Fortin Jean-Michel, Currie David J
Ottawa-Carleton Institute of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2013 Jun 19;8(6):e65263. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065263. Print 2013.
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 funding. Researchers who received additional funds from a second federal granting council, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, were not more productive than those who received only NSERC funding. Impact was generally a decelerating function of funding. Impact per dollar was therefore lower for large grant-holders. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that larger grants lead to larger discoveries. Further, the impact of researchers who received increases in funding did not predictably increase. We conclude that scientific impact (as reflected by publications) is only weakly limited by funding. We suggest that funding strategies that target diversity, rather than "excellence", are likely to prove to be more productive.
给少数精英研究人员提供大额资助，还是给众多研究人员提供小额资助，哪种方式更有效？只有当科学影响力随着资助规模的加速增长而增加时，大额资助才会更有效。在此，我们考察了加拿大自然科学与工程研究理事会（NSERC）资助的三个学科中，以大学为基础的个体研究人员的科学影响力。我们考虑了四个科学影响力指标：发表的文章数量、这些文章的被引用次数、被引用次数最多的文章以及高被引文章的数量，每个指标均在四年期间进行衡量。我们将这些指标与获得的NSERC资助金额相关联。影响力与资助呈正相关，但关联较弱。从第二个联邦资助机构加拿大卫生研究院获得额外资金的研究人员，并不比仅获得NSERC资助的研究人员更有产出。影响力总体上是资助的递减函数。因此，大额资助获得者的每美元影响力较低。这与大额资助会带来更大发现的假设不一致。此外，获得资助增加的研究人员的影响力并没有可预测地增加。我们得出结论，（以出版物反映的）科学影响力仅在微弱程度上受资助限制。我们建议，以多样性而非“卓越性”为目标的资助策略可能会被证明更有成效。
