Research Executive Agency, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium.
Research Office, University of Split School of Medicine, Split, Croatia.
PLoS One. 2019 Feb 14;14(2):e0212286. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212286. eCollection 2019.
Assessing the success and performance of researchers is a difficult task, as their grant output is influenced by a series of factors, including seniority, gender and geographical location of their host institution. In order to assess the effects of these factors, we analysed the publication and citation outputs, using Scopus and Web of Science, and the collaboration networks of European Research Council (ERC) starting (junior) and advanced (senior) grantees. For this study, we used a cohort of 355 grantees from the Life Sciences domain of years 2007-09. While senior grantees had overall greater publication output, junior grantees had a significantly greater pre-post grant award increase in their overall number of publications and in those on which they had last authorship. The collaboration networks size and the number of sub-communities increased for all grantees, although more pronounced for juniors, as they departed from smaller and more compact pre-award co-authorship networks. Both junior and senior grantees increased the size of the community within which they were collaborating in the post-award period. Pre-post grant award performance of grantees was not related to gender, although male junior grantees had more publications than female grantees before and after the grant award. Junior grantees located in lower research-performing countries published less and had less diverse collaboration networks than their peers located in higher research-performing countries. Our study suggests that research environment has greater influence on post-grant award publications than gender especially for junior grantees. Also, collaboration networks may be a useful complement to publication and citation outputs for assessing post-grant research performance, especially for grantees who already have a high publication output and who get highly competitive grants such as those from ERC.
评估研究人员的成功和表现是一项艰巨的任务，因为他们的资助产出受到一系列因素的影响，包括他们所在机构的资历、性别和地理位置。为了评估这些因素的影响，我们使用 Scopus 和 Web of Science 分析了出版物和引文产出，并分析了欧洲研究理事会 (ERC) 初级和高级资助获得者的合作网络。在这项研究中，我们使用了来自 2007-09 年生命科学领域的 355 名资助获得者的队列。虽然高级资助获得者的总体出版产出更大，但初级资助获得者在其总体出版物数量以及他们作为最后作者的出版物数量上，在获得资助前后的增长幅度明显更大。所有资助获得者的合作网络规模和子社区数量都有所增加，尽管初级资助获得者的增加更为明显，因为他们脱离了获得资助前较小且更紧凑的合著网络。初级和高级资助获得者都增加了他们在获得资助后合作的社区规模。资助获得者在获得资助前后的表现与性别无关，尽管男性初级资助获得者在获得资助前后的出版物数量都多于女性资助获得者。位于研究表现较低国家的初级资助获得者的出版物较少，合作网络也不如位于研究表现较高国家的同行多样化。我们的研究表明，研究环境对获得资助后的出版物产生的影响大于性别，特别是对初级资助获得者而言。此外，合作网络可能是评估获得资助后的研究表现的出版物和引文产出的有用补充，特别是对于那些已经有较高出版物产出且获得高度竞争的资助（如 ERC 资助）的资助获得者。
