of changes in selected funding factors based on the notion that funding plays a decisive role in defining the scope, content and direction of public research. The analysis reveals that Denmark, which today is a top research nation, experienced a turning point in impact in the early 1990s which coincided with a number of systemic policy changes. However, the analysis also shows that even at this detailed, long-term level of analysis the relationships are far from straightforward. A number of explanations for the difficulties related to opening the black box of national research performance are discussed in the concluding section.

[1]  D. King.  The scientific impact of nations , 2004, Nature.

[2]  Maresi Nerad,et al.  Toward a Global PhD?: Forces and Forms in Doctoral Education Worldwide , 2008 .

[3]  Amanda H. Goodall.  Highly Cited Leaders and the Performance of Research Universities. , 2008 .

[4]  Ben R. Martin,et al.  Investing in the Future: An International Comparison of Government Funding of Academic and Related Research , 1990 .

[5]  Othmar W. Winkler.  Interpreting Economic and Social Data , 2009 .

[6]  Michel Zitt,et al.  Relativity of citation performance and excellence measures: From cross-field to cross-scale effects of field-normalisation , 2005, Scientometrics.

[7]  Mika Nieminen,et al.  University research funding and publication performance--An international comparison , 2010 .

[8]  D. Hicks.  Performance-based university research funding systems , 2012 .

[9]  Paul Cairney,et al.  Complexity Theory in Political Science and Public Policy , 2012 .

[10]  Anthony F. J. van Raan,et al.  Citation theory and the Ortega hypothesis , 1987, Scientometrics.

[11]  Andrew Pettigrew,et al.  The determinants of research group performance: Towards Mode 2? , 2002 .

[12]  Sven Steinmo,et al.  Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: Historical institutionalism , 2008 .

[13]  Gunnar Sivertsen,et al.  Excellence and growth dynamics: A comparative study of the Matthew effect , 2015 .

[14]  Dag W. Aksnes,et al.  Ranking national research systems by citation indicators. A comparative analysis using whole and fractionalised counting methods , 2012, J. Informetrics.

[15]  A. Raan.  Measuring Science: Capita Selecta of Current Main Issues , 2004 .

[16]  John W. Tukey,et al.  Exploratory Data Analysis. , 1979 .

[17]  S. Sörlin.  Funding Diversity: Performance-based Funding Regimes as Drivers of Differentiation in Higher Education Systems , 2007 .

[18]  T. Lawson.  Economics and Reality , 1997 .

[19]  Ulf Sandström,et al.  Institutionalizing the triple helix: research funding and norms in the academic system , 2000 .

[20]  H. Boer,et al.  Regulatory autonomy and performance: the reform of higher education re-visited , 2013 .

[21]  Jian Wang,et al.  Detecting structural change in university research systems: A case study of British research policy , 2013 .

[22]  J. Espinosa,et al.  European Comparison of Public Research Systems , 1999 .

[23]  Thed N. van Leeuwen,et al.  Benchmarking international scientific excellence: Are highly cited research papers an appropriate frame of reference? , 2002, Scientometrics.

[24]  Thomas Heinze,et al.  How to sponsor ground-breaking research: a comparison of funding schemes , 2008 .

[25]  Othmar W. Winkler,et al.  Interpreting Economic and Social Data: A Foundation of Descriptive Statistics , 2009 .

[26]  Rodrigo Costas,et al.  The skewness of scientific productivity , 2014, J. Informetrics.

[27]  B. Martin,et al.  University Research Evaluation and Funding: An International Comparison , 2003 .

[28]  Mika Nieminen,et al.  Influence of research funding and science policy on university research performance: A comparison of five countries , 2009 .

[29]  R. May.  The Scientific Wealth of Nations , 1997, Science.

[30]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Is the United States losing ground in science? A global perspective on the world science system , 2009, Scientometrics.

[31]  Ingo Liefner,et al.  Funding, resource allocation, and performance in higher education systems , 2003 .

[32]  Sven Steinmo,et al.  Taking evolution seriously in political science , 2010, Theory in Biosciences.

[33]  D. Braun.  Lasting tensions in research policy-making — a delegation problem , 2003 .

[34]  Henk F. Moed,et al.  Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation , 1899 .

[35]  Benoît Godin,et al.  Measurement and statistics on science and technology : 1920 to the present , 2004 .

[36]  Philippe Larédo,et al.  Research and Innovation Policies in the New Global Economy: An International Comparative Analysis , 2001 .

[37]  Benoait Godin,et al.  Measurement and statistics on science and technology , 2004 .

[38]  Gustavo Crespi,et al.  An empirical study of scientific production: A cross country analysis, 1981-2002 , 2008 .

[39]  B. Lepori.  Public research funding and research policy: a long-term analysis for the Swiss case , 2006 .

[40]  Why Are Some Nations More Successful Than Others in Research Impact? A Comparison Between Denmark and Sweden , 2015 .

[41]  Lutz Bornmann,et al.  What do citation counts measure? A review of studies on citing behavior , 2008, J. Documentation.

[42]  A. Mas-Colell,et al.  The Governance and Performance of Universities: Evidence from Europe and the US , 2010 .

[43]  Peter Munk Christiansen og Niels Chr. Sidenius.  Forsknings- og teknologipolitik i Danmark. Politik og institutioner 1 , 1988 .

[44]  Ling-Chu Lee,et al.  Research output and economic productivity: a Granger causality test , 2011, Scientometrics.

[45]  Robert D. Shelton,et al.  Relations between national research investment and publication output: Application to an American Paradox , 2008, Scientometrics.

[46]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  Changing Incentives to Publish , 2011, Science.

[47]  Linda Butler,et al.  Impacts of performance-based research funding systems: A review of the concerns and the evidence , 2010 .

[48]  G. Laudel,et al.  The Social Construction Of Bibliometric Evaluations , 2007 .

[49]  D. Freedman.  Statistical models and shoe leather , 1989 .

[50]  R. Merton.  The Matthew Effect in Science , 1968, Science.